Peanut butter is beloved. It’s tasty. It’s versatile. It’s also bafflingly boring, given how far we’ve come in food tech and food science. 

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across a product that had me doing a double take. Aussie brand Bega had just launched the country’s first whipped peanut butter, an aerated version of the world’s most popular nut butter, that is said to be light and fluffy with a mousse-like texture. I didn’t know you could even do that to peanut butter!

This product is said to be the answer to a couple of peanut butter’s biggest issues:

A whipped peanut butter product in 2025 shouldn't feel groundbreaking, but here we are.

This product isn’t some wild molecular gastronomy trick, but it stood out for me because nobody seems to have thought of doing this. Not recently anyway, and not without adding cream, sugar, or turning it into frosting (gotta love those home chefs for keepin’ it 💯!). 

Honestly, why’d it take so long?

The idea might sound niche, but it immediately reminded me of something else: there’s a lot of love out there for a good whipped experience (hey, no judgement here, you do you).

A few months ago, our head honcho Ugo came across a whipped honey range from French company Panacea Paris. Firstly, they are bloody gorgeous! Take a gander:

Each jar had whipped honey infused with functional ingredients spirulina, dragonfruit, turmeric, matcha, ginger, and so on. And the texture was more in line with a spread rather than the flowing syrup we’re used to.

It felt forward-thinking, like the kind of innovation we expect from brands responding to modern consumers who want their food to be as photogenic as they are (and healthy, of course). So why the heck has peanut butter – more or less a global staple now – been so slow to evolve beyond creamy and crunchy? Even the height of flavor innovation in this category has been honey or chocolate. 

I mean, even Nutella’s first flavor innovation in 61 years, as they helpfully remind us, is a peanut variant set to launch in 2026 in the US. I’m not sure that’s the flex they think it is, but then they also have US$3 trillion dollars lying around to buy Kellogg, so my opinion here is worth, umm, peanuts.

Because we took a bit of a break last month, I had enough time to follow this rabbit down its hole. I discovered that whipped peanut butter very much used to exist, and till not too long ago as well. 

US brands Peter Pan and Jif both had versions back in the last millennium that were available till about a few years ago. I even found a vintage ad on YouTube. There have also been a few Canadian brands. But all of these products have been discontinued and I haven’t been able to find out why. I’m not the only one who’s scratching their head over this decision. If these Reddit threads and message boards are anything to go by, people are mourning the whip. 

In a market that’s increasingly health-conscious, visually driven, and constantly craving novelty, this is starting to feel like a massive missed opportunity.

Given all the enthusiasm swirling around peanut butter, I went digging to see what kinds of formats people are experimenting with. From home cooks to amateur tinkerers to full-blown professionals, everyone seems to have their own way of reinventing peanut butter. We just haven’t yet seen many of these ideas turning up on shelves yet.

As I rooted around, I came across a few ideas that felt genuinely fresh and not just novelty for novelty’s sake. Sure, some were buried in obscure subreddits or personal blog posts, but they had that unmistakable “this could actually work” vibe, even though they are basically versions of “some dude on the internet swears by it”.

Here are the top 3 directions I think peanut butter could (and should) go, each one rooted in today’s biggest food and beverage trends.

Let’s talk gut health, because at this point, what F&B category isn’t trying to get a piece of that biome-boosting action? Peanut butter’s a natural candidate for a gut-friendly makeover. You can take the easy route and stir in some probiotic cultures or prebiotic fibers (additional, since nuts anyway have a fair bit of fiber) for that digestive health halo. Job done, trend ticked.

If you’re feeling extra (and let’s face it, someone always is), you could ferment raw peanuts in a 2% brine, let the lacto-fermentation do its thing for a few days, then dry and grind the nuts into a paste. The result? A funky, yeasty, umami-rich flavor that would slap across everything from toast to noodles.

Still not satisfied? Sprout the peanuts before you ferment them.

Sprouting and fermenting legumes can dramatically boost nutritional value and digestibility. Sprouting increases B vitamins like riboflavin and niacin, while fermentation helps break down complex compounds, making nutrients easier to absorb. Both also reduce anti-nutritional factors like phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors, which typically get in the way of mineral absorption.

Emotional and mental wellbeing are top priorities for today’s functional food seekers, and adaptogens are becoming the go-to ingredients for this. These mostly natural herbs (like  ginseng, ashwagandha, Schisandra, and rhodiola) are believed to help the body resist stress and restore balance. 

Mainstream science is still some way from a full endorsement, but a growing body of research points to benefits like anti-fatigue, mood support, cognitive boost, and reduced stress, with molecular mechanisms to back it up.

Even more compelling: peanuts themselves carry polyphenols that could support cognition and mood via the gut microbiome. A University of Barcelona study (funded by The Peanut Institute) found that daily peanut or peanut butter intake may improve memory and lower stress markers in healthy adults, likely through polyphenol-driven gut-brain pathways. 

