What’s going on with our peanut butter nutrition labels?

By Mary Ellen Phipps, MPH, RDN, LD 
September 11, 2024

You may have noticed the nutrition facts panel on some of our peanut butter jars looks a bit different lately, specifically that the carb counts have increased. I’m Mary Ellen Phipps, a registered dietitian living with diabetes myself, so I completely understand concerns about changes when you’re carefully watching your blood sugar. Here’s what’s going on and why you shouldn’t need to worry at all: every jar of Crazy Richard’s peanut butter is still the exact same peanut butter you know and love! 

We started out making our own peanut butter in a small factory in Columbus, Ohio, but after rapidly growing we switched to a modern, state-of-the-art facility decades ago. This type of facility is called a co-packer. Most food companies in the United States use a co-packer to produce their products, rather than producing it themselves. Our co-packer follows our recipe and guidelines exactly to produce the silky-smooth peanut butter you love. In recent months, we changed to a co-packer who has more capacity to meet the growing demand for our delicious peanut butter. 

Now, what does all of this have to do with Nutrition Facts labels? Well, in addition to producing a food product (in our case, delicious PB!), co-packers are also responsible for calculating and producing the Nutrition Facts label for the products they produce. 

You may be guessing where this is going and be thinking, “Why would that matter? Shouldn’t everything be the same if they’re using the exact same recipe?” And while it would make sense for this to be the case, it’s not always. 

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees the production of all nutrition labels. They have a set of standards and rules for everything from how to calculate the specific nutrient quantities based on our recipe to what we can say on the label. 

There are several different approved ways to calculate the amount of different nutrients in our recipe (just peanuts!). And sometimes, they result in different amounts. This is allowed because the FDA allows companies to have a certain margin of error in their calculations, because they recognize that being 100% precise all the time just isn’t possible. 

Co-packers confirm their nutrition estimates by comparing the recipe for the final product to a list of reference foods and methods that they most closely resemble. These reference foods and methods are called SRMs (standard reference materials). They are typically accurate to within 2-5% for sodium, calcium, potassium, fats, protein and carbohydrates. 

Because co-packers and food producers are allowed up to a 5% margin of leeway in interpretation in their calculations for fat, protein, and carbohydrates, the same exact product produced in two different facilities may have up to a 10% difference between the two nutrition labels for these nutrients. Additionally, the FDA allows food manufacturers up to a 20% margin of error in calorie estimates. All that together means it’s not surprising or even unusual to see differences from one manufacturer to another. 

Our new co-packer uses a different FDA-approved method than our original co-packer to calculate the amounts of nutrients in our peanut butter recipe… thus, the difference you’re now seeing in our nutrition labels. 

So, while the peanut butter recipe is the exact same (still just peanuts!), the nutrition labels do look different: 

Notably, calories, saturated fat, and total carbohydrates have gone up slightly. Rest assured, the recipe used to make Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter has not changed. You are still receiving the exact same peanut butter you know and love. Only the method used to calculate the nutrition information for our peanut butter has changed. 

We understand that the increase in total carbohydrates may be concerning for people who pay attention to their blood sugars and need to count carbohydrates. Again, I understand that concern personally, so I want to dive into this part of the label change a little more. 

The Dietary Fiber (3g), Total Sugars (2g), and Added Sugar (0g) all remain the same from our old label to our new label. What has changed is the Total Carbohydrate number. It was 5g on our old label and 7g on our new label. Because the calculated/estimated amounts of fiber and sugar have not changed, we can assume that the discrepancy is coming from the calculated/estimated amount of starch. (Starch is our other type of carbohydrate that’s included in the Total Carbohydrate number on a nutrition facts panel, but it is not required to be listed out individually like fiber and sugar.) 

While this can certainly be confusing and frustrating, rest assured that you’re still getting the exact same product. Please speak with your doctor or registered dietitian if you have specific questions about how this label change may or may not impact your approach to blood sugar management, diabetes, carbohydrate counting etc. 

Still a little confused? Here’s some amazing resources and articles that explain how this process works in more detail: 
•      How do you know your foods nutrition label is accurate? 
•      Are the calorie counts on food labels accurate?

Or, email us at [email protected].

Mary Ellen Phipps, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), offers a go-to resource for balancing blood sugars, increasing energy levels, and living with diabetes. You can find her at milkandhoneynutrition.com.