Calling peanut butter a diet food, with 180 to 210 calories per serving, may seem counter-intuitive. But it has the enviable combination of fiber (2 g per serving) and protein (8 g per serving) that fills you up and keeps you feeling full longer, so you eat less overall. In addition, there’s nothing more indulgent than licking peanut butter off a spoon, and indulgence (in moderation) helps dieters fight cravings and stay on track. It is a popular and convenient food for people especially toddlers, but is it good for us? That’s is what we are going to talk about in this post.
First of all let all talk about why we love peanut butter, to me peanut butter is tasty. It really is a delicious nut butter I spread over my bread to replace the fatty margarine I used to use during my childhood. It is inexpensive, it is a great form of protein and it actually does contain a great number of nutrients. Peanut butter as a nutrient containing food high is high in niacin, which is important for warning off Alzheimer disease. It is also high in vitamin E and folic acid which are important nutrients if you want to be pregnant. Peanut butter also contains polyphenols and antioxidants which are generally cancer fighting as well as good fighting for heart disease.
Here is why I don’t like peanut butter, they are high in aflatoxins which are naturally occurring fungal toxins that have to be metabolized by the liver. These are found in other foods but they are extremely high in peanuts and if these are exposed to our liver in high level, it actually can be a liver carcinogen (cancer promoting). Peanut butter on the other hand has lectin, this in isolated studies also grew colon cancer cells (let’s face it, no one wants any cancer cells to grow in their body). Another thing is that most peanuts are grown from the moist of the ground, making them contain micro toxins and molds. Mold is one of the reasons kids today have allergies and inflammable reaction when they get around peanuts. The final thing is the peanut butter oil may cause artery clogging, even scientist used peanut butter oil to induce clogging of the arteries in lab animals.
If we are using peanut butter as a reasonable diet then it is a considerable choice for diet, but over using it for the love of it would cause a lot of unseen future effect. There is a saying “too much of everything is not good”. Moderation is a necessity in everything.
So the question here is, is peanut butter bad for you?
The answer is yes and no, it depends on how much you consume it and the variety you get for you as well as what the rest of your diet looks like. So you can actually eat peanut butter and it can be healthy. Here is a tip:
- Make sure you are buying a certain organic brand, for example jungle peanuts and Valencia peanuts. They are not grown from the moisture of the ground. This eliminates the issue with the mold.
- Eat with moderation. Eating peanut all of the time endangers you for future health issues. As stated above it is easy to include that “little drops of water makes a mighty ocean”.
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By Blessing Nwachukwu | [email protected]
Diet234 Team
2 Responses
This is one food item i binge on. Recently, I read up somewhere that peanuts are good HS snacks i.e. “hour of sleep” snacks. I only wonder how true. Thanks for this great piece of information!