Great Value Peanut Butter Vs Jif Peanut Butter: Is It Worth Paying More For A Brand Name?

With skyrocketing food prices showing no signs of coming back down to earth anytime soon, choosing the wisest way to spend your grocery dollars often means choosing store label items over national brands, especially for pantry staples like peanut butter where quantity can outweigh quality. The untold truth about peanut butter is that it's a combination of simple ingredients that can ring up at unreasonable prices. When choosing a higher dollar brand of peanut butter like Jif over the more affordable Walmart brand Great Value peanut butter, the question arises: Is there a notable difference in quality that makes spending more for the better known version an advisable move?

The only way to get to the bottom of the sticky situation is to put both Jif and Great Value peanut butter side-by-side and do a comparison of the most important aspects of each product. Whatever it is you consider when you look for the best and worst brands of peanut butter to buy, price is an undeniable attractor. I picked up both and headed into the kitchen for a tasty bit of food investigation to see if spending more for peanut butter gets you your money's worth or if you're better off sticking with the less-expensive signature brand. From nutrition to taste and texture to differences in using each peanut butter in simple homemade recipes, I put these two stalwart spreads to the test.

Great Value sticks to a standard set-up with its ingredients, providing a formulation similar to most other peanut butter brands that aren't specifically organic or all-natural. Keeping in alignment with the competitors on the shelf is a smart move by Walmart's food scientists. The rundown is standard for the food in the jar: peanuts, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oils, salt, molasses. There's nothing special that adds flavor or nutrition here, and aside from the hydrogenated oils, it's a straightforward combination of recognizable items you likely have in your pantry.

Jif's not-so-secret recipe is almost identical to Great Value: roasted peanuts, sugar, molasses, hydrogenated oils, mono- and diglycerides, and salt. Using roasted peanuts is bound to alter the flavor a bit, and the emulsifying glycerides are on hand to thicken the butter. The order of the ingredients signals a different concentration of each, though not necessarily enough to make a difference.

When examining the ingredients, Jif and Great Value are neck-and-neck. As a bonus, having such similar recipes means that your best practices for getting the most for your money before your peanut butter go bad are the same. Neither has any touchy perishable add-ins that require specialized storage, an aspect that could justify the higher Jif price if gourmet elements were in play.

You can expect a decent protein quotient from both Great Value and Jif, thanks to the high-protein nature of peanuts, though it comes with a fair amount of fat as well. Both brands offer 7 grams of protein in a 2-tablespoon serving; Jif's carries 16 grams of fat with it, while Great Value only includes 15 grams. The difference between Jif's 3.5 grams of saturated fat ring up at 17% of your daily recommended allowance, while Great Value's 3 grams takes that down to 15%. It may not seem like much, but for anyone counting their saturated fat intake, it can be a peanut butter tie-breaker.

Contrasting the fat content, Jif only includes 3 grams of sugar in its recipe, while Great Value includes 4 grams. Jif's sodium is a bit higher at 140 milligrams when compared to Great Value's 120 milligrams. Both brands bring in the cholesterol count at zero and provide 2 grams of fiber per serving. There's not much in it when it comes to the nutritional content, so whichever brand you opt for, you'll have the freedom to test the boundaries of the butter without running nutrition off the road.

Though it appears like a solid paste when you crack the lid, Jif becomes much silkier once you get it out of the jar and onto the bread. This could be due to the mono- and diglycerides included in the formula, both of which are used as food thickeners in a slew of products. The hydrogenated oils don't hurt matters either. The resulting texture is classically smooth and sticky without a greasy essence that comes from more naturally-processed peanut butters that include only the oils inherent in the peanuts.

Even without the added emulsifiers, the texture of Great Value isn't terribly different from Jif. It appears the same in the jar, scoops out just as easily and isn't any more or less sticky than its higher-priced counterpart. In fact, it was difficult for me to tell the difference which brand was which when looking into the jars with the lids off. Only when I dipped the butter knife into the surface could I tell the very slight difference in smoothness that gave Jif a minimal advantage.

Being slightly smoother doesn't justify paying more, however. The striking similarity creates a deadlock between the pricier Jif and the more budget-friendly Great Value — reassurance that shoppers can get dependable texture from either purchase.

With Great Value peanut butter, sweetness is front and center, even if it doesn't do much to diminish the nutty layer lurking just beneath it. But it does seem to present sugar prominently, reflective of the slightly higher sugar content. It isn't cloying or overpowering and doesn't block the nuttiness of the peanut butter; it simply gives more balance to the overall flavor.

