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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of NPR Radio's HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to Peanut Butter Jelly Time, I'm Josh, there's Chuck. We haven't seen you in a while. If you have seen Jerry, please tell her to call home. And this is stuff you should know, Jerry. She sent out a smoke signal that said send to me.

So she did. She did. And we sent some on donkey back in that general direction.

Are you peanut butter or jelly in this scenario? I want to be peanut butter. You always make me be jelly.

Well, I think we should level set here at the beginning. Okay. And talk about if you like, peanut butter, which is your favorite and then what you like. How do you utilize it?

Okay, my name is Josh C. And I love peanut butter. Okay.

Almost only smooth. I will eat chunky if the if civilization has collapsed and that's all I can find.

Okay. I eat it any way, shape or form, sometimes just peanut butter on a spoon, sometimes peanut butter and spoon with a little divot made with my tongue filled with local honey. And if you want to get Tubby really fast. Let me introduce you to the wonder. That is a spoonful of peanut butter scooped in some cool whip. OK, but really any kind of peanut butter, any time I will eat it. And I've noticed that once I reached my 40s, peanut butter sticks around me a lot more than it used to.

So I'm having a real struggle with it. Thank you for listening.

And do you want a buzz market, your favorite brand?

We use this Jif natural. That's like it's like in a brown container. And I like it so much. I've never I purposely never looked at the label because I don't want to know how natural it is. But my all time favorite is Reese's Peanut Butter, like.

Have you had it? You mean in the jar? Yes. Yes.

Oh so good. I think I've had it once, but I was raised on Jeff.

Now go.

Well, I was raised on whatever the gigantic gallon tub is that used to get in. It is. Yeah, I don't remember. I don't think it was any of those name brands now. I mean, I love peanut butter.

It's one of my favorite things in the world and I will go crunchy or smooth no matter. I love them both. I also like it with honey. Yeah, I like it. And I don't do this much obviously, because it's just I'm not 19 years old, but a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich is one of the best things in the world.

You know, I've never had that. Is it good really?

Do you have any cupie? Yes. Peanut butter and cupie samey.

Okay, so half and half or more peanut butter than mayo or what. It's kind of your your jam. I definitely don't go light on the mayo because you got to have that tank peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.

I used to eat when I was a kid. Yeah. That's good stuff Fluffernutter.

And now I don't eat the sugary hydrogenated types. I either have one of the the sort of artisan natural kinds you have to mix up or just the decaf farmers' market grinds the peanuts right in front of your face into a tub and hand it to you right in front of your face.

And it says, beat it. You can't have any of this.

So that's just peanuts, obviously. Yeah, maybe a little bit of salt.

Do they add any salt or is it really just peanuts? It's just peanuts. Wow.

I wonder if they salt the peanuts when they roast them then, because I've always seen like peanuts with just a little bit of salt. Like you can't have peanut butter any other way, but maybe maybe they figured out they'd crack the code.

Well, I mean, they may be salted and roasted. I have no idea about the peanut, but it's good. It's all good. But I have to mix, you know, I got to put a little bit of honey in there, maybe a little bit of agave to give it a little bit of a sweet.

Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. I was going to ask you, I've not had any artisan stuff and I did a little research and found a couple I want to try and I didn't know, like, is it is it just straight up adult kind of stuff where you're like, oh, that's really good. But you're wishing that you had like the nasty Big Three brand instead?

Well, I mean, if you don't add any sweetener, it's it's not nearly as good as you know. But I think the naturals are all kind of the same as far as sweetness level.

Yeah. The best I could discern is that if you're paying for artisan craft, peanut butter and butter, you're paying your like supposedly have, you know, depending on the kind of peanuts that are chosen, the variety of peanuts, um, the way that it's roasted, almost like a coffee or a wine or something like that. There's like a more sophisticated palate or terroir that you really have to pay attention to. That to me is kind of like the opposite of what peanut butter is supposed to be.

It's supposed to be like this dumb, messy thing where, you know, your hair is totally normal and you start eating the peanut butter and you suddenly have like a Catholic and you're wearing a striped shirt that shows your gut kind of thing, you know, like you just regress in age. But I also get wanting to enjoy peanut butter in a healthy way because it is surprisingly from from what I saw, it is healthier than you would suspect if done, right?

Yes. Not not a big glob of Peter Pan with kewpie mayonnaise and potato chips smashed in between white bread. Yes.

Yeah, I'm hungry now.

I am too. I already had some peanut butter this morning, so I'm good to go. But this thing this is like the yawning episode where I kept yawning, doing research. This is I just wanted peanut butter the whole time.

Well, peanut butter for me has now become my in my since January, you know, I'm trying to lose some weight. So that's become my sweet treat at the end of the night instead of going and getting ice cream. Oh, good for you. Just like a spoonful of peanut butter and honey and that'll satiate that desire.

I haven't seen you in a while. How's it going? It's. I mean, I'm down 20 since January, but it really leveled off the past month. Congratulations, dude, that is really impressive. Know just 40 more to go, man. Oh, that's really great, man.

Just just. Yeah, yeah, it does plateau, but it picks up again tomorrow. It plateaus because of quarantine. Alcoholism.

Oh, well, I was going to ask because I'm finding that that quarantining has made things like, you know, we have food and everything, but we're we're eating it less for some reason rather than the opposite, which both you, me and I were really concerned was going to be the way it went. Are you finding it easier to keep up with food or harder?

