Research
Macro partitioning
Consumption of peanut butter is only weakly associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease compared to whole nuts.
While whole nuts are strongly linked to heart health, peanut butter shows a much weaker association. This may be due to added hydrogenated fats in commercial brands. Choosing whole nuts or natural peanut butter without hydrogenated fats is likely more beneficial.
GoodQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Consumption of peanut butter was only weakly associated with risk of coronary heart disease (multivariate relative risk comparing women consuming peanut butter >5 times per week with those who rarely consumed peanut butter was 0.92 (0.74 to 1.15), P for trend = 0.94).
Why this rating
Same cohort study, specific analysis of peanut butter.
Source
Frequent nut consumption and risk of coronary heart disease in women: prospective cohort study
F. B Hu et al. · BMJ · 1998
DOI 10.1136/bmj.317.7169.1341
cohort · n=86016Cited 599×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Frequent consumption of nuts (defined as >5 units/week, where 1 unit = 1 oz) is associated with a significantly reduced risk of total coronary heart disease, fatal coronary heart disease, and non-fatal myocardial infarction in women.Good
- The protective association between frequent nut consumption and reduced coronary heart disease risk persists after adjusting for other dietary factors such as saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, trans fat, fiber, vegetables, and fruits.Good
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