And don’t even get me started on the fact that peanut oil is removed and replaced by palm oil to “preserve” it. Just buy what you need, and eat it. It doesn’t need to go in the fridge: I’ve been eating natural peanut butter for years and never have had it go bad from storing opened containers in the cupboard.

I mean other than that there is no such thing as an “unnatural” product because human beings made it, human beings are animals, therefore there is no difference between a product manufactured by human beings and a product manufactured by an animal (like honey). “Unnatural” peanut butter would be peanut butter that appears out of thin air after making a blood sacrifice to Yog-Sothtoth. I keep trying but no luck so far . . .

(you did ask for this)

I grew up on Laura Scudder’s natural peanut butter. (“Just peanuts and salt… that’s all” read the 1980s ad copy.) Had to stir it up, since the oil would separate on the shelf, so we’d keep it in the fridge after the initial stir to prevent it re-separating. I had 2 sandwiches of that stuff every day (along with some strawberry preserves on Roman Meal whole wheat bread) throughout the whole of the Reagan Administration. You really needed to use sturdy whole-wheat bread with cold Scudder’s peanut butter; your basic Wonder Bread would shrivel and shred like Dick Cheney’s Pocket Constitution if you tried to spread refrigerated crunchy natural peanut butter on it.

Once I moved out of my parents’ house, I switched to Skippy Super Chunk with grape jelly (preferably from a squeeze bottle), but still on whole wheat. That natural peanut butter is for the birds. Just as banana pudding shouldn’t really taste like bananas, and root beer shouldn’t taste like roots, so shouldn’t peanut butter taste exactly like peanuts. “Peanut butter” is its own flavor, distinct from “peanuts”, and we forget that at our cultural peril.

And “smooth” or “creamy” peanut butter is for toothless pantywaists.

As opposed to unnatural?

I eat wholenut peanut butter (no added sugar) (which is yummy, btw) – only added ingredient is a little vegetable oil and salt – and it sits happily in the cupboard without ill effect.

After the incident, the Secretary of Homeland Security said “Our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that.” Hence, body scanners and feel-ups.

All this despite the fact that (a) other passengers jumped on him and subdued him, just as they have in every other terrorist attack since the morning of 9/11, and (b) he only succeeded in setting his own genitals on fire, not bringing down the aircraft.

Trader Joe’s Creamy is good for those of us prefer our PB on the firmer side. Some brands like Laura Scudder are almost liquid.

Natural peanut butter is ground-up peanuts. That’s all.

that oil wouldn’t be partially hydrogenated, would it?

I always used to refrigerate it because I believed the “refrigerate after opening” admonishment, but at some point left it in the cupboard and realized it wasn’t going bad, and that it retained it’s easy-to-spread goodness. I haven’t refrigerated peanut butter since. Some jars have sat in the cupboard after being opened for 4-6 months. They taste great. FWIW, I do usually pour the oil off the top before stirring the first time I open it. It makes me feel better about the fat/protein ratio.

And: it’s great that the groping is drawing attention to the stupidity of TSA “security”, but the stupidity would be there without the groping.

And yes, I knew that’s why palm oil was substituted, but I think it’s ridiculous: I keep my TJ peanut butter at room temp, drain off (and save) a little of the excess peanut oil, and it spreads just fine (if I drained too much it would be much less spreadable, no doubt). So I suspect it’s more for economic reasons, as you mention, that many peanut butter manufacturers substitute palm oil for the original peanut oil. Screw that. I wouldn’t buy a jar of olives with the oil drained out and, say, corn oil added. Why do it with peanuts?

It just looks like fun…

My wife buys the TJ’s peanut butter for our kids. Poor dears. They also have to put up with organic preserves and hummus. Once they reach an appropriate age (I’m thinkin’ seven or eight), I’ll introduce them to the decadent pleasures that comprise Daddy’s side of the fridge. Real, all-American, honest-to-Bob Skippy peanut butter with all its sugar and preservatives. Cherry Dr Pepper. Gen-yoo-wine Kraft macaroni & cheese. Steak-Umms. The Number Four value meal at Carl’s Jr. Bavarian creme-filled donuts. Circus peanuts. Root beer floats.

They’ll thank me, if any of us live long enough.

Laura Scudder’s “natural” peanut butter will not go catastrophically bad if not refrigerated (in a moderate environment), despite what it says on the lid.

No, not catastrophically bad, but the oil will re-separate, and lazyboneses like me find it a pain to re-stir the stuff every day. (I never owned a jar of Scudder’s long enough to find out how long it took to go rancid, since my usage of the product was during my 2-sandwiches-a-day years.) The stiffness of refrigerated Scudder’s kinda bugged me, until I hit on the idea mentioned above by Antinous and Anonymous, and I tried pouring off the oil. Sure enough, the spreadability went to hell. It became way too dense and crumbly for my taste.

Obviously there’s no accounting for taste. I’ve been a peanut butter fan for over 35 years, and even though the first 15 of those years were filled with various “natural” PBs (mostly Scudder’s, but even hand-ground purely-peanut varieties), I’ll happily stick with my grossly adulterated Skippy from now on.

I like to use the example of installing a $100,000 security system to protect a dime when talking about the Security-Bill/Damage-done ratio at Toronto’s recent G20 photo-op. (Although the analogy is somewhat flawed since the only damage done was miles away from the convention centre and it wasn’t clear whether it was due to the conference or to the police deciding not to answer 911 calls from anywhere other than the convention area.)