Easier, because I'm cooking a lot cheese and buzz marketing again. But, you know, I'm just having one of those mikes mighty good for lunch, which is very low in calories. Yeah, it's really good to. And, you know, I'm just tracking the calories and it's it's alcohol that's the problem right now.

I got you. Yeah. I've been doing one or two nights a week tops and then a couple and I've been pretty good now that I think about it. It's good. Yeah, because this has been fairly stressful, but I haven't been stressed eating too much.

So OK, anyway, peanut butter here to me, Chuck, early on we happened upon the fact of the podcast. If you ask me, this is a boy, very jarring, if you'll forgive the pun, that peanut butter outside of the United States in a lot of different countries is looked upon as very weird and gross in much the same way that we Americans tend to think of like Vegemite. People like the British, Chinese, other countries do not think peanut butter is particularly good.

They think it's a little nasty. And that just blew me away to read that.

Yeah, I'd want to talk to some people before I let some Internet website tell me that people think peanut butter across some some website push your brain around.

Yeah, I'd like to talk to some folks about that. But at the very least, even if they don't think it's gross, it it is a an all American thing, like even countries that do enjoy it.

I read that Australia actually likes it a lot. It's an American concoction. So much so that, like, it might be the most American concoction there is, to tell you the truth.

Yeah. I mean, you make a good point here. You put this stuff together that mac and cheese came from Europe. Hot dogs came from Europe. Yeah. Sort of hamburgers. Even though I would argue that the hamburger, as we know it is, is pretty American. Sure. But peanut butter, just us as far as modern times go. Yeah, I think that the Enka in the 15th century used to grind peanuts into a paste and then that was it until the 19th century when one of our buddies who was going to make a cameo later got his hands on the idea.

But yeah, it was an American invention, except it was actually Canadian, as we'll see. But for the most part, people think of it as all-American. And to talk about peanut butter, Chuck, we kind of have to talk about peanuts. There's really no way around it. Believe me, I don't want to. But we have to.

I think you mean Goober's.

Have you ever heard somebody outside of TV call them that? Not really. But I knew it was a thing.

But I don't it's not in the just daily nomenclature of my crowd, but it is it's supposedly like a Southern and I guess an antiquated Southern word for peanut. A goober goober.

Yeah, I've I've heard Goober in that old song about the raisin. It's Goober. Well, Goober's, it's also a candy, right?

Yeah. And there's Smucker's Goober's, which is peanut butter and jelly mixed together in a jar.

Mm. It's actually good. Is it.

Yeah. Even as a kid I was like this is going to be gross. And then I tried, I was like not bad, not bad.

Smucker's see I'm pretty discerning with my jams and jellies. That's for another day though. You would not like this.

I probably would. You would not smucker's that if you're at all discerning that you would not like it.

All right. So Peanuts is a it's a legume. And it's also called a groundnut or an earth nut. And just like a lentil or a pea, it is a little legume nut. No, I'm a big fan of peanuts, though. I like to eat them pretty much any way you can slice it from boiled to straight up raw out of the shell, like, um, honey roasted, salted and roasted and certainly in peanut butter.

So Momoh and I go and visit squirrels whenever we can when we go on walks and we always take peanuts. And I read you're supposed to take roasted unsalted peanuts. So we get like big bags of those. And if there's no squirrels out, I get to eat old peanuts. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, give me a look. Like those are not for you, but they usually end up in my tummy anyway.

You ever seen a squirrel stick one of those in his mouth sideways. Yep. I had a darn cute. Yeah.

Well like I'll shell them and then throw like the actual peanut in the squirrel. Somehow we'll know that they're supposed to be another one coming because they'll very frequently put one in his cheek and then like be like, OK, he tossed me the other one. Then I'll take that run off in, like, eat it with his two little hands. It's really adorable. Right.

Or they might stick around to see if it's one of the rare three bangers. Right. Which is just that's a good squirrel day right there. All right.

So these things are legumes and we think they originated in South America. You mentioned Peru, even though we cannot prove that through the fossil record. But they have found evidence in the archaeological culture from Peru from about seventy six hundred years ago. And it was sort of one of these things where they found the fact that they were farming this stuff. And then when you see it in like artwork and pottery and stuff like that, then, you know, it's sort of a thing.

Yeah, right.

The future has arrived and it shows up on pottery, you know, for real. They've also found them, I guess, entombed with mummies from the Inca and the Aztecs, which makes sense because when the conquistadors arrived, the Spanish and the Portuguese to South America and Central America, they found Peanut's being grown as far north as Mexico. But I think the first place they encountered them was actually in the Caribbean. And they took them back with with them.

They took them to Spain and Spain passed them along to the rest of Europe and the Philippines and China. The Portuguese took it back to again to Europe, but also to India and Africa. And Peanut's started to be farmed all over the world like the world loves peanuts is just not necessarily peanut butter that they're crazy about. And then in a really kind of weird, surprising twist, the peanuts were reported back to the Americas from Africa as part of the West African slave trade.

And actually that word Guba, that Southern word, Guba, they think comes from a Congolese word or Congo with a K word in Guba. Yeah, pretty surprising, sure, Goober and Guba close enough, yeah, but to think like the peanut you think of the peanut is as just American as it comes and then even as Georgia as it comes. But the idea that it wouldn't have been here had it not been for the importation of African slaves that reintroduced the peanut to the Americas.

That's a pretty circuitous and weird route for it to take.

Yeah. In Africa still grows about twenty five percent of the peanuts in the world. And we're just below that at about twenty one percent here in the States. And it took all the way to 1840 to that we started growing them commercially in the US. In Virginia is where it first started for oil and food and to substitute out for cocoa.

