There are so many foods that parents buy and kids regularly eat, that seem to be good for you. I’ll be posting a series of foods that parents need to pay attention to and just by buying something different, you will help improve the health of your children.

First is peanut butter. I did a little research online. The two biggest sellers in peanut butter are Skippy and Jif. Surprisingly, you can’t get any ingredients list from the Skippy web site. They do offer a natural version (Skippy Natural Creamy). It advertises that you don’t have to stir it. It does this by adding palm oil to the peanut butter. Palm oil is a source of added fat and unnecesary saturated fats. All so you don’t have to stir it. The actual ingredients list is peanuts, sugar, palm oil and salt.

Jif does have listings of ingredients on it’s website. The standard Jif Creamy has:

MADE FROM ROASTED PEANUTS AND SUGAR. CONTAINS 2 PERCENT OR LESS OF: MOLASSES, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN), FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (RAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES AND SALT.

I have a jar of Trader Joe’s Natural Creamy Peanut Butter. Ingredients: Roasted peanuts. This is the unsalted version.

You should always buy natural peanut butter for your kids. Yes, you need to stir it, because oils collect on the top. But, my experience has been that you need to stir it throughly once. After it’s open, store natural peanut butter in the refrigerator, and I’ve never had to stir it again. You get the real peanut taste. Peanut butters like Jif and Skippy taste like sugar with a little peanut taste.

Natural peanut butter is good for you. There is nothing added and the fats in peanut butter are healthy ones. Of course, you need to not overeat nuts of any sort. But you don’t need sugar, molasses, and added oils in your peanut butter. The fact that the oils added are partially and fully hydrogenated means that they have trans fats and are very bad for your health, particularly heart health.

So, one easy way to make your child’s diet healthier, is to buy peanut butter with one ingredient (roasted peanuts) or maybe two (if you like salted peanut butter). Skip the Skippy and the Jif. Read the labels and see what it is you are buying.

Barbara