Episode Details

George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter. This episode follows the spread from the Inca and Aztecs, who reportedly used ground peanut paste for aching gums, to Marcellus Gilmore Edson's 1884 patent in Montreal and John Harvey Kellogg's 1898 paste made from boiled peanuts for sanitarium patients. Meat rationing during World War I made it popular, but the oil kept separating until chemist Joseph L. Rosefield used partially hydrogenated oil in 1922. He licensed the process to Peter Pan, started Skippy in 1932, and came up with chunky peanut butter, and Jif followed in 1955.

We also look at the Dutch name pindakaas, or peanut cheese, and at how peanut butter is made today: roasting monitored by photometers, rapid cooling, blanching, two-stage grinding, and cooling to exactly 120°F so it spreads the way it should. We end with the nutrition paradox. Peanuts can cause life-threatening allergies, yet Plumpy'Nut peanut paste treats famine, and Israel's Bamba snack is linked to low peanut allergy rates in children.

• Why George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter
• Kellogg's boiled peanut paste and World War I meat rationing
• How hydrogenation made peanut butter shelf stable
• The factory process and the physics of spreadable peanut butter
• Peanut allergies, Plumpy'Nut and the Bamba research from Israel