Canthook

Peanut sitting on the railroad track.
Along come the train, clickety, clack.
Toot! Toot! Peanut butter!

The CDC announced yesterday that it had confirmed the connection between peanut butter and salmonella.

Salmonella usually gives you bacterial enteritis: food poisoning. You get nausea and vomiting, starting between 8 and 72 hours after you consume the food. A lot of the time, "summer flu" is a form of food poisoning, too. And just like the winter flu, people sometimes die of salmonella poisoning. In the peanut butter outbreak, 410 people in 43 states were sickened, and 3 people died.

There are more than 2000 types of salmonella, though, and it can also cause typhoid fever, or sepsis, or bacterial meningitis. And although your body may fight off a minor salmonella case without your losing a day of work, you'll be contributing salmonella to the porcelain fixture in the bathroom for another year.

When they announced the possible connection to peanut butter, I stopped eating peanut butter. This outbreak seems to be connected to King Nut and Parnell's Pride brands of peanut butter, sold only in 5-pound tubs, made in Virginia. There was a previous outbreak in 2006 connected to Peter Pan and Great Value (WalMart/Sam's) peanut butter.

In one of the earlier contaminations, water from a leaky factory roof was the problem. Apparently birds contributed the salmonella to the water. If you roast the peanuts after they've been contaminated, the roasting will kill the salmonella, but if they get contaminated after they are roasted, the game is over: the fat in the peanut butter protects the salmonella. Water in a peanut butter environment is like water on a grease fire - it both spreads the salmonella, but the water allows the salmonella to grow. Salmonella will not grow in a dry environment, but entrained water in peanut button cannot evaporate.

I was almost out of peanut butter, and bought another two-pack at Costco, right before the news came out of a salmonella connection. I left it on the shelf.

Once the Minnesota/Virginia connection was announced, though, I was happy to resume consumption. The Costco brand is made in New Mexico, from organic peanuts. Organic peanuts provide no particular protection against salmonella, and there's very little rain.

The salmonella outbreak last year that sickened 1300 people was originally thought to be connected to tomatoes, but it turned out to be Serrano peppers raised in Mexico. Presumably, it was water used for irrigation that did it. There were problems with California salad greens in the recent past that were connected to irrigation water that had been contaminated by cattle manure. Even if you keep the cattle away from the irrigation water, you're going to have a problem keeping the birds away from the irrigation canals.

But since roasting kills the salmonella, that shouldn't be a problem for peanuts. I'd feel a lot happier if I knew my peanut butter was made in a factory that was run by Mennonite women. Those women take cleanliness to a whole new level. They're so obsessive, I half-believe my neighbor who insists Mennonite women boil their own teats in water for fifteen minutes to sterilize them before breast feeding their babies.

Actually, I'd be happy even if someone like Mom were in charge. She sometimes followed the 7-second rule, and she only mopped the kitchen floor twice a month, not forty-two times an hour. I know of too many people like my former sister-in-law, who I've repeatedly seen pulling dirty bowls out of the sink, sometimes rinsing them, sometimes not, before serving soup in them.

This started out as a review of Kirkland peanut butter, which is a Costco private label product. As mentioned before, they use organic peanuts from New Mexico to make the product. If you think about it, there are a lot of factors that could affect the flavor of peanut butter. There's the variety of nut, the quality of the nuts, the time and temperature at which the nuts were roasted, how finely the peanuts were ground, how fresh the product is, and what contaminants are in the product.

The federal standard of identity, 21 CFR 164.150, for peanut butter says that peanut oil may be added or subtracted from peanut butter, as long as it's less than 55% oil. In addition, seasoning and stabilizing ingredients may be added, up to 10% of the weight of the product.

Only 10%. I would have sworn that the recipe for Jif was 90% Crisco, 9% sugar, and 1% peanuts! Those seasoning and stabilizing ingredients only allow hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils, not trans-fat-free products, which certainly sounds dumb. On the other hand, it doesn't allow the use of artificial sweeteners, either, so you lose one, you win one.

The label on the Kirkland peanut butter says it contains only peanuts and salt.

It's possible that it's the type of peanut being used. The cheapest peanuts (23.8c/pound) are runners, and 54% of all runners get used in peanut butter. Virginia peanuts are the most expensive, running 24.3c/pound. They're the ones with the big kernels, sold both as unshelled and shelled peanuts. Spanish peanuts are smaller, with a red skin, and they have a lot of oil, compared with other peanuts, so they're mostly crushed for oil. And the kind of peanut grown in New Mexico, which is where Kirkland peanut butter comes from? Valencia.

Valencias usually have three or more small kernels to a pod and are covered in a bright-red skin. They are very sweet peanuts and are usually roasted and sold in-the-shell. They are also excellent for fresh use as boiled peanuts. The USDA didn't list a price for them on their January 3 report; there were none brought to market then, or the weeks of December 27, 20, 13, or 6, either.

The Kirkland peanut butter is very soft and creamy, easy to stir, when you open the jar. There's some oil on top, but it's nothing like Smucker's or Krema peanut butter, which is very stiff.

When I lived in Ohio, the store-brand Kroger old-fashioned peanut butter was packaged in the same containers as Krema - same glass jar, same lid except the color of the plastic used. It's reasonable to assume that it's made by the Krema folks, but the Kroger product was salted, while Krema was unsalted. I preferred the taste of the Kroger product. The Kirkland peanut butter tastes even better.

Until last year, I was buying peanut butter made by the Zimmerman's, up in Penbrook, also known as East Harrisburg. It's sold at a fairly good price, cheaper than the peanut-flavored shortenings made by Jif, Peter Pan, Skippy, and other national brands - but Kirkland actually is cheaper than Zimmerman's.

Or maybe not. I tend to find the bottom of the jar awfully fast. Let's just say it's cheaper per ounce than Zimmerman's. And a whole lot cheaper than eating meat.
Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
- Jif - King Nut - Krema - Kroger - Parnell's Pride - peanut butter - Peter Pan - runner peanuts - salmonella - Skippy - Smucker - spanish peanuts - Valencia peanuts - Virginia peanuts - Zimmerman