So why not add adaptogens to peanut butter for an enhanced effect? Adaptogen-enriched, polyphenol-rich peanut butter could ride two big wellness waves – mental clarity and gut-brain health.

There’s significant scope to use other ingredients as well, including the whole range of adaptogenic mushrooms that have found their way into a host of categories.

Today’s consumers are adventurous eaters with scroll-fatigued palates. They’ve grown up exposed to a smorgasbord of global cuisines, flavor pairings, and culinary mashups. And they’re always hungry for more. Flavor expectations now go way beyond the basics.

We’ve seen the rise of “swicy” (sweet + spicy) flavors, the growing love for fusion cuisines, and an obsession with bold textures and punchy profiles. But peanut butter shelves are still playing it painfully safe. Consumers today want heat, tang, umami, textural treats.

So, there’s a real white space here for flavor-forward peanut butters that lean into savory, spicy, or even fermented directions. Maybe gochujang, miso, Sichuan chili crunch, mulagapodi (gunpowder spice), tamarind-date all have space on those shelves now. 

Even among the peanut butter brands already leaning “gourmet,” truly inventive flavor combinations are rare. They’re mostly focused on organic and clean label. This is a category just begging for flavor reinvention, especially when we’ve seen how wildly popular chili crisp, fermented condiments, and globally inspired sauces have become.

Here are a few examples of less common flavors that I could dig up, and it wasn’t easy finding them, let me tell you.

I’m not getting into it in great detail, but let’s not forget the power of mouthfeel. As Tate & Lyle’s Future of Mouthfeel report points out, texture is now a strategic lever in product development, especially for healthier categories where indulgence can’t be sacrificed. Peanut butter is perfectly placed to play in this space. Done right, texture could be the difference between just another jar and a category-defining product.

With these ideas, we’ve just scratched the surface of what’s possible in the peanut butter aisle. There are so many more innovative options and I’m not going to get into every one of them in this level of detail, but here’s distilled down list of possibilities.

At this point, peanut butter doesn’t have a popularity problem. As far as I can tell, it has an imagination problem. Consumers are primed for something new: flavors they’ve never seen, textures they didn’t know were possible, formats that fit their lifestyles. It’s time to jazz up this spread. 

And the numbers seem primed to play this out too!

So, let’s check out the size of this opportunity.

The US is the largest per capita consumer of peanut butter. Based on USDA and US Census Bureau data, Americans gorged on some 4.4 pounds (about 2 kg) of peanut butter per person in 2023. The National Peanut Board estimates that around 90% of US households consume peanut butter regularly, with Millennials and Gen Z leading consumption.

The US is followed by Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and Germany in per capita consumption of peanut butter.  

But total consumption of peanut butter tells a slightly different story. Even though peanut butter is not the childhood staple it is in North America, the largest consumers of peanut butter/meal are in fact China and India. China, India, and Nigeria together account for more than half the world’s peanut production, so that tracks. But a significant share of what they consume is ground peanuts (peanut meal), which is a main ingredient in peanut-based snacks, including peanut butter.

In China, where peanuts are deeply rooted in the cuisine, peanut butter is transitioning from niche import to a high-protein, wellness-friendly, local snack, particularly among younger consumers. 

China alone accounts for 37% of the world’s peanut production, and consumes a fair share in total. But per capita consumption is still probably very low. 

Traditional Chinese peanut butter is often made with a coarser texture using crushed roasted peanuts, giving it a distinct nutty taste and a chunky consistency. It’s a common ingredient in sauces and dips.  

India too has seen a surge in peanut butter adoption, but only over the past decade. The category was worth around US$66 million in 2017, according to The India Watch.  By 2024, the market had reached US$157 million and was expected to hit US$293 million by 2033.

A significant part of this growth can be linked to peanut butter getting a rebrand as a fitness food. On-pack messaging focuses on protein and nutrition content, positioning it as a natural source of energy, good fats, and gym gains. 

Even France, which has not ever really seen what the fuss is over beurre de cacahuète, has emerged as a top importer of the spread. In 2022, the country imported US$148.21 million worth of PB, around 9.8% of the total import value that year.

Given this growing interest in peanut butter, the size of the global market is projected to grow from US$5.1 billion in 2022 to US$8.6 billion by 2032. Not exactly peanuts.

Despite the growing popularity, crunchy and creamy variants dominate the segment. As more global consumers come into the fold and start to make peanut butter their own, you can bet your bottom dollar that the category is going to see some major shakeups.

So yes, peanut butter is everywhere. Sales are growing, habits are changing, and new audiences are coming into the fold. But while other categories have used this kind of momentum to reinvent themselves, peanut butter has mostly stayed in its comfort zone. The jars are moving. But the ideas inside them? Not so much, and that’s where the next potential lies.

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