And it wasn't it just wasn't like a it was kind of like for people that didn't have the means to buy something better or maybe feed it to your animals or something like that.

Yeah, it was good for livestock. And the poverty stricken basically was who were expected to eat peanuts at the time.

That's right.

It's just like like lobster. Have you ever read consider the lobster that. Wow, man, I want to see David Lee Roth so bad, but I know that's not his name at all. Who will consider the lobster? I've never heard of that, but I who is in the know about the lobster, who is end of tour about that movie of David Foster Wallace? Oh, sure.

Sure. Yeah. He wrote this really great magazine article once called Consider We Consider the Lobster. It's good. But in it, he explains that it used to be considered a food fit only for the poor. Basically, it gets peanuts were considered the same.

That's right. You know, there were sea spiders. Yeah.

Or the cockroaches of the sea. Disgusting. It is kind of gross, we think of it like that, and apparently there was a law that said that you could only feed so much lobster to patients in mental asylums at the time or else it became abusive.

Oh, wow. Yeah, they didn't know, did they, try him on a hot dog bun with mayonnaise.

So one of the reasons why the peanut was viewed as such a lowly crop was that it was again, it was used for oil in which I mean, this wasn't necessarily just cooking oil. They would use it to lubricate machinery, that kind of stuff. So the idea of eating the same thing that your machinery lube came from was probably not super appetizing, but it was also like you would get just basically trash when you got a bag of peanuts because there was no easy way to harvest it, stem them, clean them and prepare them for basically general consumption.

So, again, you could just dump it into a trough and feed it to your livestock, or you could spend a lot of time trying to separate it. Or you could just be like, I'm not I'm not messing with this. And for a long time, they didn't mess with it, actually.

Yeah. When the civil war happened, the union soldiers got their hands on some of our southern peanuts and they said these are delicious. And both armies ate a lot of peanuts. And then when the circus rolled around with P.T. Barnum, Hugh Jackman, they started selling peanuts, their hot roasted peanuts. And especially in the cheap seats, they become known as the peanut gallery. And that's where that phrase came came from, which is kind of interesting. Yeah.

Because apparently, if they didn't like what they saw, they would toss their peanuts that they were eating at the stage. So that's where Peanut Gallery came from.

Yeah. And then you've got them on the street corners. You've got them at baseball games. Peanuts are starting to get a little traction as a snack, but they were still not. It was still hard to get like a really good quality peanuts because like you said, the way they were being harvested at the time by hand, it was just tough to do. Mm hmm.

And then so two African-Americans around the turn of the last century stepped up and basically said, we're going to make the peanut what it is today. So one obviously was George Washington Carver, who's known as basically the father of the peanut, who actually, contrary to popular belief, did not invent peanut butter. But he did come up with more than 300 different ways to use the peanut. And I never realized, like, why he was so bonkers for peanuts.

But one of the reasons he was trying to make the peanut re-establish it is a prominent crop was because the South had depleted its soil so badly from growing cotton for so long. And then, you know, at the worst of this, there was a boll weevil outbreak that just ruined the rest of the cotton crop. So the South really needed something to replace cotton in. George Washington, Carver helped introduce and popularize peanuts and say, not only can you eat these things, look at all this other stuff you can make out of them.

That's right.

And there was another guy around the same time named Ben Hicks, Mr Benjamin Hicks. He was from Virginia and which we already talked about being a big peanut state. And he invented a gas powered machine for cleaning and stemming these things. He got it patented like a lot of well, it still goes on, I guess, with with the little guy and their patents.

Big Pharma came around and a farm equipment company challenged him. He actually had to go to court, but won the case in 1981. And this picture was a big, big deal and modernizing peanut farming. And all of a sudden you could get really good peanuts a lot quicker. Doesn't take as many hands, are man hours or person hours. And the demand for peanuts, for oil, for eating them and peanut butter and candy all just kind of went through the roof at that point.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you could you could get your hands on good peanuts. They were widely available and they were just delicious. Everyone saw finally how great peanuts are, but not peanut butter yet. And I proposed, Charles, that we take a break and come back, really dig into the peanut butter. Let's do it, OK?

Hey, it's Bobby Bones, executive producer of Make It Up as we Go, the brand new podcast from Audio Up and I Heart Radio brought to you exclusively by Unilever's Noor and Magnum Brands. The story follows a songwriter's journey as well as the songs themselves and how they make it to country radio from executive producer Miranda Lambert and creators Scarlett Burg and Jared Goosestep. A story inspired by the competitive world of Nashville writing rooms featuring original music by Scarlett Burke, director and executive producer, featuring some of the biggest names in country, including Nicole Guy and everything.

Now in that. Just like now, it's feeling like one day on a Saturday night, make it up as we go only on the podcast network in association with audio of media created by Scarlett Burke and Jared Goosestep. Scott, joshin shot down. OK, so like I said, the Enka probably had us beat as far as the invention of peanut butter went, but it was actually a Canadian who they think was probably the actual inventor of modern peanut butter, a guy who I had never heard of before.

His name was Marcella's Gilmor Edson Wallace. I'm kidding about the last part I just knew that was going Marcella's Gilmore Edson. You just can't say the name Marcellus and not followed up with Wallace somewhere.

You know, it really has become like peanut butter and jelly. So he patented a paste made of peanuts in 1884, which was described by him and his patent as at room temperature, having a consistency like that of butter, lard or ointment.

