9 Store-Bought Peanut Butters You Should Avoid

Believe it or not, all you really need to make phenomenal peanut butter are peanuts and maybe a little bit of salt. After that, everything else is, technically, an unnecessary additive. But that doesn't stop a handful of brands from bulking up their products or trying to mask lesser-than ingredients with extra stuff, like added sugar, pesky oils, molasses, and more. Sure, some additional ingredients are needed to prevent separation in more shelf-stable products, but some products go well beyond that. You better believe the healthiest peanut butter brands don't mess around with additives, either.

With all of this in mind, there is a collection of store-bought peanut butters that you're probably better off avoiding. Whether it's because they have a high fat content, lots of sugar, or an unappealingly long list of additives, steering clear of them and opting for another product is a smart move. After all, there's no need for any of that extra junk. So, what are these sub-par peanut butter products? Let's find out.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are beloved. No arguments there. However, the brand's Creamy Peanut Butter isn't something to be sought out. When you are enjoying candy, like the company's most well-known product, you expect plenty of sugar and all kinds of other stuff in the mix. With peanut butter, though, it's all completely unnecessary. Not a single bit of sugar is needed to make yummy peanut butter that, well, actually tastes like peanuts. Unfortunately, Reese's didn't get the memo on this.

Reese's Creamy Peanut Butter's ingredients list features the necessary ingredients, peanuts and salt. However, the brand's recipe also includes sugar, molasses, monoglycerides, and a collection of unnecessary oils. At least peanuts are first in line, but sugar is the second ingredient, and molasses makes an appearance as well. That's two unnecessary sweeteners, and they add up to 3 grams of total sugar per 2-tablespoon serving. In addition, 2.5 grams of saturated fat also get lumped in. 

As for the oils in Reese's Creamy Peanut Butter, you find hydrogenated vegetable oil and peanut oil. While hydrogenated oil is used to help make products shelf-stable and enhance flavor and texture, that doesn't mean they are ideal for consumption. The trans fat in them can raise your low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (commonly known as LDL or "bad cholesterol") levels and lead to an increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke.

Peanut Butter & Co White Chocolate Wonderful comes to us from a reputable brand, so you might think it is a top-notch pick. For the most part, the company's peanut butter products are pretty darn tasty, too. However, when it comes to this particular recipe, you'd be wise to reconsider adding a jar of it to your cart.

If the presence of white chocolate didn't tip you off already, Peanut Butter & Co White Chocolate Wonderful is padded with all kinds of extra — and in our opinion, unnecessary — ingredients like cane sugar, cocoa butter, natural vanilla flavor with other natural flavors, palm oil, and lecithin (from sunflowers). To be fair, cane sugar feels like a step in the right direction, but it still makes this spread a little sweeter than it needs to be.

In addition, palm oil is an ingredient you typically need to be on the lookout for with generic peanut butter brands, but it rears its head in this company's recipe as well. It may be far from a generic brand, but it sure isn't acting like it in terms of additives, so you may want to think twice before purchasing it. To top it all off, a 16-ounce jar of White Chocolate Wonderful costs about $6, so it's not like you're saving here, either.

At first glance, the label on a jar of Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter Spread makes it seem like a healthy option. Even so, looks can be deceiving, and upon further inspection, the appeal starts to wear off quite quickly.

The main issue with Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter Spread is what feels like a never-ending list of ingredients. One look at it and you know it is full of unnecessary additives. For starters, it contains corn syrup solids and sugar; the former is a dehydrated form of corn syrup that's used to sweeten and help add bulk to processed foods. The recipe also features hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is high in trans fat and can lead to higher levels of bad cholesterol. In addition, it also has mono- and diglycerides thrown into the mix. While they are generally considered safe to consume, they also contain trans fat, and products that list them in their ingredients don't say exactly how much is present. Per Healthline, "foods containing monoglycerides are often high in other fats, refined sugar, and sodium."

All that's to say the reduced fat label is a bit misleading. This peanut butter may be lower in fat specifically, but it still has 190 calories per serving, and who knows how much trans fat. Geez. Our advice is to just leave it on the shelf where it belongs and put something else in your cart.

The next product we recommend you avoid is Jif Peanut Butter & Chocolate Flavored Spread. While the two namesake ingredients are undoubtedly a perfect combo in sweet treats, they don't translate to what we would call a healthy or additive-free peanut butter. In fact, it's hard to even call it peanut butter in the first place — this is more of a chocolate spread. To be fair, it's not like the brand is trying to hide the fact that it is not basic peanut butter, but that just serves to underscore the fact that you can do better. 

Jif Peanut Butter & Chocolate Flavored Spread claims to contain 50% less sugar than the leading hazelnut spread with cocoa (subtle, but we all know that's referring to Nutella). That's a great start, but it is still somewhat misleading, because it contains a whopping 3.5 grams of saturated fat. Plus, it has hydrogenated oils and mono and diglycerides, both of which contain trans fat. Add that all up, and you have a significant amount of bad fats. 

Jif Peanut Butter & Chocolate Flavored Spread also contains added sweeteners like sugar and molasses. Additionally, its 200 calories-per-serving is one of the highest counts among products on our list. This spread may give you a delicious mouthful of chocolatey goodness, but it is still a sugar overload, and it is far from being what we would consider a healthy peanut butter. 

Great Value Creamy Peanut Butter may be priced just right — a 16-ounce jar costs just under $2 — but that should be your first indicator that it is not a quality peanut butter pick. Sorry, not sorry, Walmart. This product doesn't make the cut.

