Justin’s Nut Butter Review plus Giveaway

I’ve professed my love for nut butters countless times on my site. In my humble opinion, there’s really nothing better than a banana smeared with a little nut butter. Even more delicious than this fantastic combination is the combination of nut butter with proceeds that go towards a a good cause. This is just what Justin’s Nut Butter does.

What first attracted me to Justin’s Nut Butter was there individually-portioned nut butter packets. While the excess packaging of course isn’t favorable*, one can’t deny that a pre-portioned package of nut butter make a good grab-and-go lunchbox item. Backpacking for the weekend and don’t want to lug around a heavy jar of peanut/almond butter? That’s what I instantly though of when I looked at these cutesy nut butter packets. Nut butter serves as an awesome energy-dense source of food.

*(Justin’s is currently working on this issue. They hope to unveil 66% renewable packaging by Earth Day 2012.)

As I researched Justin’s further, I became more and more intrigued. First, most of what goes into their jars/packets is sourced from organic ingredients, with as many locally-derived ingredients used as possible. Second, the company stands behind two positive outreach initiatives.

The company primarily supports the Conscious Alliance, “a grass-roots organization that provides youth awareness programs on severe hunger issues through its Art that Feeds program and other outreach initiatives.”  The Conscious Alliance has collected and distributed over one million pounds of non-perishable food donations to food pantries and global disaster relief programs nationwide over the past six years.

This is where Justin’s comes in. The company donates one pound of peanut butter to Conscious Alliance for every item sold at an in-store product demonstration, in addition to putting in volunteer time with the outreach program.

Next on the agenda, Justin’s will begin to focus their support on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the 2nd poorest county in the nation, located just 407 miles from the company’s offices.

While I prefer my nut butter in it’s simplest form (nuts, salt), Justin’s doesn’t fair all too bad in terms of keeping the ingredients list short. They steer clear of hydrogenated oils (Trans Fat, eeek) and don’t add sickening amounts of sweetener. They have a ton of fun flavors, like honey almond butter, maple almond butter, and chocolate hazelnut butter, the three flavors I was fortunate to try.

The honey almond butter was notably buttery with delicate hints of salt and subtle hints of honey, while the chocolate hazelnut was like a slightly more intense version of Nutella, favorably containing 2/3 less sugar and a few less ingredients. The only flavor I wasn’t a huge fan was the maple. I found it to be kind of bland, but Justin claims this to be his favorite.

You can click here to view their other products, which include my favorite, peanut butter cups. Yum.

Want to try some of Justin’s Nut Butter for yourself? Food-Fitness-FreshAir is giving away three jars (pictured above) to one lucky winner.

How to enter: (Leave a sepearte comment per entry.)
This contest closes on **Monday, March 14, 2011 at Midnight, 12:00am EST**

1) Leave a comment on this post telling me why you want to try Justin’s
2) Become a fan of F-F-F on Facebook
3) Follow me on Twitter
4) Link this giveaway on one of your blog posts and let me know that you did
5) Retweet this on Twitter: @GraceDickinson is giving away 3 jars of nut butter at Food-Fitness-FreshAir: http://bit.ly/dzXamL

One winner will be chosen at random by random.org.