There are few foods as deceptive as the classic PBJ. It is the perfect example of the confusion brought on by the national "nutrition" authorities. I grew up eating them. It is an elementary school lunch staple, yes. But it is a scam.
The problem is, they will tell you the bread is whole wheat. They will tell you the peanut butter has protein. They even are able to convince the consumer that jam is actual fruit. Kids think jam is actual fruit. but truly, the PBJ is a dessert food, passed off as a balanced, complete meal.
To begin with, most bread today is trash, an amalgamation of poor quality flours, and 20 other unnecessary ingredients, including often cane sugar, honey, and high fructose corn syrup.
The next layer on this dessert, is peanut butter. Peanut butter has protein, and that would be perfect, if it wasn't for the fact that most available cheap peanut butter is also almost always cut with molasses, sugar, and other unpronounceable ingredients. Almost no one known what actualy pure only peanut peanut butter tastes like.
Finally, we have jam. Jam is of course, the "sweet" part to balance the rest.
Thus, the classic PBJ is a scam. The good part is, if you do make it made with real food ingredients, you have yourself a solid lunch option. Try making a PBJ with sourdough bread. Try it with real pure peanut butter (extra points if you make that yourself. Joshua Weissman has a good tutorial on how to make it with a food processor). Get yourself a high quality local jam.
04/27/2024