A low price is awesome if it is attached to a good product, but that's not the case with Great Value Creamy Peanut Butter. Instead, it is made with several unnecessary additives, including sugar, and molasses. That's two extra sweeteners, which results in 2 grams of added sugars per 2-tablespoon serving. There are also 2.5 grams of saturated fat in each serving, and the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends only 16 to 22 grams for a healthy person's daily intake. The number drops to 13 grams for anyone who has heart disease or high cholesterol. It also features hydrogenated vegetable oil and monoglycerides in its ingredients list, which, as we now know, both add unhealthy trans fat to the product. 

Admittedly, Great Value Creamy Peanut Butter does have a slightly lower calorie count, 180, and paired with the low cost, that's two marks in its favor. Even so, we can do so much better. There are plenty of options on store shelves that don't require you to overlook extraneous ingredients; this just isn't one of them.

Jif is an old-school peanut butter company that's ubiquitous on American grocery shelves. Unfortunately, though, its long-standing success and easy brand recognition don't mean Jif Creamy Peanut Butter is necessarily a quality pick.

As you may have guessed by now, Jif Creamy Peanut Butter is loaded up with several superfluous additives, including sugar, molasses, mono- and diglycerides, and fully hydrogenated vegetable oils. Translation: There are two superfluous sweeteners, as wells as trans fat stemming from two sources. The 190 calories, 2 grams of added sugars, and 3.5 grams of saturated fat per serving aren't anything to write home about, either. 

The abundance of fat and sweeteners is probably why kids like Jif Creamy Peanut Butter so much, but that all but saps its nutritional value. Basically, if you are trying to sneak some nutrition into a child's diet (something that isn't always that simple), this isn't the best way to get there. Don't fret, though. Jif is far from the only tasty peanut butter on store shelves. Get one that's additive-free or at least devoid of trans fat, and something tells me most kids will be none the wiser.

Sold at Safeway, Albertson's, and Vons, Signature Select Creamy Reduced Fat Peanut Butter falls a bit flat when compared to other, more premium options. As a generic grocery store brand, most of us don't expect it to scream quality. It contains 2 grams of saturated fat and 4 grams of added sugars in every 2-tablespoon serving. FYI: That's one of the highest added sugar contents we've seen thus far.

Signature Select Creamy Reduced Fat Peanut Butter's list of unsavory additives includes corn syrup solids, sugar, molasses, hydrogenated vegetable oils, and monoglycerides. What this means is that it contains higher levels of trans fat and sugar than a healthier peanut butter option. The corn syrup solids are particularly concerning because when consumed in high amounts, they can lead to adverse side effects like fatty liver disease, weight gain to the point of obesity, diabetes, and increased inflammation.

Signature Select Creamy Reduced Fat Peanut Butter's one saving grace is its lower calorie count: 160 per serving. At $2.99 for 16 ounces, the price isn't awful, either, but that's not enough to make up for its deficiencies. We'll pass.

Many people see peanut butters featuring honey on store shelves and think, "Oh yeah, that would be tasty." They aren't wrong, either, and the presence of honey alone doesn't lead to a product you want to avoid. It's when all kinds of other pesky additives come into the equation, like with Skippy Roasted Honey Nut Creamy Peanut Butter Spread, that you may want to rethink your purchase. 

Skippy Roasted Honey Nut Creamy Peanut Butter Spread's include peanut oil, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil (by way of cottonseed, soybean, and rapeseed oils), and molasses. Add to that the as-advertised honey, and a 2-tablespoon serving winds up containing 2 grams of added sugars and 3 grams of saturated fat. It also has 200 calories, making it one of the most calorie-dense of the bunch. We anticipated a slightly higher sugar content because of the honey, but Skippy just had to use plain old sugar as well, and we are not fans of the decision. Why not just let the honey do the sweet talking here?

If you just so happen to already have a jar of Skippy Roasted Honey Nut Creamy Peanut Butter Spread in your pantry or fridge, we say turn it into a five-ingredient no-bake pie and call it day. That way, you can move on to something much better for you (and tastier, too).

Available in three different flavors, Strawberry, Grape, and Honey, Smucker's Goober Peanut Butters are next up on the chopping block, and let me tell you: It isn't going to be pretty. For starters, they've got the highest calorie count of them all — 220 per 2-tablespoon serving (the same for all three recipes), and contain 19 grams of added sugar per serving.

Interestingly enough, all that extra sugar also results in Smucker's Goober Peanut Butters being exceptionally low in protein as well — only 5 grams per serving. Of course, there are all the unsavory additives too, which include high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, dextrose, and distilled monoglycerides. What really gave us pause here is the use of both high fructose corn syrup, regular corn syrup, and dextrose — all sugars. The jelly stripes surely account for some of the sweetness here, but as a peanut butter product, this one goes beyond the pale. The trans fat found in the monoglycerides isn't doing it any favors, either. 

Basically, these products are sugar bombs without any redeeming qualities. You certainly couldn't use a near-empty jar to make the perfect noodle pairing, either, something that's easily done with products of a similar nature. Kids may marvel at the swirled contents of the jars — I know I sure did when I was young — but eye-catching appeal isn't enough to launch them anywhere near the realm of a healthy option. 

To determine the peanut butter products worth avoiding, I scoured what felt like an endless number of product labels to examine the list of ingredients and nutritional information. Peanut butters that included anything more than peanuts and salt made a short list of products to avoid. 

From there, I compared the overall sugar and saturated fat content, while also flagging some of the ingredients that are indicators of those — things like hydrogenated vegetable oil, monoglycerides, and corn syrup solids, among others. The ones with higher numbers for each made the final list you find above. We recommend you steer clear of all of them and stick to one of the best brands instead. After all, life's too short for bad peanut butter.