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See Also: Peanuts; Peanut Butter & Jelly; Peanut Oil;
Peanut Gallery; etc.
PEANUT BUTTER
American eat about 700 million pounds of peanut butter each year.
Women and children prefer creamy, while most men opt for chunky.
Developed in 1890 by a St. Louis doctor for his patients with bad teeth. It was promoted as a health food at the St. Louis Exposition 14 years later, but the oil separated from the grainy solids. In 1933, a California packer was able to homogenize the peanuts into a stable butter -
- "Skippy Churned Peanut Butter".
Peanut butter accounts for over half of U.S. peanut production, and Americans eat almost 7 pounds of peanuts and peanut butter per capita.
One acre of peanuts will make 30,000 peanut butter sandwiches.
People who become hysterical when peanut butter sticks to the roof of their mouth have 'arachibutyrophobia'.
It takes about 550 peanuts to make a 12 ounce jar of creamy peanut butter.
Creamy peanut butter is preferred on the East Coast, Chunky on the West Coast.
The Jif plant in Lexington, Kentucky is reportedly the largest peanut butter factory in the world.
Peanut butter's high protein content draws moisture from your mouth. That's why it sticks to the roof of your mouth.
Peanut butter was almost uniquely American until about the 1960s. - most of the rest of the world just didn’t understand it at all.
Note:
• This does not mean that no one else in the world except Americans ever ate peanut butter.
• It does not mean that others do not eat peanut butter today.
• It does not mean that if you lived in another country in 1955 or 1945 that you never ate peanut butter.
• It does mean that until recent times, the vast majority of peanut butter was made and consumed in the United States, and it was an extremely common food there, known to virtually every American. Throughout most of the rest of the world it was not a common food until the last quarter of the 20th century. Research peanut butter production and consumption figures if you doubt this.
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