Why would you want sugar with your peanut butter you might ask? Well, just look at the label of your peanut butter and if it is a commercially produced peanut butter, you may well find it contains added sugar AND salt AND EVEN added saturated fats.  One wonders why on earth such a healthy food needs these extra ingredients added, to then make it a not so healthy food. Carefully read the labels of any peanut butter you intend purchasing. Or better still purchase from your local health food shop. We make our own peanut butter, using fresh peanuts with no added salt, sugar, or oil.

In fact, you can buy the peanut butter already decanted into a container or you can bring your own jar to save on waste or buy a jar from us.

This ‘dry ground’ nut butter provides all the benefits of the nuts, without those extra unnecessary, unhealthy ingredients. Did you know that the peanut belongs to the same botanical family as peas and beans making it technically a legume rather than a nut? However, the nutritional composition of the peanut is much closer to that of true nuts than to peas or beans.

Peanuts and peanut butter are whole foods packing a whole lot of nutrition into just one serving. This nut, sorry legume is an important source of zinc, copper, selenium, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, and iron. Some of the difficult to find minerals, such as copper and magnesium may protect against coronary disease. They are also quite high in B vitamins such as folate. Peanuts and peanut butter also contain high quality plant protein. This is especially important for children, vegetarians and people who are choosing to have less meat in their diet. It also contains mostly beneficial monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats. These fats as compared to saturated fats have been shown to help lower cholesterol.

Below is a fantastic peanut butter protein ball which is perfect as a mid afternoon snack for both adults and children. Instead of grabbing for a high fat, high calorie sweet treat, try one of these healthy alternatives which I can assure you will taste better with the benefit of many nutrients. It will give you just the boost you need to get through to dinner. The recipe is so simple, why not get the kids involved in making this treat. It will be a sure way to encourage them to eat these healthy treats.

The Whey Protein Isolate powder available from our store, is the perfect way to obtain a concentrated form of protein, so necessary in our diets. Peanut Butter of course has all the nutrients I have mentioned above, Coconut Syrup is a great sugar alternative (very low GI) suitable for diabetics, which means it will give you a slow release of energy rather than the quick boost and subsequent crash which most sugars with high GI will give you. Hemp Seeds are a great source of fibre as well as Omega 3. Cacao Powder and Cacao Nibs are the chocolate superfood being unadulterated raw unprocessed chocolate so high in antioxidants and so so yummee!!

PEANUT BUTTER PROTEIN BALL

Ingredients:

1 cup Whey Protein Isolate Powder, 1 cup Natural Peanut Butter, ½ cup Niulife Coconut Syrup, ¼ cup Hemp Seeds Australia Organic Hemp Seeds, 1/3 cup dried Cranberries, 1 dessertspoon Organic Road Raw Cacao Powder, ¼ cup Loving Earth Cacao Nibs, 1 cup Organic Road Shredded Coconut.

Method:

Mix all the ingredients excluding the coconut and roll into balls. Then roll balls in shredded coconut until coated and refrigerate until firm.

PURE UNADULTERATED HONEY – BUY LOCAL

Whilst I’m on my soap box about tampering with good nutritious food, I’m sure like me you would be appalled to know just how much adulterated honey there is on the market. I guess the question then arises, how do we avoid buying this ‘fake’ honey. The obvious answer for me is to buy local wherever possible. We are blessed to live in an area where we have local apiarists and at Go Vita our honey is sourced locally.

Once again, our local honey can be purchased pre-packaged in jars, or you can dispense the honey into your own jar from the honey drum set up in store.

Dispensing your honey from the bulk drum or making your own peanut butter, means you save money as the peanut butter and honey will be cheaper. Of course, the other big saving is on the environment – yes there’s less packaging when you bring your own container.