Are you a fellow peanut butter lover? Do you feel guilty when you reach for a jar of the nutty buttery spread because you fear the fat content is too high?
The good news is, you don’t need to feel guilty any longer!
Peanut butter isn’t just for school lunches. This versatile spread is surprisingly good for your health. The high protein and healthy oils help with weight loss, diabetes, and even Alzheimer’s disease.
Two tablespoons of peanut butter have 190 calories and 16 grams of fat per serving – it hardly sounds like suitable diet food, BUT surprisingly there are a number of GOOD health benefits from the popular spread.
Suppresses Hunger For Weight Loss
Eating peanuts and peanut butter helps control hunger without leading to weight gain.
Your Heart Loves Peanuts
Studies found peanuts lowered the risk of cardiovascular and coronary heart disease.
Lowers Colon Cancer
Eating peanuts and peanut butter may reduce colon cancer in women.
Helps Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Impairment
A study found that those getting the most niacin from foods were 70 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Peanuts are one of the foods highest in niacin.
Prevent Gallstones
In two studies, individuals eating five or more servings of nuts per week had a 25 percent to 30 percent lower risk of getting gallstones compared to those who rarely or never ate nuts. Although peanuts are technically classified as a legume, they were considered nuts for these experiments, so peanuts are actually the most commonly consumed ‘nut’ in the world.
Full of Healthy Fat
All of the fat in peanut butter is heart-healthy monounsaturated fat. A study found that insulin-resistant adults who ate a diet high in monosaturated fat had less belly fat than people who ate more carbohydrates or saturated fat.
Lowers Type 2 Diabetes
Eating peanuts can reduce the risk of diabetes according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
High in Valuable Nutrition
Peanut butter has protein as well as potassium — which lowers the risk of high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease. It also contains fiber for your bowel health, healthy fats, magnesium to fortify your bones and muscles, Vitamin E and antioxidants.
On some level, you probably already know that, sure, it's pretty easy to make your own peanut butter. But if you've never actually made homemade peanut butter, I don't know if you quite understand how indeed, incredibly, ridiculously easy it really is. Peanuts, meet blender. Blender, it's go-time.
Peanuts go through a few stages on their way to becoming spoon-able, spreadable peanut butter. At first, the mix looks impossibly crumbly and dry in the bottom of your food processor, but let the blender go a little longer and it starts resembling actual honest-to-goodness peanut butter.
HOMEMADE PEANUT BUTTER RECIPE
INGREDIENTS:
☛1 kg groundnuts (raw).
☛4 tablespoons olive oil/peanut oil.
☛4 tablespoons honey.
☛2 teaspoons salt.
☛Cinnamon (optional)
☛Paprika (optional)
INSTRUCTIONS
⏩Started off by blanching the nuts, this you do first by bringing water in a pot to a steady boil.
⏩Introduce your nuts into the boiling water and let them boil for 1 minute, be careful here not to overcook the nuts.
⏩When done with, strain the nuts of all the water.
⏩Preheat your oven to about 175℃.
⏩Go ahead and spread the nuts on the baking tray, don’t you worry about crowding the tray.
⏩Put it inside your oven and bake for 1 hour.
⏩Be sure to check from time to time turning the nuts around for even roasting.
⏩When done take them out of the oven and let them cool completely.
⏩Now take the peels off your nuts.
⏩You are done at this stage, however, I took mine back to the oven for a further 10 minutes to achieve a darker smokier color that I love on my peanut butter.
⏩Divide this into two or if you have a powerful and enough blender you can do it in 1 batch.
⏩Pulse your nuts in the blender until it starts to form lumps and begins resembling peanut butter.
⏩Here introduce your oil, salt, and honey.
⏩Pulse further until smooth and consistent.
⏩Scoop this up into a jar and seal.
⏩It can be stored in a refrigerator for up to 3 months.
⏩You can spice it up by adding cinnamon, paprika, and other ingredients as you so wish.
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