Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 8, 1995 TAG: 9503080126
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
His heart was all aflutter
Along came the 6:15
Toot! Toot!
Peanut butter.
- children's song
Sadly, Virginia has no peanut butter ambassador.
There's one in Fairbanks, Alaska. There's one in Chicago, Ill.
These brave souls work hard to spread the word on peanut butter across the nation. They attend conventions. They are bona fide members of the Adult Peanut Butter Lovers' Fan Club.
But not a Virginian among them.
"That's appalling," says Norma Carpenter, a peanut butter ambassador from Orofino, Idaho.
Especially considering that Virginia produced 133,400 tons of peanuts in 1994, making it fifth in the United States in peanut production.
And especially at such a crucial time, when peanut butter's reputation is being maligned by food critics who say that while America's favorite sandwich spread is filled with protein, niacin and riboflavin, it also has a high fat content.
"But it's unsaturated fat," says Carpenter, 50. "I eat it all the time and I'm rather thin."
Critics, go choke on your watercress.
There is still a place for peanut butter in the cupboards of America, says Mitch Head, president of the Adult Peanut Butter Lovers' fan club. And while he and other peanut butter advocates admit the high fat content, they tend to stick more to discussing protein and taste.
"Everybody loves peanut butter," says Head, also a member of the Peanut Advisory Board based in Atlanta.
His proof? Americans consume 800 million pounds of the stuff each year. According to marketplace surveys, 85 percent of all American households are stocked with at least one jar of peanut butter - 60 percent of those with creamy, 40 percent with crunchy.
"Kids prefer creamy," Head says. "Their teeth are still a little fragile and crunchiness is difficult for them at times."
While peanut butter is still a uniquely American food, Head says, other countries are catching on. "We eat more of it per capita here than they do anywhere in the world," Head says. "But it's growing in places like Canada."
Ann Hertzler, a professor of human nutrition and foods at Virginia Tech, spent a year in Australia and managed to find the sticky stuff there. Of course, in some parts of the land of Vegemite (ugh!) it's referred to as "peanut paste."
"Every time I'd ask for peanut butter, people would look at me," Hertzler remembers.
Extension agents say that in Virginia, peanut butter isn't on the school lunch tray as much as it used to be.
But as long as there are lunch pails, kids will still carry it to school. And they'll still study it, Hertzler says. "It's part of learning where foods come from. You can take a peanut and crank it through an old grinder and get chunky peanut butter. Or you can put it through the blender and get smooth."
Peanut butter was invented in 1890 by a St. Louis physician who was looking for some high-protein foods for his patients. Their families tried it, too, and liked it, the lore goes, and its popularity grew.
But the rest of peanut butter history - even the physician's name - is lost.
Scores of people are taught that scientist George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, for instance. He didn't. But he discovered more than 200 uses for the peanut and found nutritive qualities that had not been fully appreciated before. He's still known as The Father of the Peanut.
The first patent for peanut butter was issued to John Harvey Kellogg on Nov. 4, 1895, says Leslie Wagner, another member of the peanut board and editor of "Spread the News," the newsletter for the peanut butter fan club. "That's all we know for sure."
So it made sense last year to move "National Peanut Butter Lover's Month" from March to November, in connection with that one, ironclad day in the peanut butter chronicles.
The Adult Peanut Butter Lovers' Fan Club has about 4,500 active members - 60 of them in Orofino, a small, logging and agricultural town of 4,000.
Many of them have been rounded up by Carpenter, who just the other day asked her jeweler to change some peanut tie-tacks into earrings. Her jeweler "eats peanut butter every day, and I said, 'I'm not leaving until you join the fan club,'" she says. "I can get carried away, talking about peanut butter."
Activities her club has planned for this year include baking peanut butter cookies for a nursing home and putting jars of peanut butter in holiday food baskets.
"Of course our first priority is fun," Carpenter says. "And recipes. As many as we can get our hands on.
The national club's honorary members ("people who have talked in the news about how much they love peanut butter," Wagner says) include President Bill Clinton and former first lady Barbara Bush, comedian Soupy Sales, anchorwoman Barbara Walters, actress Cher, pop star Madonna and evangelist Jerry Falwell.
To join the Adult Peanut Butter Lovers' Fan Club, send $3 to P.O. Box 7528, Tifton, Ga. 31793.
Information about becoming a peanut butter ambassador is available by writing Leslie Wagner, Adult Peanut Butter Lovers' Fan Club, 1950 North Park Place, Suite 525 Atlanta, Ga. 30339.
recipes for:
PEANUT BUTTER CHICKEN DELIGHT
SWORDFISH STEAK WITH PEANUT BUTTER SAUCE
PEANUT SOUP
PASSION DIP
PEANUT BUTTER MUFFINS
P.B. WALDORF SALAD
by CNB