Nut Butters & Spreads

Mostly taste, texture and price. Peanut is the strongest flavoured and by far the cheapest, because peanuts are a legume and grown at scale. Almond is drier and grainier with a cleaner, slightly bitter finish. Cashew is the mildest and naturally the sweetest, which is why it is usually the one children accept first. Hazelnut is the richest and the dearest, and on its own it tastes nothing like a chocolate hazelnut spread.

If you are buying your first jar of something other than peanut, cashew is the easiest swap and almond is the most useful in baking.

Peanut butter, of the common ones. Peanuts carry noticeably more protein than almonds, cashews, hazelnuts or macadamias, and a peanut butter made from 100% peanuts has nothing diluting it. Seed blends with hemp in them also sit at the higher end.

Macadamia is the lowest in protein and the highest in fat, which is what makes it taste the way it does. The panel on the jar carries the exact figure for the one you are looking at.

Ideally the nut, and nothing else. A good jar reads "100% peanuts" or "100% almonds", or adds salt and stops there.

The three things worth looking for on the back of a supermarket jar are palm oil, added sugar and an emulsifier. Palm oil and emulsifiers are there to stop the oil separating, and sugar is there to cover a cheap roast. None of them is in the jar for your benefit. Most of what we stock is single-ingredient, and the exceptions are the flavoured butters and sweet spreads, which say so on the front.

A nut butter is ground nuts. A spread or cream is a confection with nuts in it, usually 30% or so, plus sugar and often milk solids and cocoa.

Both have their place, but they are not interchangeable. The pistachio creams and the coconut chocolate spread on this page are the sweet end and are meant to be treated as such. The 100% jars are the everyday ones.

Only for texture. Crunchy is the same butter with chopped nuts stirred back through it, so the ingredients and the nutrition are effectively the same.

Smooth is easier for baking, smoothies, satay sauces and small children. Crunchy is better on toast and in sandwiches. If you are buying a 2kg or 4kg pail for a household, smooth is the safer choice because it does everything.

Two things. The hulled organic tahini is 100% sesame seeds, and the coconut chocolate spread is cacao, coconut nectar and coconut milk. Neither contains nuts.

Read the allergen line before you buy either, though. The Forty Thieves tahini is ground in a facility that also handles peanuts, tree nuts, sesame and soy, so it is not suitable for anyone with a diagnosed nut allergy, and it is not the right thing to send to a nut-aware school. If you are managing a genuine allergy, talk to us or to your child's allergy nurse rather than going off the front of the jar.

Smooth nut butter thinned into food, not off a spoon. A spoonful of thick nut butter is a choking risk for a baby or a toddler, so it is stirred through yoghurt, porridge or puree until it is loose, and never given on its own.

Current New Zealand advice is that common allergens are introduced early rather than delayed, usually from around six months alongside other solids, and cashew or peanut smooth are the usual starting points because they are mild. If there is eczema, an existing food allergy or a strong family history, check with your Well Child provider, GP or practice nurse first.

Any of the 100% nut jars, because there is no sugar in them at all. Peanut, almond, cashew, hazelnut and the plain tahini are single ingredient.

The keto butters are the other option: they are sweetened without cane sugar and are made for low-carb eating. At the other end, the flavoured butters, the pistachio creams and the coconut chocolate spread all contain sugar of one kind or another, so check the panel if that is the deciding factor.