Try this. It's it sounds gross. But when you think about peanut butter, that's kind of about right. Yeah.

He added sugar to stabilize it a little bit. And this was kind of like the first modern peanut butter that we think of as peanut butter sold for about six cents a pound, which is a pretty good price. Yeah.

And if you from what I can tell, just reading about it, if you tried it today, you'd be like, yeah, it's peanut butter. Whereas if you tried some of the other stuff, you'd be like, and it's the artisan peanut butter to you. Yeah.

And the other stuff was first developed. So it's interesting to me that there is in the first try, right out of the gate, the guy who invents peanut butter basically invents the modern version of it. And then it takes a big step backwards or sideways, I guess you can say, depending on your viewpoint. When our buddy, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg comes along and if you'll remember from the live show we did on the Kellogg brothers, he invented nut butters and in particular, peanut butter is considered one of the main inventors of peanut butter.

Well, yeah, it was it was right up his alley because I think that might be my favorite live show we've done, actually.

Oh, yeah, I think so. PR was my favorite part. Honey, you're going to say that you did. Yeah, that was a good one. You did. I think those are my top two. What about Pinto's man? What about my B Cooper? Those might be the first four that I would name. What else have we done? Malls, bars.

We did the secret one that is still supposedly on tour, but on hiatus right now. So you think that's it? I think that's all.

Well, I'm going to go with John Harvey Kellogg because he is if you listen to that one, he was very big on chewing food until it was the consistency of peanut butter, basically. And so peanut butter comes along and he's like, well, this is perfect because you don't have to chew it like that. It's already like that. It'll just glide right through your system and come out as delicious peanut butter poop. Yeah.

And it won't poison your entire body and you won't have to spend any time in the electric light bath.

That's right. For the kneading machine.

So Dr. Kellogg creates basically what we would recognize today is the the artisan version of peanut butter. It's just ground up peanuts that form a paste. And apparently that's just a natural thing that happens. Like if you put roasted peanuts in food processor, it's going to turn like gritty and everything. But if you just keep going, it eventually reaches this point, this threshold where that grit turns into this oily paste, like peanut butter, like an ointment like Marcellus Wallace would call it.

And that's basically what John Harvey Kellogg did and served at Battle Creek. But most of the people who would have been exposed to peanut butter would not have tried John Kellogg's because, you know, that sanitarium was really expensive and it was for the wealthy, it was for celebrities. So most people experience peanut butter at one or two places. And Chuck, I really found out in researching this that the history of peanut butter is super murky.

It's like a spoonful of peanut butter stirred up in a glass of water, kind of murky right where it is kind of gross, where it's just not entirely clear who did what, when, whose contribution has been disproportionately mythologized. But from what I can tell, John Harvey Kellogg is definitely one of the fathers of peanut butter. Mr. Marsalis was one as well. And then it gets a little murkier after that. So much so that people say, well, Peanut Butter made its debut at the 1984 St.

Louis World's Fair. And then other people like, no, no, that's wrong. It made its debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. And I can find good, credible sources that say either one. So I have no idea where it made its debut. I believe it was sold for sure at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1984 and that a guy named S.H. Summers sold like 20000 dollars worth of peanut butter as snack items there, but that the people who ate it there had probably already been exposed to peanut butter.

And like that it might not have been something that was. Part of their everyday thing, they weren't standing in their pantry eating it off of a spoon, but they had probably had it before and this is like a real treat for them to to experience. It wasn't like debuted in 1984, from what I can tell. Right, well, regardless of who introduced it initially, by 1997, thanks to companies like Hynde's and Beechnut, they were selling 34 million pounds of peanut butter, up from just two million in 1899 to over an eight year period.

That's a pretty big increase. And the soldiers come into play again. It wasn't just the Civil War and World Wars one and two. And I've had peanut butter K rations before. Really, it's my daddy's to get that stuff a lot when I was a kid for camping and stuff at the Army Navy store. So it became a big part of your your Army rations in the armed forces because a lot of protein was good sustenance. You can make a PB and J and that was pretty comforting if you were on the front lines or in a trench in World War One.

Yeah, supposedly they popularized the PB and the troops did.

That's right. And thank them for that. Oh, I will I'll salute the troops for that one, but it was pretty regional at the time in the early 20th century, it didn't travel that great. They finally let you know I mentioned hydrogen. I said earlier it was this hydrogen nation. Is that right? Yeah. That really led to the big three coming about with the industrialization of peanut butter production and three gentlemen named Peter Pan, Skippy and Jeff, which I was curious about, Jeff, where that came from.

And all I found was they said it's easy to spell, easy to say and easy to remember.

It's true. All three of those checks had no meaning beyond that, basically. Really, I would have guessed they had something to do with, you know, like doing it in a Jeff or Jeffrey or something. Huh?

I mean, you got to be in the room, I guess, to know where the seed came from. But they just said it was simple and super easy. And that was kind of the end of that story.

That good night. So that more you know, I'm with you. I do, too.

I'm kind of mad right now. But we got we got to press on with hydrogenation, right? Because there's this guy named John Kampfner and he wrote a book called The Creamy and Crunchy, all about peanut butter. And he basically points they're saying like that that's that was the turning point for peanut butter, maybe even tied for first with its invention was the introduction of hydrogenation, which takes oils that are liquid at room temperature and as hydrogen and a catalyst usually like powdered nickel.

