Celebrating Peanut Butter

November 23, 2008

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Profile America — Sunday, November 23rd. One of life’s simple pleasures is being celebrated — it’s Peanut Butter Lovers Month. It’s one of America’s favorite foods and certainly its most popular sandwich. Peanut butter was first offered to the public at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. But peanut butter as we know it — with the peanuts roasted and the product churned like butter to be smooth and not have the oil separate — didn’t appear on grocery shelves until 1922. Our love of peanut butter, whether smooth or chunky, accounts for a large part of the nearly seven pounds of shelled peanuts we each consume in a year — which brings in some $850 million annually to the farmers who grow them. You can find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.

Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events 2008, p. 539
Statistical Abstract of the United States 2008, t. 205, 809
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2008edition.html