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Peanut, Peanut Butter and Jelly

© Donna Smith

Every second someone buys a jar of peanut butter. We eat an estimated 800 million pounds of peanut butter a year. By the time most kids graduate high school, they will have eaten about 1,500 peanut butter sandwiches. Now that's a lot of peanut butter! Peanut butter was invented over 100 years ago. An unknown doctor in St. Louis, Missouri created the nutty spread for people who couldn't chew meat because of bad teeth. C.H. Sumner introduced it to the world in 1904 at the Universal Exposition in St. Louis. Little did he know how popular it would become!

Despite the name, a peanut is not a nut at all. The peanut is actually considered a vegetable. Peanuts are the seeds of the peanut plant. The seeds are planted in April after the last frost. Yellow flowers form on the plant, then all off. The bud, or "peg", enters the soil and becomes a peanut. About 120-160 days after planting, the peanuts are harvested. Tractors with attachments called "diggers" drive over the peanut plants. This brings the peanuts to the surface where they are left and allowed to dry 2 to 3 days in the sun.

After they've dried, a machine called a "combine" drives over the peanuts. It picks them up and deposits them into a "hopper" where they are allowed to dry out even more. The peanuts are then taken to buying stations where they are weighed, graded, and inspected.

The next step on the peanut's journey is the shelling plant. There the peanuts are shelled and separated by size. After this step, the peanuts are finally on their way to the peanut butter plant.

At the peanut butter plant, the peanuts are first roasted and skinned. They are then put into a grinder with other ingredients to make peanut butter. The other ingredients include vegetable oil, salt, and either sugar or dextrose, a sweetener made out of corn. By law, peanut butter must contain at least 90% peanuts and contain no artificial sweeteners, colors, or preservatives. Did you know a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter contains about 500 peanuts?

Good news! Peanut butter is good for you! It contains protein, vitamins, minerals and carbohydrates. Two tablespoons of peanut butter has as much protein as an egg or a glass of milk. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich eaten with some fruit and a glass of milk is a very nutritious meal.

Some people are allergic to peanut butter. Peanut allergies are very serious. People with these allergies must check food labels carefully. For these people, accidental consumption of peanuts can cause hives, swelling of the throat, difficulty breathing, vomited, and potentially fatal anaphylactic shock. In some people, the allergy can be so severe that a reaction can be caused by just skin contact. Researchers are working on methods to stop the proteins in peanuts that cause these allergic reactions. A vaccine for peanut allergy suffers is also being worked on. While most childhood food allergies are out grown, alleries to peanuts are usually a life long problem.

The copyright of the article Peanut, Peanut Butter and Jelly in Cooking with Children is owned by Donna Smith. Permission to republish Peanut, Peanut Butter and Jelly in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.