And those those bonds become infused or saturated with hydrogen. And so they stick together a lot more easily. So those liquid oils have a more stable, solid state at room temperature. So you go from like peanut butter with oil on top to peanut butter that doesn't have oil on top of the oils mixed into the mixture. And it stays that way even on the store shelf, which people love, because, I mean, you know, from eating artisan peanut butter, it's kind of a pain to stir it up, little dog.

I mean, that that initial stir is a little dodgy because it's so close to the lid. Yeah, but you just have to have the right spoon, take your time to be in a rush. And, you know, shelf life stability is super important with peanut butter because only monsters put peanut butter in the refrigerator. Who does that? Who point them out to me? Monsters who, like you've met somebody who's done that before.

I think it was in a Judge John Hodgman listener mail at one point. Oh, man.

I don't think it was a major case, but I think it was one of their one of their listener. Mallon's OK, but totally, totally think it should be on the shelf. That's where it belongs. Right. Although I will say if you mix a little PB and J with the natural kind and you put it in the fridge because you've had your two bites and you made too much the next day, it is interesting. It's more like a Reese's cup.

Consistency is kind of hard. It makes for a nice little snack, but it's certainly not anything that you can spread on bread.

Right, right. Well, that's the other thing, too, is if the oils are mixed into the solids, the forms is creamier substance that makes it way easier to spread which moms love. Right. Or and then the other thing it does, too, is with all of those hydrogen atoms linked on to the fat chains, the lipids, there's not all these unused or open bonds that an oxygen atom can come along and bond to and oxidized the peanut butter, which creates peroxide, which gives it a rancid taste.

So hydrogenation not only made peanut butter less liquidy, more creamy, it also made it last longer, like sitting on the shelf before it was sold and used. It wouldn't turn rancid nearly as fast. So it was a big deal. The problem is, is that took peanut butter, which is actually kind of healthy with a monounsaturated fat, that liquid oil, and turned it into saturated or partially saturated saturated fat, which is really tough on the old ticker.

Yeah, that's why I stay away from that stuff. I mean, it's so good. But yeah, I just I made the switch many years ago.

Good for you, Jack. Yeah. The hydrogenated outsold Natural for the first time in 42 and accounts for about 80 percent of the current market. Peter Pan, believe it or not, I don't think I've ever had Peter Pan. It's not bad unless it was just at a friend's house or something.

I don't think we ever had it in our house.

Peter Pan makes a natural one, too, and I'm making air quotes like Jeff does. And it's I think they all do. Now, it might even be better than Jeff's natural version. I think Emily likes the Smucker's natural, huh? But I also got some I can't remember the brand, it's one of the one of the other natural brands, they're all pretty good, I think.

OK, so nineteen twenty eight was when Peter Pan rolled out and was the first, which I did know was the first major brand. It was the biggest seller at the time. It used that partial hydrogenation process that was patented by a guy named Joseph Rosenfield from Kentucky. And then. That's where our etc. Skippy came from, Peter Pan's parent company said, I want to cut your licensing fee. He said, I'm done with you and I'm going to go out and I'm going to make Sipi on my own.

And by the end of his career, he had 10 patents, not just for peanut butter, but relating to food. And he was just kind of like Chevy Chase and vacation movies. He was a food scientist.

Yeah. What was it? The thing that he learned to code a flake with that he used on the sled? Oh, I don't know.

Some sort of nutritional. I can't remember. I'll figure it out. No need to email everyone. No need to e-mail now.

I want to hear I want every email about this.

I think it was called a non nutritional coding is what he called it. But but yes, he was very much like that. But he was also way, way, way better than anything Chevy Chase could ever be because he was a really great boss. He paid his workers really well. And in creating the Skippy brand, he broke off from this kind of this corporate overlord that he he worked for was keeping him under his thumb and then trying to shortchange him and said, you know what, by creating Skippy, I'm going to not only challenge you, Peter Pan, I'm going to become the best selling peanut butter there is from 1950 to 1980, like Skippy was it?

And I just missed the Skippy train. So I'm wondering, like, if I had been, you know, born in 1970, if I would have been raised on Skippy, but I came along at the Jif and I really you know, he said in your face and they said, I love peanut butter in my face.

And he went, Oh, I got to think of a new comeback.

You know, Chuck, one thing that's always bothered me about Peter Pan is, do you remember that jingle or it's like eat some peanut butter anytime you can. It's like, oh, that's nice. And then they follow it up with but only if it's Peter Pan. Like, it's got kind of this. Like, if I can't have, you know, one can psychotic mentality to it. Yeah, I never I never heard that song, so I never really thought about that.

You didn't watch the television in the 1990s? I did. I don't remember that one, though. But, I mean, I was in the 90s.

I was in college. So I probably wasn't I don't think we had cable. I didn't watch much TV in college.

Gotcha. So Skippy is doing great. Peter Pan is just like I guess I'll just have to be second banana and Skippy. And Jeff said, how do you like being third banana? Because that's where you're headed that same year in 1955. This is when Rothfield sold Skippy to Bestfoods. Procter and Gamble bought big top peanut from William T. Young, also of Kentucky. Yeah. And then they became Jeff and they held that brand until 2001. 2002.

Yeah, I did not know that. That's right. But wait, 2001, 2002, when they sold to smugglers. OK, but Jeff is still the number one brand today, right?

As far as I know. OK, yeah, that's that's my understanding, too. I thought you were saying like it was the number one brand until it. But yeah. From from I think 1980 to today, it's it's number one. Yeah.

