[nhf]

I've found the Whole Foods store-brand smooth peanut butter is a good happy medium between Jif and the organic stuff. It stays emulsified a lot longer than others, but has more roasty peanut flavor (and less sugar) than the cheap stuff.

[boogies]

It seems that palm oil makes a decent alternative to hydrogenation. My current favorite butter is Trader Joe’s Crunchy No Stir, which contains 90% roasted peanuts, powdered sugar (cane sugar and cornstarch), palm oil, and sea salt (in that order on the label). 3g total sugar (2 added) in one 2 tablespoon / 32g serving.

[bobthepanda]

Palm oil cultivation is responsible for massive rainforest deforestation.

[fuzzfactor]

Palm oil comes in chemical tank ships.

These have a lot more piping than oil tankers, so each cargo compartment can be loaded with a different industrial commodity, some of which are known to be highly incompatible, such as acids vs alkalis. There's usually 10 or 20 different chemicals on a vessel at any one time.

This way if they are careful, the operators on board and on shore can transfer the parcel, without significant enough contamination from foreign chemicals in other tanks, otherwise the material would fail to meet specifications.

Not everyone is as careful as they should be all the time.

When a cargo does go off-test it can take a lot of prime material to blend it with in order to pass.

It can be a headache of industrial proportions. Lloyds of London can get involved.

For that reason I hate it when a benzene or methanol transfer picks up a little too much palm oil.

[baud147258]

on the other hand, palm oil, compared to rapeseed or sunflower, need much smaller surfaces to produce the same volume of oil

[bobthepanda]

Palm and other added oils are pretty much superfluous for peanut butter though, only really added to prevent the minor inconvenience of stirring the peanut butter.