Is Peanut Butter Keto? How to pick Peanut Butter for Keto

Although peanut butter is considered keto friendly, a lot of the conventional peanut butter variety would not be recommended on keto as they contain vegetable and seed oils. Traditional peanut butter is made with just peanuts which is blended with a food processor until it is creamy. When you let blended peanuts sit, usually the oil will rise to the top, looking like a pool of oil at the top of the peanut butter. This is normal in traditional peanut butter. In order to make peanut butter smooth to prevent the oil from pooling at the top, manufacturers usually have to add oil to the mixture. This added oil is typically vegetable oil.

The best practice for keto diets is to avoid vegetable and seed oils because they are highly inflammatory to the body and can be harmful when eaten as a staple in your diet. For more information on this please refer to the following:

Nina Teicholz - Vegetable Oils: The Unknown Story

Chris A. Knobbe - Omega-6 Apocalypse: From Heart Disease to Cancer and Macular Degeneration - AHS19

When it comes to shopping for peanut butter, we will have to do more work and read the ingredients label.

Look for the lowest amount of carbs, this is generally 3 grams total carbs, 1 gram of fiber and 1 gram of sugar. This adds up to 2 grams net carbs per tablespoon of peanut butter.

Check the ingredients list to make sure that it doesn’t contain vegetable oil or seed oil. Usually if you are buying peanut butter and you see a pool of oil at the top, then that is a good sign that there is no other oils present.

If you like your peanut butter smooth without the pool on top, then look for these oils in the ingredients. Make sure there is no vegetable oil.

Good choices include:

1. Coconut oil
2. Palm oil (not hydrogenated)
3. Avocado Oil
4. MCT Oil

A single serving of peanut butter is 2 tablespoons, weighing 1.23 grams. One percent of peanut butter is water and this serving contains 191 kcal of calories.

A 2 tablespoon serving of peanut butter contains 5.5 grams net carbs. Total carbohydrates is 7.14 grams with 1.6 grams of fiber and 3.36 grams of sugar. For reference, on a target of 25 grams net carbs per day on a ketogenic diet, you can have 4 tablespoons of peanut butter a day.

Peanut butter is high in fat and has a moderate amount of protein. A 2 tablespoon serving contains 7 grams of protein and 16 grams of fat, at around 1:2 protein to fat ratio. Peanut butter is fairly nutritious and is a good source of Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Vitamin E, choline, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese.

If your goal is to lose weight or improve body composition, then you may want to consider cutting back on the peanut butter. The 1:2 protein to fat ratio is not ideal for fat loss and will require even more protein in your meal to offset this higher fat content. When trying to lose weight, it is best to focus on higher protein and lower fat content, even on a ketogenic diet to allow your body to use its stored fat, as dietary fat is used first.

Anecdotally, we know that for some people, peanut butter hyperpalatable and easy to overeat which may cause us to feel more hungry, rather than feeling full for as long as possible which is the most important factor for weight loss. A study in mice found that polyunsaturated fats and endocannabinoid system may provide a clue to this. Peanuts are high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats which are used in the body to synthesize endocannabinoids. Simply put, these in turn stimulate the need for food intake causing “munchies”, the feeling of hunger (r).

If you tend to overeat peanut butter, then it is best to avoid them until you have reached your target weight. Focus on eating foods that are high in saturated fats, which are shown in studies to help us feel full and regulate food intake (r).