Is a peanut butter sandwich a balanced meal?
Is a peanut butter sandwich a balanced meal?
I mean carbs in the bread, proteins and fat in the peanut butter. Use wholemeal bread for fibers.
Or are proportions off compared to recommendations?
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Define "balanced meal".
My general answer would be no. Bread is a pretty simple carb, and you're looking at 200+ calories from 2 slices of bread, all simple carbs. The glycemic response from that would be: not good.
At least the fat in peanut butter will reduce the glycemic load.
And then most peanut butter has added sugars unless you specifically buy peanut butter without sugar.
More than that, most peanut butter has a lot of hydrogenated vegetable fats which are likely much worse than a bit of sugar.
If the package doesn't have a tablespoon of peanut oil or so pooling at the top when you first open it, that you then need to mix it in, it's hydrogenated.
Raw/natural PB tastes so much better anyways. I can’t buy anything else since I’ve tasted it.
Respectfully disagree. The super sweet creamy peanut butter from my childhood is one of the best tasting foods on the planet. Real peanut butter tastes like health food by comparison.
You're objectively wrong.
Objectively.
maybe... /s
You can also check the ingredients. It should have exactly one ingredient, and that's peanuts. Maybe salt too.
Don't forget that the valuable peanut oil is separated hydraulically which fractures the peanut meal, and then they add back cheaper soybean oil.
(Side note: That's why it separates, and that's why even organic peanut butter separates, it's because it's been hydraulically fractured)
In my opinion, the only peanut butter that is worth a damn is fresh crushed from unsalted roasted peanuts.
It will never stop being disturbing that there's sugar in peanut butter in the US. If I didn't know it was true I'd think it was a joke. Outside the US peanut butter is just peanuts and salt, that's it.
In my experience it's usually just peanuts. That's the only kind I buy. You can find it with sugar and / or salt but that's a minority.
It really is weird how US has to ruin every kind of food to make it more unhealthy. All this while not having a real healthcare too.
The bread has about three times as much sugar in it too
So basically to answer OP's question -
No. That's dessert 😂
It’s not nearly as much sugar added as I expected. Jif, which seems to be the most popular brand, has 2 grams of added sugar in a 33 gram serving, for a total of 3 grams of sugar (peanuts seem to naturally produce some sugar). Comparing that to Costco’s Kirkland Select natural peanut butter, which only has peanuts and salt for ingredients, a 32 gram serving has 1 gram of total sugar. So the total sugar Jif adds is twice as much as would naturally be present, but still makes up only 6% of the serving. It’s sweeter, but not dramatically sweeter. It’s not like it’s been turned into Nutella, which has 19 grams of added sugar in a 37 gram serving, or 51% of the serving.
What nutritional goals are you assuming? Not everyone is trying to minimize caloric intake. Personally I need to make sure I actually eat enough in a day due to appetite curbing effects from my neurodivergence and medication. PB&J is in my experience the highest calories for cost and effort. It's dirt cheap, almost effortless to make, and has a decent number of calories.
I make a peanut butter concoction subbing a whole grain like spelt for the bread and using pb that is just peanuts. Would that be considered any better?