

We have two types of peanut butter in our house: 1) typical “kids” peanut butter and 2) “healthier” peanut butter. When I went to get the healthier peanut butter this morning, I noticed that the calorie count is the same for both for the exact same serving size. As noted by ingredient list, the kids peanut butter contains sugar and molasses among other ingredients. The “healthy” peanut butter only contains peanuts and salt.
How is it possible that the “kids” peanut butter isn’t higher in calories?
by Shoddy_Link_9753

6 Comments
Peanuts are insanely high in calories. The filler in the sugared pb is about as calorie dense as peanuts.
Calories is not a measure of how healthy something is. There are quite a few healthy high-calorie foods.
“Healthier” Food ≠ Less calories per se.
What seed is that
It depends on what you’re looking for with the term healthy. If you’re only counting calories and don’t care about anything else, all peanut butter is basically the same unless you get the powdered kind. In terms of added sugars and other ingredients and nutrients, the one that’s just peanuts and salt is most likely gonna be healthier in that sense – probably has more protein so you’d stay full longer.
I think Nutella is also around the same calories per tablespoon and it’s easy to see why that’d be considered less healthy than the plain peanut butter.
The added veg oil in the sugared peanut butter makes up for the loss in “peanut” calories.