America’s favorite condiment isn’t ketchup — it’s peanut butter

Aside from some run-of-the-mill contamination recalls and compensation allegories, peanut butter has been in the news for more interesting reasons recently, after a descendant of PB royalty sparked discourse about the spread (and not just the tired smooth vs. crunchy debate).

Brad Reese, the grandson of — you guessed it — the guy who invented Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, hit out at the brand’s current owner, Hershey, for skimping on ingredients, including replacing peanut butter with “peanut butter crème.” Reese told The Associated Press that the candy was now “not edible,” and described the recipe change as “very devastating.”

Spread on thick

While cutting corners has incensed at least one member of the PB cup dynasty, a new YouGov survey, conducted January 30 to February 1, reflects the strong feelings that many Americans have about the legume-based paste.

Indeed, 44% of US adults reported that they “love” peanut butter and a further 35% said they “like it,” making it the top-rated condiment overall — and, before you say what we’re all thinking, YouGov went out of its way to point out that it defined condiments “broadly” for the purposes of the survey.

The top 5 was rounded out by some other unconventional “condiment” choices, including honey (40% love it) and chocolate sauce (33%). Predictably, hot sauce was the most divisive condiment in the survey, with almost the same share saying they hate it (27%) as love it (28%), even as sales of spicy food continue to soar in the US.

Ketchup, arguably the most ubiquitous table sauce, notched a 75% share of positive responses and was reported as being owned by the greatest share of Americans, at 84%. Not only that, but of the 22% of US adults who say they carry sauces outside the home, 40% said they were packing ketchup; hot sauce, meanwhile, was reportedly packed by far fewer sauce carriers, at just 22% (sorry, Beyoncé).

Whether you believe peanut butter qualifies as a condiment or not, the 17% of condiment-carrying Americans that are nuts enough about the spread to take it with them on the go — equivalent to about 4% of US adults overall — likely won’t care.