Jam’s brown bread as peanut butter spreads

PEANUT butter is on course to overtake jam as Britain’s favourite breakfast spread after a backlash against sugary foods, figures show.

Sales of the spread were up by nearly a fifth last year and are expected to break through the £100 million barrier this year, after a number of “healthy” upmarket versions were introduced.

Supermarket data collected by Kantar Worldpanel showed that jams, which typically contain around 10g of sugar per tablespoon and are likely to be affected by Public Health England’s sugar reduction plan, were the only spreads that recorded a fall in sales last year, down 2.9 per cent to £106million. Peanut butter sales leapt by 17 per cent to almost £94 million, meaning they will eclipse jam if the trends continue.

Meanwhile, marmalade sales rose by 2.9 per cent to £54.5million.

Peanut butter is poised to overtake marmalade and other preserves to become the toast of the British toast-rack at breakfast time. It is quite surprising peanut butter proves so fashionable, since its most famous fan, Elvis Presley, died at the age of 42 after heroic midnight assaults on peanut butter and banana sandwiches fried in bacon fat. Perhaps for the British consumer, as for Elvis, the spread embodies the comfort of childhood that the bitter tang of adult marmalade challenges. It is as though the world were divided into the bland, safe side of fish fingers and peas versus the dangerous, acquired taste of kedgeree or bubble and squeak. After the pabulum of peanut butter the rising generation may expect a trigger warning to be printed on the label of the Seville marmalade, lest bitter early memories be reawakened.