Peanut Butter vs Nutella: Battle of the Spreads
Posted by Brad Campbell
20
Aug, 2010
TopFatLossTrainer Q&A: Diet and Nutrition Post…by Brad Campbell
Hey guys, Brad here, and it’s time to settle this debate once and for all. I’m talking about the battle of the spreads–peanut butter versus Nutella, to be exact. Here’s a question I just received the other day…
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Hey Brad,
What are your thoughts on nutella, I’ve never really tried it because I love peanut butter myself, but I know a lot of people who like it and eat it regularly that are in good shape.
Thanks,
Ross
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Cool, so for this battle of the spreads, let’s look at the nutrition label and point out a few things for each:
Alright, so the nutrition label for Nutella is on the left and the nutrition label for peanut butter is on the right. I selected a random “peanut butter with omega-3, creamy” for this example. For simplicity, I used a one ounce serving size for each spread and highlighted the most important stats.
By the way, I used http://nutritiondata.self.com to get my little paws on these labels. Awesome, now that props have been handed out, let’s get nutty…
To start with, if you look at the ingredients list (not shown here) and pay close attention to the first thing listed, you’d notice that PEANUTS are numero uno for pb; whereas, SUGAR comes up first on the list of Nutella ingredients.
Remember, ingredients are listed in order of importance, meaning that which comes up first is the main ingredient and that which comes up last is used the least.
Anything that has it’s main ingredient listed as sugar is probably not going to fare so well, assuming we’re looking for lean body-friendly foods.
You can see from the labels that Nutella has 15 times the sugar content in this particular example. That’s un-good.
But the case for Nutella only gets worse–peanut butter dominates the protein game as well, having 350% more of this crucial muscle building macronutrient per one ounce serving.
And peanut butter puts the final nail in Nutella’s coffin by offering more healthy fats per serving. So even though in this example, peanut butter has slightly more calories…the calories are of much higher quality than those from Nutella.
The one potential positive for Nutella is that, like my boy Ross says, people claim it tastes great. I can’t back that up, since I’ve never tired it either…but even if it edges out pb in the taste bud department, it’s still a landslide victory for peanut butter.
My final verdict: peanut butter smokes Nutella like a cigarette.
Remember though, you should be eating natural peanut butter and NO reduced fat crap (we want the healthy fats and you should be aware that the reduced fat varieties simply add in more sugar, which defeats the whole purpose of eating peanut butter in the first place).
I should end by noting that Nutella, due to it’s high sugar content, would be a good treat to consume immediately post-workout (along with protein), to spike insulin and shuttle the protein to your starving muscles. So no need to toss it in the garbage just yet…
Keep those questions coming.
Your Coach,
Brad Campbell
PS – For all the best diet plans, go here: Diets
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