Peanut Butter Reviews

All peanut butters are not created equal, and the same applies to reviews of peanut butters. In researching this report, we had the most confidence in blind, reasonably controlled taste tests of large numbers of peanut-butter brands. (It's important that a taste test be blind, since research shows that seeing labels can have powerful psychological effects.) In this regard, we especially valued comprehensive reviews by general-interest publications such as Newsday and The Washington Post, in which the tasting panels seem to have been kept in the dark as thoroughly as possible. Newsday's September 2007 roundup is especially informative, since this Long Island newspaper tested peanut butter with a panel of grade-school kids, rather than adults. The reviews from The Washington Post -- on creamy and chunky peanut butters, from January 2001 -- are fairly old, but we still ranked them highly in our All Reviews chart because food-makers don't tend to change their peanut-butter formulas very much over time.

As helpful as blind taste tests of peanut butter are, we didn't rely on them exclusively. Many food enthusiast sites have tackled peanut butter in one form or another, considering everything from the best peanut butter for cooking to the best reduced-fat brand (and also weighing the virtues of plain old Skippy vs. Jif). In this regard, we were especially impressed by SeriousEats.com, Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Country and EatingWell.com. Epicurious.com takes a novel slant on the issue, comparing the best peanut-butter alternatives for allergic kids.

Finally, we rounded out these reviews from general-interest newspapers and food enthusiast sites with various reports from the online peanut-butter trenches -- dieting blogs like UrbanHonking.com, Hungry-Girl.com and The Watery Gourmet, as well as discussion threads at sites like Runner's World. These online arguments were especially helpful in identifying the pros and cons of various reduced-fat peanut butters. While bloggers can't generally match the methodology and seriousness-of-purpose of the sources mentioned above, they do yield some interesting insights and hands-on reviews for peanut butter.

We were especially impressed by a blind taste test conducted by Cook's Illustrated, in which creamy peanut butters were evaluated both on their own merits and baked into peanut-butter cookies. Skippy Creamy takes the top spot for its "creamy nuttiness" and "sweet, salty, creamy and perfect" flavor and texture, as well as its "pleasantly soft and chewy" cookies. In a blind taste test conducted by Newsday with grade-school kids, Skippy Natural Creamy and Skippy Creamy take the top two spots (Skippy Natural uses palm oil rather than partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.) Skippy Creamy and Skippy Super Chunk finish in first or second place in many other reviews, including taste tests conducted by The Washington Post and a leading consumer review magazine, as well as a mini-roundup of peanut butter by Real Simple magazine.

By most reckonings, Skippy isn't the nation's leading brand of peanut butter. That honor belongs to Jif, even though it can't quite catch Skippy in taste tests or reviews by connoisseurs. In the review by Cook's Illustrated, Jif Creamy (*est. $2.60 for an 18-ounce jar) finishes second to Skippy Creamy, largely because of a slight excess of sweetness (a complaint echoed by many other sources) and the "bland and too sweet" cookies it yielded. Jif also finishes well behind Skippy in Newsday's peanut butter taste test, and according to The Washington Post, while Jif Extra Crunchy (*est. $2.60 for an 18-ounce jar) scores well for texture, it's rated lower for being too sweet.

Jif does have its fans, though, as evidenced by two of the most credible peanut-butter taste tests. The website SeriousEats.com tests peanut butters in a novel way, combining them with Smucker's jelly in PB&J sandwiches. In this test, Jif finishes second among creamy peanut butters (behind 365 Organic, the Whole Foods house brand), with Ed Levine saying it has "the smoothest texture and the most pleasant mouthfeel." Simply Jif -- a variant of Jif Creamy with less salt and sugar -- is the top finisher in The Washington Post's taste test of creamy peanut butters, while Real Simple magazine raves about Jif Extra Crunch, calling it the "perfect blend of crunchy and creamy." Still, the preponderance of reviews vote in favor of Skippy, so we've chosen not to include Jif in ConsumerSearch Fast Answers.  ... Continued

Our Consensus Report shows how many times products are top-ranked by reviewers included in our
All The Reviews Reviewed chart.

Most major blind taste tests we found cover the big, national peanut butter brands, chief among them Skippy and Jif. Organic brands are included in more modestly scaled reviews, and thus are more contingent on the writers' (and tasters') individual preferences. Skippy is clearly preferred overall, and Smucker's Natural has an edge among peanut butters without hydrogenated fats.