There are quite a few peanut free spreads on the market now to smear on a sandwich and send in your kiddo's lunchbox. Most have an appearance that is very similar to the traditional lunchbox favorite, but how do they stack up nutritionally? Let's take a peek, starting with the nutrition label for the good ol' standard- peanut butter. (So you know what you are measuring against.)
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| Peanut butter. This is the standard everyone holds replacement against. Note the protein content. |
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| Barney Butter- made from peanut-free almonds. This is a great option if you can have tree nuts. |
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| Biscoff Spread- NOT a peanut butter replacement. This is made from ground up cookies, people. I don't care if it is nut free, it is still a dessert spread! All sugar, no protein. |
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I M Healthy Soybutter- There are several soybutter products on the market, this is the label I grabbed.
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| Sneaky Chef No-Nut Butter made from golden peas. This was surprisingly delicious, but awfully low in protein. |
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| Sunbutter made from ground sunflower seeds. This is the favorite in our house! Great protein, free of the top 8. |
I made sure to get the original spread with each of these, not a flavored version. I have seen chocolate soybutter often ( I adore the Don't Go Nutz brand version. Yum.), but make sure to watch the sugar content on those labels! Some of them are more of a dessert spread with more sugar than is really needed. I know that the flavor of the soybutter spreads varies from product to product, so feel free to try several to find the one that hits your palette right.
The above labels are as complete as their original packaging would allow. I did not research to see what nutritional perks may have been left off of the label. This is just so you can see how your spread compares!
Now. Who's hungry for a sandwich?
The kicker is when different brands have different profiles - my husband emailed SunButter about differences between their sugar free variety and another company's and got no reply but when I asked on Twitter they said the seeds were different varieties. Fascinated, we looked into it and of over 70 sunflower seed varieties, only two are commercially used. One in bird seed mixes, one for humans. So seeing your roundup is really on point to our own search re: nut free alternatives! Thank you!
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