What a nut butter is, and the ten percent rule

How the regulation is written

It describes a food prepared by grinding shelled, roasted peanuts, to which optional seasoning and stabilizing ingredients may be added provided they do not in the aggregate exceed 10 percent of the weight of the finished food. That is the whole mechanism, and the widely quoted "at least 90 percent peanuts" is its arithmetic consequence rather than its wording.

What it rules out

Artificial flavorings, artificial sweeteners, chemical preservatives and color additives are named as not suitable ingredients in peanut butter. The fat content of the finished food is capped at 55 percent. Stabilizing oils, where used, are hydrogenated vegetable oils, which is the regulation naming the thing that stops separation.

Why that cap governs the texture

Everything you might add competes for the same 10 percent: salt, sugar, and the stabilizer. A maker who wants a sweeter product and a stable one is spending the same allowance twice, and a maker who adds nothing at all gets a product that separates. The texture in the jar is a direct consequence of a number in the regulation.

Everything else is a descriptive name

Almond butter, cashew butter, sunflower seed butter and the rest have no standard of identity, so you name them for what they are and the general labeling rules apply. The freedom is real and it removes the one external check a peanut butter maker is handed.

Deliberately outside is a legitimate position

A peanut spread with more than 10 percent of other things in it is a fine product that may not be called peanut butter. Choosing that is reasonable; drifting into it without noticing is how a label becomes wrong.

References