Viral TikTok Has The Internet Questioning Canada's Peanut Butter
Peanut butter is one of America's favorite snack items and sandwich spreads.
According to the National Peanut Board, peanuts are the most consumed nut by Americans (which is especially impressive when you consider that peanuts aren't really nuts). Whether we eat them from the shell or spread them on our toast, we eat huge quantities. The total amount of peanut butter eaten in the United States in a year can supposedly coat the entire floor of the Grand Canyon. The National Peanut Board also reports that a typical adult has peanut butter and jelly three times a month.
Although Americans love their peanut butter, in other parts of the world, it seems to be a completely different picture. BuzzFeed reported in 2014 that the average European ate less than one tablespoon of this delicious stuff a year. Even the way peanut butter is presented appears to differ in other places.
Although there's a real debate over whether creamy or crunchy peanut butter is better (via HuffPost), most Americas can probably agree on how peanut butter is packaged: in a jar. However, a viral TikTok purports to show peanut butter being packaged and sold in a vastly different way in Canada.
Peanut butter in a flat package?
TikTok user @Foodies posted a video showing peanut butter packaged flat in a styrofoam container, covered in plastic wrap. The packaging resembled the way meat and fish are commonly sold in supermarkets – only, the product inside was clearly peanut butter. @Foodies says that Canadians buy their peanut butter this way, adding that you can break off a piece of peanut butter, place it on your bread, and the peanut butter melts onto the bread. "It's perfect," they insist before saying that if you're buying your peanut butter any other way you're wrong.
The alleged revelation created mixed feelings in one viewer, who responded, "I do not know how I feel about this." One commenter simply responded with a succinct "bro what." A common reaction was skepticism. "I live in Canada and this is 100% not true," wrote a user. Someone else said, "I want to think this is a joke," and another suspected that many folks were "missing the hum[o]r." Indeed, it looks TikToker may have laughed all the way to viral status.
USA Today notes that the claim has popped up in other places, like Facebook. However, a fact check appears to debunk the assertion that Canadian peanut butter is sold in flat packages. Multiple commenters on both TikTok and Facebook claimed to live in Canada and denied ever seeing such packaging for peanut butter. But that doesn't mean the photo is a total hoax.
Peanut butter in flat packs does exist
Though it seems that Canadians buy their peanut butter in jars, there is one place where peanut butter is apparently sold flat in styrofoam containers. Per USA Today, Lead Stories, a fact-checking site, reports that while the photo is real, it comes from an unnamed shop in Trinidad and Tobago.
The site explains that nowadays, this is not the way peanut butter is normally packaged and sold in Trinidad and Tobago. But it used to be sold by weight and packed in a "grease-proof paper wrapper."
The photo, according to Lead Stories, can be traced back to the Facebook page of Dane Moses Greaves, a person claiming to be from Trinidad and Tobago. In the original caption, Greaves says that a friend told them that a grocery store in Trinidad was selling loose peanut butter. Greaves went to check it out and took a photo of the questionable item for evidence. The picture went viral, although it originally had nothing to do with Canada.