Peanut butter cups are delicious – unfortunately the most popular brand is made with the chemical polyglycerol polyricinoleate.
So we found some great peanut butter cups without seed oil or chemicals!
| Image | Peanut butter cups | Oils | Soy lecithin or any emulsifiers? | Other ingredients |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Theo Chocolate Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups 12 Pack | Fair Trade | (maybe a trace of Vegetable Oil in the Rosemary extract) | None |
|
 | Two-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cup - Note: This is probably not very sweet | None | None |
|
 | EVOLVED Chocolate Almond Butter Keto Cups - Organic | None | None |
|
 | UNREAL Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups | Palm Oil (organic) | Sunflower Lecithin |
|
 | Justin's Organic Mini Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups | Palm Oil (organic) | Soy Lecithin, Sunflower Lecithin |
|
The Theo peanut butter cups are almost perfect, but they contain cornstarch (which may concern some people) and they say that there may be a bit of vegetable oil in the rosemary extract, one of their ingredients. It’s probably a tiny amount. These peanut butter cups are probably great! Other than that, they contain no seed oil, no soy lecithin or other emulsifiers, and no chemicals! They are the best peanut butter cups we know of.
Be careful of the peanut butter cups with soy lecithin, sunflower lecithin, or other emulsifiers. We don’t recommend eating a lot of these but it’s up to you since there aren’t any better products we could find.
All of these peanut butter cups are better than the most popular brand, but none of them are quite perfect unfortunately. We couldn’t find a peanut butter cup that was just chocolate, peanut butter, and sugar, which would be great.
Note: The most popular peanut butter cup brand is actually seed oil free as well, however it does contain that unnatural sounding chemical.
Ingredients in these peanut butter cups
Either they’ve got lecithin (emulsifiers we don’t like) or they’re a slightly strange alternative type of product made with paleo fibers, almond butter, or no sugar. That being said, these are the best peanut butter cups with no seed oils that we could find! Some of them do look pretty good!
Peanut butter cups without soy lecithin would be much better
We really prefer to avoid emulsifiers like soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin. They’re probably not very good for us. If there’s nothing better available, we will put a product that contains emulsifiers on one of our lists, but we will always make sure you know that it does contain emulsifiers and that you should probably not eat a lot of these. The good news is that lecithin in chocolate is apparently required to be under 0.5% of the total, so at least there isn’t a lot of it. (Source)
Some of them have palm oil, is that OK?
Palm oil is a low PUFA oil, and is probably not a problem for people trying to avoid seed oils. Palm oil is likely only an issue for your health if it’s got chemicals in it, according to Dr. Cate Shanahan, MD. These peanut butter cups use organic palm oil so they ought to be good.
Weird paleo ingredients like jerusalem artichoke and agave inulin
These are probably OK in moderation – they are natural products used to make “paleo” alternative foods, but are they really traditional foods that you should eat a lot of? We’re not sure. We’d much prefer to see good classic ingredients, but we think they’re probably OK for a treat.
Nothing bad in these peanut butter cups, but they dropped the sugar too!
The Two Ingredient Peanut Butter Cup is totally fine, containing nothing but peanuts and chocolate, not even lecithin emulsifiers. This is a good peanut butter cup without seed oils, soy lecithin, or additives. The only issue is that it doesn’t have any sugar so it is probably not sweet at all, and not the classic peanut butter cup taste you’re looking for. If you’re OK with that, give them a try!
These peanut butter cups without seed oils are all pretty good (but could be better)
So there’s no perfect peanut butter cup yet, but maybe soon! In the meantime, if you are craving peanut butter cups without seed oil in them, give these a try!
Also, check out our other guides to snacking without seed oil.