THE BORN LESAR

Reduced-fat peanut butter? Really, what's the point?

The Israelis and Palestinians are blowing each other up again, the Republicans and Democrats can't decide if the Jan. 6 events at the Capitol were a riot or a church picnic, last I heard, Aaron Rodgers thinks he may want to take his football and go home even though he signed a binding contract worth more than 100 times the combined gross salaries of the entire 1967 Green Bay Packer Super Bowl champion team, and I'm stuck with a full jar of low-fat peanut butter. Just what is this world coming to?

Yeah, that's right, I said low-fat peanut butter, which you might not think is a problem on par with the others I just mentioned, but then, apparently, you haven't tasted it. I did, accidentally, and I must say, the GreatValue brand blackberry jam I spread over it was embarrassed to be on the same slice of toast. At least that's why I think a good bit of it slid onto my white T-shirt. At least it missed the spaghetti sauce glob.

Now lest you think I've reversed 58-plus years of artery-bustin' eating habits and begun buying more healthful products at the grocery store, let me say, Huh? Peanut butter was on my most recent shopping list, 'cuz I usually spoon enough of it into my gullet every two weeks to choke a giraffe (can you imagine how tough it'd be to swallow it with that long esophagus?), so I grabbed a jar of Jif on my swing through the appropriate aisle. It was right there where it always is -- belly-button height, just left of the Skippys -- so I chucked it into my cart and moved on with life. I'm kinda like that, ya know, don't let no big decisions slow me down (although I have been timed taking up to 12 minutes deciding on a Pop-Tart flavor).

At home one day last week, I carefully scraped the last deposits of PB out of my old jar and painted it over a few Whole Grain Ritz for a quick snack. Thinking I needed just a few more, I cracked open the new Jif jar, peeled back the safety seal, and dug my knife down deep. A big dollop I took, slathered it on another cracker, and EEeeewwwwww. I haven't put anything that nasty on my tongue since that moldy piece of black forest ham from the back of my fridge, and that was on a dare. Well, OK, it was a double dare. A real man cannot walk away from that.

At first I thought maybe I had just gotten a bad jar, maybe the freshness seal had been broken during shipping, but then I picked up the plastic bottle for a look-see. There it was, in bright letters, right over the big brand name, the dreaded 'reduced fat' label, which I had carelessly missed while in the store, perhaps while I was miffed because the SPAM supply was gone. I mean, c'mon. If you can't keep the salt-saturated canned pig parts in stock, what's the point?

It's hard to describe how the reduced fat Jif tastes, perhaps because I've never sucked on toxic-waste infused wet cardboard before. For whatever reason, it has a gritty texture, like the good folks in the Jif research and development lab figured that the fat could be replaced with beach sand. It's sort of like getting into what you think is a Porsche, but when you step on the gas, you find it has a 4-cylinder Ford Pinto motor in it. Or tapping a shapely lady on the shoulder from behind to ask her on a date, but when she turns around you find it's your first cousin.

Even worse when she says 'Sure.'

I compared the labels of the 'regular' peanut butter with the 'unedible poison' version. Turns out my normal Jif has 16 grams of fat per 2-tablespoon serving, while the reduced fat version has just 12. Hmm. Only 25 percent less, in theory, yet the flavor reading drops from a 9.1 (a medium well ribeye is a 9.25) to like a 2.1 (blanched caulifl ower is a 1.8).

The label also informs me that this product has less than 2 percent salt, fully hydroxenated vegetable oils, molasses and ferric orthophosphate (that one's OK, I get mine from Gummy Bears). Somewhere in there they forgot to mention that Reduced Fat Jif also has less than 2 percent of anything a normal human being with functioning taste buds would want to eat. Truth in labelling, my arse.

Wanting to know more (not really, but having time to kill), I went online. On Jif's web site, it has what it calls 'reviews,' which I believe are what its marketing department concocts between coffee breaks. The one review -- ostensibly written by a real live customer who lived to tell about eating this crud on a cracker -- says, 'It tastes like heaven.'

Wow, I want to go back and tell my gradeschool catechism teachers, 'Heaven tastes like gritty garden slug excrement.' Who knew?

Another review says, 'A slightly different taste and texture from regular creamy Jif, but after a few sandwiches (and a spoonful or two), we quickly got used to it and love it now.' Turns out the same family once wrote to Serta, 'At first we thought our new bed of sharpened nails wasn't quite as soft as your cushy pillow top brand, but after our deep flesh wounds healed and the infection cleared up, we're sleeping almost 3 minutes a night now.' Yeah, no, I didn't actually see that letter, just a hunch. I like this next guy. 'As a loyal Jif buyer, I was disappointed with the texture and taste of this spread. Peanuts are high in fat (not a bad thing) and if you take the fat out of a peanut what do you get? Probably something like this product. The grainy weird taste of this spread is not worth the health benefit, if there is even any. Just get regular peanut butter.'

Amen.

This one, though, is my favorite.

'This product is good. I'm personally not a fan of butter, but I put this on my dog's toy when he was teething and he absolutely loved it. It's great when you want to distract somone for a long time and I heard it's good with cookies, as well.'

Gotta love a guy who calls his dog 'someone.' I'm thinkin' he's single.

Of course, after all this, I do realize it's my own dang fault. Had I not hurried through the store and just checked the label, I wouldn't be stuck with 40 ounces of peanut-colored ooze.

Truth is, though, I'm more worried about the other product I grabbed without careful scrutiny. But 'cmon, really, how bad can a tube of Jalapeno/ Tobasco-Infused Preparation H really be?