The Story Of Peanut Butter:

The following is just one story I found interesting.

Peanut butter is one of the most favorite and versatile foods found on supermarket shelves today. Whether it's used in a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a basic peanut butter on bread sandwich, between crackers, in pies, puddings, cookies or other desserts, as a spread, or straight from the spoon, Americans have a long lasting love affair with peanut butter. Amazingly, peanut butter is a fairly modern invention.

Peanuts have long been used to supplement human diet in many corners of the world. Chinese cooks have added crushed peanuts to flavor sauces for hundreds of years while Africans traditionally added ground peanuts to stews for flavoring and thickening. During the Civil War, peanuts (called goober peas in the South) were made into a thick concoction called "peanut porridge". In the 1880's,a St. Louis doctor developed what he called "peanut paste" and recommended it to patients who had difficulty chewing. Another doctor, Dr. Harvey Kellogg, also experimented with what he called "nut meal" or "peanut meal" in his quest for healthier foods. His "peanut meal" was close to what we know as peanut butter but since he steamed the nuts instead of roasting them, the flavor was mild. He abandoned his experimentation with "nut meal" to pursue another interest - breakfast cereal and the Kellogg company was created.

The first peanut butter debuted at the St. Louis World Fair in 1904 when a concession vendor named C.H. Sumner sold the first peanut butter. Crowds raved about the taste and Sumner sold more than $700 worth of peanut butter, equivalent to a year's wages or more.

Peanut butter continued to improve and to grow in popularity. In 1980 the Krema Company of Columbus, Ohio began marketing peanut butter but sold the product only within the state of Ohio for freshness reasons. 

Source: associatedcontent.com