Peanut Butter Recall
The recent peanut butter recall really scared me. Our son Jacob is only 7 months old and isn’t eating peanut butter yet, but will be soon, and peanut butter is one of my favorite foods. We have been buying our peanut butter from Whole Foods (the grind your own honey roasted), so when I heard about the recall I naively thought that our peanut butter would be safe. I checked the recall list a couple of weeks ago and the peanut butter we’ve been buying wasn’t on there, but i checked back a few days ago, and it too had been added to the list.
It is really frustrating that even Whole Foods’ peanut butter was affected by the recall. I went to their website and only some stores were affected but they did not provide a list of which ones. I’ve already eaten all of the peanut butter we had, so I have not contacted our store to ask them if it was tainted. I find it surprising that Whole Foods peanut butter came from the same source as all of the generic peanut butter. In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan talks about industrial organic and how it is not too different from regular food because it is highly processed. My peanut butter wasn’t organic, but, probably stupidly, I had assumed it would be of higher quality than typical peanut butter because it was from Whole Foods who claims to be “Selling the Highest Quality Natural & Organic Products.”
I wish that I could get local peanut butter. We found one place that makes peanut butter locally, but they too get their peanuts from somewhere in the south, I don’t think they were affected by the recall, but it could just be one of the 100s of items that hasn’t been added yet. The list is now up to over 2,000 items, some of which you wouldn’t think would contain peanuts or peanut butter, so go check frequently any snack items you have in your pantry. To me, this is just one more reason to eat our food as local and unprocessed as possible. If you know of a good and reliable source of peanut butter (and one that doesn’t have partially hydrogenated oils), please let me know, I am looking for one, even if it is not local!
This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Ugh – that’s so annoying. I would also think Whole Foods’ peanut butter would be better, especially considering how much they charge for everything. I even saw that their organic kind was on recall – disturbing. It really is difficult (and expensive) trying to do “deep organic” instead of just buying store brand organic stuff or non-local organic products. This is also the first time I’ve looked at the recall list, and it’s insane how many products are on it. Why do these kinds of recalls seem to be happening more and more frequently in the last few years? I’m not sure of a reliable peanut butter source – Min’s been buying an organic kind made by MaraNatha – at least it’s not on the recall list, but I don’t know much else about it.
Please tell me how you’ve managed to find time to cook all your delicious food with Jake – I find it so hard to find time to cook. I’m trying to get more into using my crock pot to cook more on the weekend to eat throughout the week, but I’d love to be able to find more time to cook on weeknights too.
I’m loving your blog!
February 21st, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Thanks Erin!! I will try to make a post about finding time to cook. It is challenging and sometimes I do better than others, I think the key is planning. I’ll say more about it in the next couple of days. Also, we just got back from Whole Foods to buy Jeremy some milk and me some granola, and I think we will be making a Peanut Butter Recall part 2 post.
They pulled their peanut butter off the shelves now, which had not been the case last week, but there were no signs or anything. Ugh, we’ll post more later.
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Did you look into Justin’s Nut Butter? They’re local and unaffected by the recall, but they don’t state from where they source their peanuts.
The butters (almond and peanut) are damn delicious, but they’re also about 2x the price. I guess not eating rat droppings and contracting salmonella may be worth a couple bucks a month though.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Thanks Brent! I will definitely try to find some, it sounds great. Where do you buy yours at?
February 25th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Whole Foods has it in Boulder and once the farmer’s market starts up Justin is usually there every week. He’s got some really interesting flavors too, like cinnamon almond butter. Not a sandwich spread, but good for a snack.