Like Butter
Kroger’s Hazelnut Spread with Cocoa goes up against Nutella.
Retailers also going fruity with store brand spreads. It’s not just peanut butter and jelly any more!
Sometimes you feel like a different nut butter. That’s the thinking behind alternatives to peanut butter that are cropping up now in private label as well as specialty brands, as witness Hazelnut Spread with Cocoa at Kroger, Cincinnati, OH. And Kroger isn’t alone.
Fruit butters are also getting more exposure in store brands. Kroger has its own apple butter, and so does Target, Minneapolis, MN. Trader Joe’s, Monrovia, CA, offers both honey apple and mango butters, and Harris Teeter, Matthews, NC, markets apple, pear and peach butters.
Peanut butter isn’t as plain as it used to be. Harris Teeter, Giant Eagle, Pittsburgh, PA, and Safeway, Pleasanton, CA, offer organic versions of creamy and crunchy under the Harris Teeter Naturals, Nature’s Basket brands and O Organics brands. Safeway recently added all-natural versions under the Open Nature brand. Wegmans, Rochester, NY, calls its reduced fat peanut spread just that – not a butter. At Trader Joe’s, a 40% reduced calorie version is dubbed Better’n Peanut Butter.
Kroger’s line includes reduced fat as well as natural versions, plus a Roasted Nuts & Honey creamy variety – and that Hazelnut Spread with Cocoa. J.C. Reid of the Houston Post compared it to Nutella, the brand that pioneered the product – its very name “has been ‘genericized’ to refer to any spread made with hazelnuts and cocoa,” he noted. But here was his appraisal:
Interestingly, the generic “hazelnut spread” from Kroger is virtually identical to brand-name Nutella. The taste is indistinguishable – the only difference is that the generic version is less creamy. At a couple bucks less for a 13-ounce jar, the generic version is a great alternative if you need to buy in bulk – say, if you’ve had a bad day, or maybe you’re just homesick.
Under the Archer Farms brand, Target, Minneapolis, MN, offers Vanilla-Cranberry and Cinnamon flavored peanut butters, peanut butter with flax seeds and creamy cashew butter – plus an Almond, Peanut & Cashew blend butter. One blogger, Rosey Rebecca, called that “the greatest thing on sliced bread.” Another, Lisa the Health Nut, gave it four stars: “Overall, it is a rather delicious spread, but I cannot eat this out of the jar with a spoon without something to drink. I think it would be absolutely great on bread with sliced bananas and honey. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have that for lunch…soon!”
Trader Joe’s markets five varieties of almond butter: raw unsalted, creamy and chunky, creamy and chunky with sea salt, and crunchy and salted Almond Butter with Roasted Flaxseeds – that last is billed as offering 360 mg of ALA Omega 3 per serving, or 25% of the recommended daily value. There’s also a Valencia peanut butter with roasted flaxseeds, and labels for the chain’s more conventional peanut butters make a point of the peanuts coming from Valencia.
The specialty nut butter segment seems to be catching on: overall sales jumped 44.4% to $133.2 million for the 52 weeks ended 7/10/2011, according to SymphonyIRI Group, Chicago, IL, and private label sales were up 55.9% to $9.1 million. Plain peanut butter sales in store brands were off 1.9% to $210.4 million, and overall sales also slipped. That might mean that people with peanut allergies are embracing the new segment, or it might just mean that a lot of people are looking for something different.
Fruit butters three: Kroger’s apple, Trader Joe’s mango, Harris Teeter’s pear.
Not seen in store brands, at least not by Private Label, are butters made from macadamia nuts, pecans, pistachios and walnuts mentioned in a Wikipedia entry; likewise spreads made from pumpkin, sesame and sunflower seeds. But, perhaps unknown to the online encyclopedia, Honey & Ginger spread is one of the Taste of Inspirations premium items from Delhaize America, Salisbury, NC; another is a Chocolate Peanut Butter topping.
Although alternatives to peanut butter are often promoted as healthier, that isn’t necessarily the case, according to “Guide to Nuts and Nut Butters” published in the Vegetarian Journal five years ago and cited in the Wikipedia entry. Almond butter, for example, has 101 calories per tablespoon, 2.4 grams of protein and 9.5 grams of fat. For natural peanut butter, the figures are 94, 3.8 and 8; and for reduced fat peanut butter 95, 4 and 6. Unsweetened soy butter has 80 calories, 4 grams of protein and 6.5 grams of fat.
Fruit butters, according to fitday.com, typically have a lot of carbohydrates and some fiber, but little protein. Kroger apple butter contains eight grams of carbs and six of sugar per tablespoon, Trader Joe’s mango butter nine and eight, and Harris Teeter’s pear butter eight and eight. The mango butter is sodium free, while the others contain 10 mg. None have any protein.
In traditional fruit spreads, Wegmans has created a new image for its Red Raspberry and Strawberry organic fruit spreads with the Jammin’ sub-brand, which is in addition to the Food You Feel Good About sub-brand. Kroger favors regional preserves like Oregon Marion Blackberry, and Meijer offers sugar-free seedless blackberry. Wakefern Foods, Keasbey, NJ, is even making a big thing of an imported – from Canada – line of preserves.
What’s a superfruit? Who knows? But an organic superfruit spread is a blend of sour morello cherry, sweet blueberry, tart pomegranate and red and white grape concentrates at Trader Joe’s. Besides being organic, the retailer beams, it has a third less sugar than traditional jams and preserves and is loaded with phytonutrients.
That sort of thing is a far cry from traditional grape jelly, which retailers like Big Y, Springfield, MA, now offer in upside-down squeeze bottles similar to those popularized for ketchup years ago. And for people who want a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Topco Associates, Skokie, IL, has taken out the work, or maybe taken out the fun, with its Food Club PB & Stripes combination.