And they got a lot of I think they all do. But Jeff alone has 15 different kinds of peanut butter, which is kind of nuts. If you look at their list, they've got all kinds of different crazy peanut butter is out there now.

Well, nuts is just one variety. Yeah, well, they all have peanuts in it, but. Yeah, well, they have they have a good almond butter too.

Yeah. I can, I can get down with some almond butter. You know what buddy. I'm going to buy you some when we see each other again. I'm going to be brandishing a jar of jif almond butter for you.

You know, it's not good. What is you know, you can't take peanut butter sandwiches into classrooms anymore or at least it, you know, at my kids' preschool. And of course, you can't take anything in there anymore because it's closed.

But you have to make you have to make it with what? A cheese. I used to chew these things all the time.

What a baseball players chew, sunflower seeds, chickpeas, sunflower, butter. That's good to have had that. It's not bad. Oh, I do not care for it. Oh, you don't like it huh. I think it's all right I guess.

Wow. I really like basically any kind of butters including just butter. Butter. They were.

Yeah butter is great but I just cannot get down with the sunflower sunflower. Yes.

Yeah, no it totally is. And it's definitely there's a taste of some flour to it, like you could have no idea what you're eating and somebody gives it to you. You would be like, that's sunflower butter isn't it. I love sunflower seeds.

So that was a big thing in college. For a little while we would sit around and, you know, just put a mouthful of sunflower seeds in our mouth.

Yeah, I remember the sunflower trend quite well. Remember that. And you would attract. Yeah. You would crack them open with your teeth. Yeah. And you would spit out the shell and then swallow the seed, chew on the seed and swallow it.

So I would eat the whole thing. You know. You didn't eat the shell. Yeah. This is I would eat the whole thing that I would smoke all cigar and inhale it.

You're a very bad squirrel. You would drought drown your lawn and water. Yeah. And you would sit back and say, I'm doing life just right.

Yeah. I got it all figured out. Would you really eat the shells.

Still do to this day. Really. Yeah. And it's kind of dangerous because every once in a while there's like one part to it. That's just a spear.

Yeah. You can go right into your gums if you're not careful. So I'm pretty good at it, but everyone will be like, I think I'm bleeding.

Well, here's how I eat peanuts.

When I go to the ballgame, I stick the whole peanut in my mouth like a squirrel and I kind of suck on it for a second and get that salty goodness. And then I crack it open with my teeth. Right. And I pull it out of my mouth and then dump the peanuts in and throw away the shells.

And then between every bite, you have to cut your lips with lip balm because it's so dry and cracked.

I just thought maybe it is pretty salty, but the only time I eat peanuts in the shell like that is at a baseball game.

So now I do something similar, but it's with Peanut Eminem's I will like crack the peanut Eminem in half and expose the peanut in your teeth. Yes. And then eat that the the fried chocolate shell side and then eat the other chocolate shell side from around the peanut and then I eat the peanut by itself.

Are you kidding. Are you serious? I'm dead serious. I can't remember the last time I ate a peanut I.M. without doing that with every single one. All right.

Here's what I'll do sometimes with Peanut. Eminem's OK. We should just have a side gig where we just talk about our stupid quirks.

We do.

It's part of the podcast I put in. Sometimes I'll just mouse on them like there's no tomorrow, but sometimes I will. And this helps me eat fewer of them because I will pop one or two in my mouth and I'll just let them sit there and marinate in my saliva. Oh yeah. Yeah. And swirl them around. And then that candy coating kind of melts away a little bit.

It makes it like a really soft little crunch.

Yep. I know. I know what you mean. You know that move. Yeah. It's really good. I do that too.

But usually I'm a little less patient than that. It's every once in a while maybe when I'm like, you know, I have a whole Tupperware bowl full of peanut Eminem's. I might go crazy like that.

All right. So let's should we take a break or should we wait a second. Yeah, let's do that. Let's take a break. Scott, joshin shark Sean. All right, so where we left off was Jeff was killing it. You and I have very weird eating habits. Yeah, and Jeff starts killing it. They start putting sugar in molasses in there. Everyone else followed suit. And finally, in the 1960s, the FDA stood up and said, hold on a minute, guys.

This stuff you're calling peanut butter is junk food. Now, there's one leading brand I'm not going to name names.

I think it was Jeff that was only 75 percent actual peanuts. He's like, so you've got to start putting 95 percent peanuts in the whole thing. The peanut butter lobby said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, how about 87 percent? And they said, we're the FDA. We meet people in the middle. Let's settle on 90 percent peanuts and peanut butter. And since 1971, that's been the standard.

Yeah, I think like this went on for a dozen years. There's a really interesting article on today I found out called The Momentous Peanut Butter Hearings. It's definitely worth reading, but it just was nuts, literally nuts how long this went on for. And then finally, it's just kind of heartening that the FDA was like, no, 90 percent. That's as low as we're going. Make sure that your peanut butter has 90 percent peanuts. Good day to you, sir.

And that was that finally. And it became enforced in 1972. And still today there is a federal legal definition for what constitutes peanut butter. And one of the first things is it has to have 90 percent peanuts in it.

That's right, because that is still the standard. If it is smooth, it has to be very fine with an even texture and no hint of Graney peanuts at all. No, if it's a medium, you can have a little grain to it, but nothing larger than one sixteenth of an inch and dimension. And then all bets are off. If you're crunchy. I don't I don't know who says chunky, but it's definitely crunchy chiles.

Yeah, that's like a type of Campbell's soup.

Not so crunchy can be larger than one 16th. And I guess I mean, they're all about the same size. I'd be curious to see if they're any kind of half size peanuts if it gets that chunky.

