Low-Fat Peanut Butters Add In Carbs

For most peanut butter aficionados, the idea of slimming down their favorite treat is met with the sort of revulsion usually reserved for roadkill. How can you possibly mess with peanut butter, one of nature's most perfect foods?

Almost every mass-market peanut butter has already been messed with. For instance, in many cases the peanut oil has been removed from the crushed peanuts and replaced with canola or other oils. Why? If you've ever fried a turkey at Thanksgiving you know that peanut oil, with its incredibly high smoke point, is expensive stuff.

There are innumerable other tweaks and fiddles that go into producing your jar of peanut butter, so why not try cutting down on the fat?

For this test, we picked the light versions of four major brands, plus one "super-healthful" peanut butter with all manner of supposedly good-for-you extras. Our panel of five adult testers assembled, spoons in hand, and dug in.

They rated each entry based on aroma, texture, flavor and spreadability. The last category is important, as if the fat removal turns the peanut butter so sticky that it rips your bread to pieces it's basically useless.

Each tester was allowed to award up to 20 points per entry, for a possible perfect score of 100. All entries were the creamy versions, and all serving sizes are two tablespoons.

Jif Reduced Fat: 190 calories, 12 grams fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 220 mg sodium, 15 grams carbs.

This was an astoundingly sweet peanut butter, without a great deal of peanut flavor. Given that this Jif has the same calories and double the carbs of regular Jif, it would seem that the reduced fat -- 4 grams -- has been replaced with sugar. The texture was nice, and it spread well, it just tasted like slightly peanutty sugar. There was a bit of peanut aroma, but it was very subtle. Final score: 73.

Skippy Reduced Fat: 180 calories, 12 grams fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 170 mg sodium, 15 grams carbs.

This one's numbers were almost identical to the Jif entry, and the impressions of the testers were nearly identical, too. It had a bit more peanut flavor, but the sweetness was still overwhelming. Final score: 76.

Peter Pan Reduced Fat: 200 calories, 13 grams fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 150 mg sodium, 14 grams carbs.

Out of the "big three" brands kicking off the test, this one was the best. The sweetness was still high, but the peanut flavor at least put up a good fight. There was a bit of grainy texture, but it didn't affect the spreadability at all. Final score: 79.

Smucker's Natural Style Reduced Fat: 200 calories, 12 grams fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 120 mg sodium, 12 grams carbs.

This "natural style" peanut butter uses maltodextrin as a fat substitute, and has no sugar or corn syrup listed as an ingredient. The flavor was a somewhat-muted roasted peanut hit, with a refreshing absence of sugar overload. It lost points on spreadability, however, as even after a prolonged period of stirring the separated oil, it remained so sticky it savaged untoasted bread. There was not much in the way of aroma whatsoever. Final score: 82.

Smart Balance: 200 calories, 18 grams fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 110 mg sodium, 6 grams carbs.

Have you ever seen someone try to spit out peanut butter? It's a bit of physical comedy worthy of one of those "funniest video" shows. It happened with three of the five testers of this product. One of the oils used in Smart Balance is flaxseed oil, with has a fairly pronounced taste. There's a reason why you don't find flaxseed oil used in many recipes: It tastes absolutely vile. It's a bit bitter, a bit fishy and not in any way appealing. The spreadability of the product was fine, the aroma was nonexistent, and the final score was 29.

So our winner in this test only managed a B- grade.

Is reduced fat peanut butter even a good idea? For a savings of three or four grams of fat, you're easily doubling your carb intake, which is of serious concern to a lot of folks with diabetes concerns and those who avoid carbs as a rule. The calories, the ultimate measure of how much you'll have to work to burn off a given food, are nearly the same across the board.

But if you must have your reduced fat peanut butter, go natural!