Almonds Vs. Peanuts

Remember when almond butter wasn’t a thing? Neither do we.

There was a time that the nut butter in every household was peanut butter. PB and jam, PB and banana, PB and honey… there were so many options!

This classic seemed to be almost completely replaced some time in the late 00’s. Maybe you weren’t around for PB’s heyday, or maybe you went along with the mass switch without really investigating what it was all about. Either way, we thought it was a good time to revisit this shift and discuss the two main factors that caused it.

1. Allergies

Once schools began heavily recommending that peanuts and products containing peanuts or their oils be brought into schools, daycares, and workplaces, room for a new nut butter was opened.

Almond butter was the most similar tasting nut to fill this demand. It’s worth noting that market demands to replace peanut oil was also high. It was being used commercially in products including, but not limited to, granola bars, sauces dressings, and glazes, fried foods, hydrolyzed plant proteins, cake icing, and skin lotions.

2. Nutrition (our favourite!)

While spoonful for spoonful (which, let’s be honest, is how many of us eat nut butter) almonds and peanuts have very similar calories, but almonds have a greater amount of monounsaturated fats, fibre, vitamin E, iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and zinc. Peanuts aren’t void of these nutrients, almonds just win the comparison. 

To be fair to peanuts, their nutritional profile may have lost some potency as the result of high market demands for crop yield which led to over harvesting or the breeding of new peanut varieties that may not be as nutritious. (“Breeding” isn’t the same as genetic modification.) This is also happening to almonds because of the demands for all the products they are used to make: mylks, butters, flours, oils etc.

We use organic almond butter in our products. If you’re wondering about the taste difference in organic and conventional almond butter, we invite you to try one of our almond butter cups! With a filling made from organic sprouted, rather than roasted, almond butter, you can really taste the the full flavour! You can pick these beautiful treats up online in bulk, or from our participating stockists!