Peanut Butter Is NOT A Good Protein Source
Peanut Butter Is NOT A Good Protein Source
This is probably not the kind of blog post you must be expecting, but hey, someone’s got to speak it out!
Full disclaimer: I love peanut butter and it is a staple in my diet.
That said, it would be nothing but delusion for me to believe that peanut butter is a good source of protein.
You might find tons of articles that go into the depth of why you should or shouldn’t eat peanut butter on the Internet, but very few are going to tell you the truth straight up:
Yes, peanut butter is tasty.
Yes, peanut butter is a good source of fat and can provide you with some micronutrients.
No, peanut butter is NOT a good source of protein.
That’s a big claim I’m making, so let’s back it up with some data.
Here’s the nutrition profile for peanut butter:
Peanut Butter Nutritional Information (Courtesy of Google)
While this might not look bad at first, let’s just sit back for a moment and acknowledge the fact that just 2 spoons of peanut butter come in at around 200 calories.
And no, these aren’t the heaped spoons you’ve been throwing onto your sandwiches.
These are just 2 leveled tablespoons of delicious peanut butter.
But that isn’t enough evidence to say that it is NOT a good source of protein, right?
To answer this, we need to understand what we generally mean when we say something is a good source of protein.
A good source of protein:
Has a good protein to total calorie ratio.
Has a complete amino profile.
Has a good fat to protein ratio.
What satisfies “good” in the above statements could be subjective, but no matter how opinionated you may be on peanut butter, there’s no denying the fact that it fails to meet these criteria.
Here’s why:
1. Protein to total calorie ratio.
Let’s take whey protein, one of the best sources of protein available, for comparison.
100 calories of whey protein give you 20g-25g of protein.
On the other hand, 100 calories of peanut butter gives you only 4g protein.
That’s a BIG difference.
2. Amino profile.
Peanut butter doesn’t have all the amino acids present, thus making it an incomplete protein by itself.
While having peanut butter with toast can easily help overcome this issue, it still doesn’t make up for the fact that peanut butter is not a complete protein by itself.
3. Fat to protein ratio.
In most cases, we prefer protein sources that have a good ratio of fats to proteins.
While people interested in gaining or in going keto might be exceptions to this rule, leaner sources of protein are generally considered as better sources of protein.
This might seem like an opinion at first, but here’s why it matters.
Glancing over the macro profile, it is very easy to see that for every 8g of protein you are getting from peanut butter, around 16g of fats just tag along.
That is, for every 32 calories of protein, you are eating 145 calories of fat.
Now I don’t know about you, but I definitely wouldn’t categorize food with a 4/1 calories of fat to protein ratio as a primary source of protein.
Conclusion
To wrap this up, here’s a little recap:
Peanut butter is NOT a primary source of protein
Peanut butter is a primary source of fat
Don’t use the content of protein in peanut butter to rationalize eating more peanut butter
Don’t eyeball or guess a serving of peanut butter until you’ve tracked it regularly
One serving of peanut butter is a lot lesser than you would assume
Just like peanut butter, so are almond butter, cashew butter and any other nut butters NOT a primary source of protein
Nuts, in general, are NOT a primary source of protein
That said, I love peanut butter.
You can make peanut butter a regular part of your diet as long as you account for it’s calories and focus on getting your protein elsewhere.
Don’t know how much you should be eating to lose weight and transform yourself? Check out the calculator embedded in “How Much Should I Eat To Lose Fat?”.
That’s all for today!
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