Peanut butter

HISTORY

Canadian pharmacist Marcellus Gilmore Edson was the first to patent peanut butter, in 1884. He developed the idea of peanut paste as a delicious and nutritious staple for people who could hardly chew on solid food, a not uncommon state back in those days.

A decade later, George A Bayle Junior, a St. Louis doctor and owner of a food products company developed the idea of peanut butter. The doctor had been looking for a nutritious protein substitute for his patients with bad teeth who couldn't chew meat and had experimented by grinding peanuts in his hand-cranked meat grinder. After mechanizing the process he started selling peanut butter out of barrels for about six cents per pound.

Peanut butter was considered a delicacy and was only served in the finest tearooms in New York City.

The first reference to peanut butter being paired with jelly was in 1901. It was in an article by Julia Davis Chandler in the Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics.

Three years later peanut butter came into the limelight at the St. Louis Universal Exposition by concessionaire C. H. Sumner, where it was promoted as a health food.

In 1922, pharmacist Joseph L. Rosenfield invented the churning process that gives peanut butter the smooth texture it has today. He  licensed this process to the company that creates Peter Pan peanut butter six years later, and in 1932, Rosenfield started his own peanut butter company which he named Skippy.

Reese's peanut butter cups were also originally called "penny cups" since they cost just one cent each when Harry Burnett Reese first started selling them in 1928. The penny cups were so successful that Reese was able to sell them in 5-pound boxes to local retailers.

US peanut butter manufacturers fought a 12 year legal battle with the FDA over the minimum peanut content required to be legally labelled as "peanut butter". Finally, on May 3, 1971, the US Appeals Court affirmed that any peanut butter that was labeled as such had to have 90 percent peanuts. Anything under 90% peanuts must be labelled "peanut spread".

FUN PEANUT BUTTER FACTS

Half of the peanuts grown in America are used to make peanut butter.

in the US, peanut butter must contain 90% peanuts, otherwise it must be called "peanut spread."

The National Peanut Board estimates it takes about 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter. That's approximately 45 peanuts per ounce of peanut butter.

It takes one acre of peanuts to make 30,000 peanut butter sandwiches.

Almost $800 million a year is spent on peanut butter in the United States.

There's a jar of peanut butter in 75 percent of the homes in America.

60 percent of American consumers prefer the creamy variety over the crunchy kind.

The average European eats less than a tablespoon of peanut butter in a year.

National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day celebrates on April 2, 2020 the favorite lunchtime sandwich of American children, and many adults.

The average American child will have eaten over 1500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the time they graduate from high school.

The world's largest peanut butter and jelly sandwich was assembled in Grand Saline, Texas. It weighed 1,342 pounds and contained 292 pounds of peanut butter, 340 pounds of grape jelly, and 710 pounds of bread.

A 2003 study co-authored by hundreds of physicists, "The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth," is only one sentence long: "So far as we can determine, peanut butter has no effect on the rotation of the earth."

Archibutyrophobia (pronounced A'-ra-kid-bu-ti-ro-pho-bi-a) is the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.

Rubbing peanut butter on a stubbed toe acts as a painkiller, due to the oil in the peanuts.

Sources Food For Thought by Ed Pearce, Mnn.com, Todayifoundout.com