A Peanut Butter You've Never Heard Of Beat Skippy, Jif, and Justin's

We graded every nut butter in our database, and the winner isn't a household name — it's Crazy Richard's Creamy Natural Peanut Butter, whose entire ingredient list is one word: peanuts. It beat Skippy, Justin's, and the store brands not by doing more, but by adding nothing. Skippy — the jar most people picture when they hear "peanut butter" — came last, because it takes the same nut and adds sugar and palm oil. The lesson of the whole category fits on one line: in peanut butter, the shortest label wins.

The verdict, and the receipts

This isn't a hot take — it's what falls out of the data when you score every jar on the same six dimensions (protein, ingredients, added sugar, sodium, saturated fat, fiber) and rank them. Here is the full list, pulled live from the same grades that power the nut & seed butter report card, so it can't drift from what we actually scored:

1. Crazy Richard's Creamy Natural Peanut Butter — Labelgrade A- (86/100) winner
   one ingredient — just the nut, nothing added
2. Justin's Classic Almond Butter — Labelgrade B+ (84/100)
   2 ingredients — adds palm oil
3. 365 Everyday Value Organic Creamy Peanut Butter — Labelgrade B+ (81/100)
   one ingredient — just the nut, nothing added
4. MaraNatha Creamy Almond Butter — Labelgrade B (79/100)
   4 ingredients — adds added sugar + palm oil
5. Justin's Classic Peanut Butter — Labelgrade B (77/100)
   2 ingredients — adds palm oil
6. Peanut Butter & Co. Smooth Operator Creamy Peanut Butter — Labelgrade B- (74/100)
   4 ingredients — adds added sugar + palm oil
7. Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter — Labelgrade B- (72/100) last place
   4 ingredients — adds added sugar + palm oil

Grades from USDA FoodData Central nutrition data, scored on the Labelgrade methodology. Ranking and hooks are generated from the live product records, not hand-typed — when a jar is reformulated, this list updates with it.

What the winner did differently: nothing

Turn Crazy Richard's's jar over and the ingredient line is a single word — peanuts. No sugar, no palm oil, no salt, no stabilizers; nothing the peanuts didn't bring themselves. That's the entire story of why it lands an A- (86/100) and tops the category. A clean label isn't an aesthetic here — it shows up directly in the numbers:

• 0 mg sodium. Conventional jars add salt; this one doesn't, so it earns a perfect score on the sodium dimension. Over a daily habit, that's a real difference.
• No added sugar. The 2 g of sugars per serving are the peanuts' own — there's no cane syrup or sugar in the recipe to push the sugar load up.
• The most protein in the set. Because the jar isn't diluted with oil and sweetener, you get a little more peanut — and therefore a little more protein — per spoonful than a spread that's part palm oil and sugar.

The one honest knock is saturated fat, which keeps it at an A- rather than a straight A — but that's a property of peanuts themselves (they naturally carry a couple of grams), not a recipe flaw. There is nothing on the ingredient line to apologize for. If your only question is "which peanut butter has the least added to it," this is the answer.

Why Skippy lost — and why it's still fine

Skippy's ingredient list explains its B- (72/100) in four words: roasted peanuts, sugar, palm oil, salt. The peanuts still do the heavy lifting — protein density holds up fine — but every add-in quietly costs a dimension. The sugar gets scored as added rather than natural. The palm oil stacks onto the peanuts' own saturated fat, which becomes the weakest mark on the jar. The salt puts sodium where a clean jar reads zero. None of those are alarming on their own; together, they're the gap between an A and a B-.

Here's the part the David-vs-Goliath framing can obscure, so let's be plain about it: a B- is not a bad grade, and Skippy is not bad for you. In our system a B- means "fine in moderation," not "avoid." Skippy is still real peanuts, still a legitimate source of protein and mostly-unsaturated fat, and still a perfectly reasonable thing to put on toast. The sugar, palm oil, and salt aren't there by accident or neglect — they're what make it sweet, smooth, and no-stir straight from the pantry, which is exactly what a lot of people want. That convenience is a genuine preference, not a moral failing. The honest critique isn't of the peanuts or the people who buy it; it's that the front of the jar sells "peanut butter" while the back of the jar is doing three extra things the winner simply doesn't need to do.

And notice the pattern in the middle of the list: the jars that creep up the ranking are the ones that stop adding things. Justin's Classic Almond Butter and the store-brand organic jar climb precisely because they drop the sugar and the salt. It's the same lesson from the other direction.

The practical takeaway: read the label, then learn to love the stir

You don't need our grades to win this one in the aisle — you need the back of the jar. The healthiest peanut butter is the one with the fewest things in it, ideally just "peanuts" (an "and salt" is a minor footnote). Skip the front-of-pack health halo; the ingredient list is where the truth is.

The one thing that scares people off natural peanut butter is the layer of oil on top — and that layer is the feature, not a defect. With no palm oil or stabilizer in the jar, the natural peanut oil rises to the top. Stir it back in (store the jar upside down for a day first and it mixes easier), then keep it in the fridge. Do not pour the oil off — it's the healthy unsaturated fat you paid for, and tipping it out just leaves a dry spread. A jar that separates is simply a jar with nothing extra holding it together. That's the whole trade: thirty seconds of stirring in exchange for the cleanest label on the shelf.

Want the full breakdown of every jar, dimension by dimension? The nut & seed butter report card grades the whole category A–F, and the methodology page shows exactly how the six scores combine. Or read the two ends of the spectrum side by side: the one-ingredient winner and the supermarket standard it beat.