I heard that, although peanut butter is high in fat grams, it tends to be burned off and not stored as body fat. Any truth to this?
If there’s any truth to that, I can’t imagine that it’s for any reason other than peanut butter is a slow-digesting food.
The fat in peanut butter contains very little trans-fats (bad fats) and lots of monounsaturated (good fats) such as the kind found in olive oil. It has been found to actually be good for the heart. Just restrict your intake to 2 tablespoons per day. as too much of a good thing like peanut butter is still a bad idea. 
I guess that’s why they call it ‘too much’.
I can’t find cites, but several studies have shown that people who include peanut butter in a calorie reduced diet plan lost more weight than those who didn’t.
Generally, ‘health nuts’ like myself recognize the importance of good natural peanut butter (popular brands might be rich in sugar).
Around health clubs and such, natural style peanut butter is held in high regard.
It is high in calories, so usually it is limited to being spread modestly onto one piece of a wheat bagel or whole grain crackers.
Really? Is this all PB or just natural PB? I know that the “Simply Jif” (low sugar) PB i was buying has partially hydrogenated soybean oil in it…which I thought meant “trans fats”. I stopped buying it because I didn’t want the trans-fats.
Also, both Skippy and Jif have 16-18% of the RDA of saturated fat in 2 tbs. Isn’t that alot of saturated fat?
I’m not second-guessing you, kniz. I just seriously want to know more about fats and peanut butter. I recently found a great, cheap, delicious natural PB at Trader Joe’s and wanted to know if it’s worth it for me to trek out there to pick it up instead of sticking with my Simply Jif.
I have to admit to being lazy about making a “cite”, but the one I found said that it applied to all major brands. As I remember, it was stated that smooth peanut butter wasn’t quite as good because of what they do to make it smooth. Personally, I’m a Jiffy Extra Crunchy type of guy.
This is getting into IMHO territory here, but I find that Jif tastes like they mixed toxic sludge or something into it. Avoid that stuff. Go with brands that have an ingredients list limited to just peanuts and maybe salt if you want that. If they have trans-fat in them, it’s been adulterated with lard or something.
As for Trader Joe’s, they sell their house brand for less than the big box discount grocer sells Adams (which is a good brand). So stock up on TJ’s pb and you won’t have to make so many trips across town. I just wish TJ’s would put their pb in 2 lb jars instead of those dinky 1 lb jars.
They say* that the kind that separates, so you see the oil on top, has the good fat, and the kind that does not separate has been partially hydrogenated.
*what a cite! 
Eating nuts regularly has been shown to have a metabolic effect. This may mean that any nuts, or nut butters, are more beneficial than, say, a heaping tablespoon of hydrogenated fat bits. Many peanut butters are highly sugared. Read the label, or grind your own. Me, I’m a big fan of hazelnut butter.
Having both Peter Pan smooth and natural peanut butter in my pantry, I did a quick comparison. The Peter Pan brand contains peanuts, sugar, partially hydrogenated oils (rapeseed and/or cottonseed), and salt. The natural type consists of peanuts and salt. Nutritionally, the main differences I see are that the Peter Pan has one more gram of saturated fat per serving (presumably from the hydrogenated oils) and the natural type has 20 calories more per serving (perhaps because peanuts are more calorie-dense than sugar).