Oh yeah. Like Lagrangian a sixteenth of an inch. Yeah. Like a half of a peanut. People would be like, it's too chunky. I can't take it. Maybe.

I mean that's that's like a candy bar level. It is.

It is. So Chuck, what you've just said is the federal government's definition of the different varieties of peanut butter as far as they're concerned. And I don't know if you said it or not, but that guy, Joseph Rothfield, who who was the founder of Skippy, he actually created chunky, sorry, crunchy peanut butter.

We both said crunchy.

And now we're both saying, Chuck, I know it's kind of stuck in my head, but he's the guy who, if you like, chunky peanut butter. First of all, shame on you. But secondly, thank Joseph Rothfield for that because he came up with it, I think, in the 50s.

Yeah. Like I said, I like it all. There is not a kind of peanut butter that that I won't eat. I think it's all really good.

So then I think also the the this kind of demonstrates just how seriously Americans take peanut butter. The USDA goes on to say there are other qualities that make a peanut butter, either grade A, grade B or substandard peanut butter. And to my favorite, it's things like color. The color has to match certain color samples that you can only obtain from a company called Egg Trun. Think of Sparks, Nevada. This is in the 1972 law that you have to write to Akron and say, can you please send me the peanut butter colored standards?

Because I need to make sure that my peanut butter matches the USDA's standards for color on their online get with it.

Why are you writing me a letter? Right.

That's that's a really good point. And you email or you'd write back like I don't know, but can you please send me the website, you URL and then they would. But when you get this color standard, you can't just look at it wherever you have to. You have to look at it with a light, with a color temperature of about 7500 Kelvin, plus or minus two hundred and fifty Kelvin or something equal to a moderately, partly cloudy day.

That's that's the government's standard for judging the color of peanut butter. All I can think of now is somebody writing a handwritten letter to someone asking for a Eurail, someone with a ballpoint pen spelling out H.T. Tepes colon slash slash.

I looked up again and they're still around and they are on point man. They've been in business for, I think about a century, but they are all about like food analysis. If you're a coffee roaster or a barista or something, you can take their online class. I think it's online. It's like a day long class that really teaches you all like the science behind the coffee you're selling and roasting and grinding. It's a really interesting company. It looks like.

But that's if you start making peanut butter, you need to you need to write a letter to Elektronik asking for there you are.

And they will send you a laminated sheet in a manila envelope. Yeah.

So if you're talking peanut butter in the United States, about half of the edible use of peanuts is from peanut butter. Obviously, peanut butter is in a ton of it's one of my favorite parts of candy bars and stuff like that. I'm a sucker for any peanut butter, ice creams, peanut butter, candy bars. It's just I can't get enough of that combination.

I'm totally with you, buddy, which, by the way, Joseph Rothfield was the Skippy guy, was the guy who came up with that peanut butter and chocolate combo before Reeses did. But the National Peanut Board estimates that it takes about 540 peanuts to make up one of those 12 ounce jars. Which is a lot of peanuts that kind of surprised me, it was more than I thought. Yes. That they're in shell peanuts until you reach five hundred and forty individual peanuts and you will have a sudden appreciation for your butter, you know what I mean?

For sure. But of course, machines do that.

But yeah, well, if it's artisan now, somebody's wearing like a calico sarong is doing it with by hand in Vermont.

Vermont people are like yeah I think that's my conception. Prove me wrong. Vermont.

So in 2009, we're talking about health aspects. There's a couple of parts to the health of it of whether or not it's just good for you, which we'll get to. But also there have been a couple of peanut butter incidents throughout the years, in recent years that have scared people off from peanut butter a little bit. Yeah. In 2009 was the second one. There were five hundred people who got sick and eight people died from eating peanut butter from a plant in Blakely, Georgia.

That was pretty gross and not maintained. Well, I remember that, don't you? I remember both of them.

The other one was in 2007, and that was salmonella in Peter Pan and great value, both owned by ConAgra. And that got about six hundred and change sick, but nobody died, luckily. But I remember both of those.

It was a big deal because peanut butter so ubiquitous.

So there's also I didn't realize this until I started researching it. There's something called aflatoxins. Have you heard of them?

I think I did back when all this stuff happened, or maybe not. So I have heard of it.

So there's there's a mold called aspergillus that grows on peanuts because peanuts are grown under ground. Right. And the aspergillus can produce a toxin called aflatoxins. And apparently humans are pretty much immune to its initial effects or its short term effects. But we have no idea what happens if you eat aflatoxins, you know, over the course of a lifetime. You know what happens in apparently there's studies of humans that found that it's been linked to certain types of cancer, potentially birth defects, cognitive disabilities, all sorts of horrible stuff.

And peanut butter producers say, well, we get at least 89 percent of the aflatoxins out just by processing peanuts. You say, well, what about the other 11 percent, like had some Peter Pan and forget your troubles.

That's right. So so there is like a real risk of something bad happening to you, whether it's a poisoning or not. But a lot of people are like even if it's pure peanut butter, it's it's still it's still not healthy for you.

Yeah. I mean, the the major brands that are sugary and hydrogenated certainly are good for you if you're going to the farmer's market and and getting those peanuts ground right in front of your face. It's not it's not terrible. It's got a lot of nutrition. It's got a lot of antioxidants. It's got we're talking this is one hundred grams of this stuff. You've got 45 percent RDA of vitamin E, 67 percent of vitamin B, three, 16, seven percent I'm sorry.

