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Skippy, a brand owned by European food giant Unilever, has issued a recall  of its “reduced fat” peanut butter products. Evidently, they have become tainted with salmonella — an unhappy echo of the widespread 2009 salmonella outbreak from salmonella-tainted “peanut paste.”

But the real scandal with Skippy® Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter Spread and Skippy® Reduced Fat Super Chunk Peanut Butter Spread isn’t that some unwanted pathogen somehow found its way into the finished product. The problem is the stuff that Unilever quite intentionally injects into its “peanut butter spreads” — and takes out.

What do I mean? Let’s look at the ingredients list (which is the same for both the “creamy” and “super chunk” varieties):

 Roasted Peanuts, Corn Syrup Solids, Sugar, Soy Protein, Salt, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils (Cottonseed, Soybean And Rapeseed) To Prevent Separation, Mono And Diglycerides, Minerals (Magnesium Oxide, Zinc Oxide, Ferric Orthophosphate, Copper Sulfate), Vitamins (Niacinamide, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid)

The products deliver 180 calories per two-tablespoon serving, and 12 grams of fat.

Let’s compare that to another widely available commercial product: Woodstock Organic Peanut Butter. According to its ingredients list, it contains just “Organic dry roasted unblanched peanuts and salt,” with 190 calories per two-tablespoon serving and 15 grams of fat.

In other words, it’s quite possible to mass-produce peanut butter without weighing it down with all manner of additives.