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Peanut Butter is so American, you can’t even really find it in the UK
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 29, 2007
I have a few friends who just headed over the England and were dismayed to discover that you can’t buy peanut butter in the UK (except maybe in some obscure specialty stores). One of them eats peanut butter sandwiches at least once a day — sometimes twice — so this is a real issue. They are suffering withdrawal. Peanut butter is such a huge phenomenon here, it’s weird to think of it not being easily accessible in the rest of the western world (sort of like realizing that Thanksgiving is not a holiday that anyone in the rest of the world cares about. In Beijing the forlorn Americans got together and had roast duck — no turkeys in China). Everyone was like, oh England will be so easy to deal with — compared to other places to live abroad. There won’t be a language issue. They have nice public transportation so it’s easy to get around. They have all the amenities you could want — except peanut butter.
This American obsession with peanut butter has not gone unnoticed.
So according to peanut butter lore, peanut butter is just over a century and a quarter old, having been created around 1890 doctor as a easy to digest protein for people who couldn’t chew meat. It really only hit the mainstream when the emulsifiers kept it from separating into the oil and ground nuts.
Weird fact: the largest export market for American peanut butter is Saudi Arabia.
So, I’m trying to send over a fix of peanut butter.
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