Seventy three percent of manganese and thirty nine percent of magnesium. Yeah. So it's got a lot of good stuff in there. It's got a lot of calories too. That's about 600 calories eating 100 grams worth. But if it's you know, I mean that's a 100 grams is a lot.

No, it is a tremendous amount. The other thing is, too, if you're eating that artisan peanut butter, that Kraft peanut butter, the non hydrogenated, I guess I should say, peanut butter, the the oils in the fats in it are actually good for you. The monounsaturated fat is the kind that's good for your heart. It's that saturated stuff that becomes shelf stable. That's the stuff that can build up as plaque in your arterial walls and cause, you know, heart attacks and strokes and that kind of thing.

But the natural peanut butter actually does the opposite. It helps your cholesterol levels.

That's right. It's just great. It's basically just really calorie dense. Like if you're trying to lose weight, it's a good idea to shy away from peanut butter. But if you're eating natural peanut butter, it's not like in a non nutritious food. It's actually pretty nutritious. It's just calorie dense.

Right. And if you're trying to lose weight and you opt for a spoonful of peanut butter and honey rather than a pint of Ben and Jerry's, then you're definitely doing the right thing for man for sure.

One thing, though, that has, you know, strikes fear in a lot of people, like you were saying in your daughter's preschool, you can't even bring a peanut butter sandwich in there anymore. Is this the.

The rise of the peanut allergy, like there's a survey that was conducted in the 80s, the 90s and the 2000s, I think the most recent one was in 2008, and they found that between 1997 and 2008, in this national survey of 1300 homes, that the the self reported peanut allergies went from point four percent of respondents to one point four percent of respondents, which it's one point four percent, doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a huge increase between like 11 years, I guess.

But the thing is, is if you look at other studies, they found that, yes, self reported rates are on the rise, but doctor diagnosed rates have held steady. So there seems to be an increase in perception that people have peanut allergies. That's not necessarily an increase in actual peanut allergies, which is really strange and bizarre to think of, if that's correct.

Yeah, and I have seen the trend of oral immunotherapy, like feeding your very small child and your baby peanut a little bit at a time to ensure or hopefully ensure that they won't be stricken with the worst food allergy of all.

It's true, the peanut allergy and there was a study in Israel that had guidelines for early infant feeding and they said around four to six months of age, just shove a bunch of peanuts in their mouth and see what happens when they come to you and then hit them with the lipo.

Yeah, hit him with all the lip balm.

So one last thing. Chuck and I couldn't find a place to put it, but it has to be said there is a phobia called Iraq bood to a phobia Iraq about a phobia. Yeah, I think I nailed it last time.

And it is. Is that for me, is that my cue? Yes, it's hard to tell because you're not kicking me under the table. I'm not like doing that series of blinks.

That is the fear of peanut butter getting stuck on the roof of your mouth.

That is a true thing, which is shouldn't be a fear because all you got to do is just keep working the tongue and that peanut butter is going to dislodge and go right down your throat. That's right.

Just like John Harvey Kellogg foresaw a little whole milk and you're all set. Nice and awesome.

Cool whip. Don't forget the co-op. I'm going to try that. That's I don't know if you should try that.

Like, I think I gained 10 pounds in a month just after I discovered that it's it's not good for you, man.

Yeah. I can't call it doesn't last longer in the house. We can't keep it here. It's just like it's really hard not to just sort of oh, I'll just have a little spoonful every now and then I go, yeah.

It's like your hair's stuck to your forehead because you've put your whole face in the tub so good.

And it's good frozen too. I don't know if you ever tried that.

Yeah, I've tried it both ways. But if you if you do want to try, it's about it's about half and half peanut butter clip per spoonful. I'll give it a shot if I'm ever allowed to go to the grocery store again. Yeah, right.

Okay. Well, I think that's it then. For peanut butter, unless you have anything else, you've got nothing else. OK, well, since we said we have nothing else, that means it's time for those in the mail.

I'm going to call this, uh, early listener that came back as an adult. Hmm. Love these. Hey, guys, last year.

Well, what I really love is people that never stop listening. Right. But we'll take this.

Hey, guys, last year I started getting back into stuff you should know after a long break from the nine to ten days. What does that mean? And a need for an educational podcast on my long drives to Blacksburg, Virginia, from the Tidewater area of Virginia.

I think they got hit by the aflatoxin. Uh, I think he may be I don't know what he means. When I first started listening, I was in middle school and I always loved trivia in your podcast helped me annoy other students with random facts about Twinkie's and fluoride. Once I went through church camp, it was appreciated. I earned the name Random Fact Kid. You guys helped me encourage my natural instincts in the world that got me through electrical engineering and also helped me earn free beer at trivia nights.

Because of my tendency to remember obscure knowledge. I even made a friend through the podcast listener Lucas. I take it that's just Lucas, not his first name?

I hope so. He was listening to your podcast while driving his bus, and I recognize the familiar voices. So I just want to say thanks, guys, and that is from listener Daniel. So maybe that's how they met.

They had the same first name right there. Like, I never thought I would have a brother, but now I do. Daniel and Lucas together. Are you anything else now? I got nothing at all.

Well, if you want to be like listener Daniel and let us know how long you've been listening, we want to hear from you. You can get in touch. This just through a simple email, simple gesture, the gesture of wrapping it up, the gesture of spanking it on the bottom gesture of early feeding it peanuts and sending it off to stuff podcast that I heart. Radio dotcom. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, my heart radio, the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.