For more than a decade I’ve suffered with frequent ‘digestive’ issues – mainly urgency, sometimes flat out diarrhea, occasional constipation. I put this down to the known side effects of some of the medications I take daily, and just coped. About eight weeks ago I stopped eating peanut butter (and peanuts themselves in other foods) mainly as part of restricting my calorie intake some … and it’s been just over seven weeks since I had an ‘incident.’ Hmm. Don’t have to hit me over the head with a sledge hammer, I guess.
But I miss the convenience of peanut butter – always at hand for a quick pick-me-up snack or for a PB&J when there’s no leftovers or other supplies at hand.
So. Time to explore the other options. Which of the various non-peanut butter spreads do you find tastiest/cheapest/most available/whatever? Help me with your experience, please!
I had chickpea butter recently - it was, I would say, the closest to peanut butter that I have tasted (I’ve tried almond, cashew, hazelnut, pistachio and probably others).
My gf recently bought a jar of cashew butter. We were both underwhelmed. However, our African Grey Rocco LOVES it. So, as a special treat he gets 1/2 tsp of it every other day.
There’s a local company, Once Again, that use to have a line of flavored almond butters. But they’ve cut this back to just maple flavored (along with unflavored).
I’m partial to soy nut butter, but for some reason it is harder to find than it used to be. My favorite brand is Wowbutter, because they use palm oil in it so that it doesn’t separate. It apparently doesn’t take much palm oil to get this effect, and for the amount that I eat, I’m not worried about the saturated fat. Anyway, the only store I can find it at is Mollie Stones, which makes getting it a special trip, since they’re way too high end for my regular grocery shopping. There used to be other brands around, but I’m not seeing them.
I’m allergic to peanut butter and tree nut butters. I have tried sunflower butter (pretty good but it separates), and also tahini, which is too thin. All of the mixed nut butters I have seen have tree nuts in them.
Huge fan of almond butter. We got some for my sister because she’s allergic to peanuts, and it was so hard not to eat it up for her. I had to start getting my own.
Almond butter is delicious. Almost too delicious for me to have in the house. The consistency is a bit liquid-y for my preferences. What I’ll do is get the natural almond butter and pour off some of the oil which floats to the top. Then it’s a little thicker and more like peanut butter.
I’ll just quietly hope that OP can isolate the problem to a non-peanut butter source. I’ve never been happy for the rest of the butters but love their constitute seeds, nuts and legumes. Except…
I snerked out loud, that sounds dreadful. I’ve tried commercially roasted/salted watermelon seeds (best used for wildlife) and once had an Indian curry with milk made with the them but I think there’s a reason it’s not a popular foodstuff.
I by far and away prefer cashew nuts to almonds, to eat out of hand. But:almond butter is w-a-a-a-y out in front for flavor. And don’t dump the extra oil! Chuck a single mixer beater into a variable speed hand drill and slowly lower it, turning as slowly as you can manage, into the jar. Stays mixed for a long time.
Can’t report back already, but the clear consensus seems to be that almond and sunflower butters are the best options for me to try. I actually used to eat roasted sunflower seeds a lot, so that’s likely to be a good choice for me. I’ve never much liked almonds, but that was because whole almonds were too hard to crunch for my taste, so maybe finely ground ones will hit the spot better.
Won’t do grocery shopping again until Friday though.