The Jif label denotes roasted peanuts, in contrast to the Great Value label that reads simply peanuts, and that does alter the taste profile just a little. Though both options are perfectly usable for creating rich peanut butter, roasted peanuts impart a more luxurious flavor. I've made my own at home using both types of peanuts, and I much prefer using roasted for the robust essence. It's obviously a matter of preference, and not one that could make peanut butter fans clamor for Jif over Great Value in a blind taste test.

Though the flavor of Jif nudges the jar in a more upscale direction, Great Value offers a similar if slightly sweeter flavor that works perfectly for sandwiches, dips, and any other peanut buttery recipes you can conjure.

One of the most crucial aspects of any proper peanut butter is its spreadability. It may be a mostly made-up word, but everyone in the sandwich-making world understands what it means. If you can't apply the peanut butter to the bread or toast without grinding a hole in the surface, the overall experience of your chosen brand is bound to suffer. Dry or overly thick peanut butter is a bane to lunchmaking and snack preparation, and having a more workable version could make the price difference a worthwhile expense.

So how did each jar do? Jif spreads just a little more smoothly than Great Value, glossing up quicker than the Walmart brand as it's being swiped into a thinner layer. But once on the bread, there's almost no difference detected, another tick in the Great Value box; if you can't tell the difference when the peanut butter is in use, what are you paying extra for, other than a fancier label?

With no discernible difference in how easily both Jif and Great Value can be spread for sandwiches, there's no advantage to paying more for a national brand. 

An important but often overlooked component of how well a peanut butter works is the quality it adds to baked goods. From cookies to homemade bread to frosting, if a peanut butter can't perform in the mixing bowl, it may not be worth the price you paid for it. I put these two jars to the test with a simple three ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe to see just how admirably each one availed itself when called into a higher service. If either one produced a less than tasty cookie, how could it ever be a worthwhile purchase regardless of price?

I made two half-batches of the Mashed Best 3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies recipe, one with Jif and one with Great Value in the starring role. The simplicity of sugar, egg (I used flaxseed with water), and peanut butter without adding flour or butter lets the main ingredient shine through in taste and texture. Though I baked them on separate pans and kept them in their own regions of the cooling rack, it was nearly impossible to tell the difference between the two. They were equally tender and delicious.

The good news resulting from this experiment is that whether you choose Jif or go with Great Value, you can turn out top-notch baked goods regardless — a valuable discovery for frugal bakers looking to save a few bucks.

When it comes to price, there's no disputing the difference between the two jars. With Great Value being bargain-priced at $1.94, it's a temptation even for brand-loyal shoppers looking for reasonable ways to trim their grocery receipts. It's available as creamy and crunchy, giving peanut butter lovers the same options as every other brand on the market, though Great Value stops short of providing premium mix-ins such as chocolate or grape jelly. Still, Walmart does a prime job of giving customers a price-conscious alternative.

On the other hand, Jif is almost a dollar more at $2.80 for an equal-size jar. Though the roasted quality is notable to anyone with a particular palate, it isn't quite distinctive enough to turn heads on shopping day. Maybe if there were flavored version that worked cinnamon or ginger into the profile or used specialty nuts for a base, customers would be compelled to pay almost a dollar more for their peanut butter.

As it stands, Great Value gives you everything that Jif does while saving you precious cash.

Even brand-name lovers who tried Jif and Great Value side-by-side would have to conclude that there's no reason to shell out more money for a peanut butter that doesn't rise above. And since Jif isn't doing anything outrageously different with its formula, you can get just as much enjoyment and nourishment out of Great Value while spending nearly a third less — money you can spend on bread or jelly to complete your family's weekly lunches. For bakers and home cooks who look for creative ways to work peanut butter into their culinary endeavors, Great Value also comes to the rescue in the kitchen, leaving more spending room for ingredients where substitutions aren't possible.

It might be easy to dismiss Great Value as just another cash grab by Walmart. The lack of high style on the label doesn't do much to dazzle the eye, which can sometimes indicate inferiority for the product behind the picture. In the instance of Great Value peanut butter, there's no difference discernible enough to justify paying more for a better-marketed name. Cautious shoppers looking to spend less can find a perfectly plausible substitute for their peanut butter needs, cutting cost without cutting quality.

I bought a jar of both Jif and Great Value peanut butters and compared labels to determine what distinctions there were between ingredients and nutrients. Then, I cracked open each jar and made a visual assessment of the texture before diving in and scooping some out to spread on homemade bread. I gave each brand a taste test off the spoon before trying them on bread to see how they held up with and without additional elements.

To get a deeper understanding of how these two compare in more intensive situations, I created cookie doughs from each brand and baked a dozen cookies from both Jif and Great Value. I tasted them hot and cooled to see if there was a notable difference and found them to be identical.

After lining up these two incredibly similar products along these axes, it was easy to determine that Jif and Great Value are equal peanut butters offered at vastly different price points