How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
Peanut butter. Peanut butters generally have more fat, saturated fat, salt (sodium), and sugar
than plain peanuts, with as much fiber and potassium per serving as plain peanuts, but less
folate. Two tablespoons (one ounce) chunky-style peanut butter has an average 2.11 g fiber,
239 mg potassium, and 29.44 mcg folate.
Medical Uses and/or Benefits
Lower risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some forms of cancer. Grape skin, pulp, and
seed, and wines made from grapes, contain resveratrol, one of a group of plant chemicals
credited with lowering cholesterol and thus reducing the risk of heart attack by prevent-
ing molecular fragments called free radicals from linking together to form compounds that
damage body cells leading to blocked arteries, glucose-damaged blood vessels (diabetes), and
unregulated cell growth (cancer). Peanuts also contain resveratrol. In fact, a 1998 analysis
from the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Raleigh, North Carolina, shows that pea-
nuts have 1.7 to 3.7 mcg resveratrol per gram of peanuts vs. 0.6 to 8.0 mcg resveratrol per
gram of red wine.
Possible lower risk of heart attack. In the spring of 1998, an analysis of data from the records
for more than 80,000 women enrolled in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study at Harvard
School of Public Health/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, demonstrated that a diet
providing more than 400 mcg folate and 3 mg vitamin B 6 daily, either from food or supple-
ments, might reduce a woman’s risk of heart attack by almost 50 percent. Although men
were not included in the study, the results were assumed to apply to them as well.
However, data from a meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association in December 2006 called this theory into question. Researchers at Tulane Univer-
sity examined the results of 12 controlled studies in which 16,958 patients with preexisting
cardiovascular disease were given either folic acid supplements or placebos (“look-alike” pills
with no folic acid) for at least six months. The scientists, who found no reduction in the risk
of further heart disease or overall death rates among those taking folic acid, concluded that
further studies will be required to ascertain whether taking folic acid supplements reduces
the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Lower cholesterol levels. A 1998 study at the University of Rochester, Pennsylvania State
University, and the Bassett Research Institute suggests that a diet high in monounsaturated
fatty acids from peanut oil and peanut butter reduces levels of cholesterol and low density
lipoproteins (LDLs) without increasing levels of triglycerides (another form of fat considered
an independent risk factor for heart disease).
Lower risk of some birth defects. As many as two of every 1,000 babies born in the United
States each year may have cleft palate or a neural tube (spinal cord) defect due to their
mothers’ not having gotten adequate amounts of folate during pregnancy. The current R DA
for folate is 180 mcg for a woman and 200 mcg for a man, but the FDA now recommends
400 mcg for a woman who is or may become pregnant. Taking folate supplements before
Peanuts