I was at the health food store today just looking around for something new and discovered pumpkin seed butter. It was expensive but I am noticing that the healthier I eat the bigger my grocery bill. Which is OK because I am worth it. A 20 oz. container was almost $10.00. But...

1 Tbsp. contains
100 cal.
8 gr. total fat
1.5 saturated
4.5 polyunsaturated
2.0 monounsaturated
0 cholesterol
40 sodium
1 total carb
1 fiber - net carbs 0 yipee!
protein 5

The ingredients are pumpkin seeds and celtic sea salt.

You have to stir it up like you would with natural peanut butter. It is dark green, I am not thrilled with the color - looks like green Heinz ketchup which I could never eat because I couldn't get past the color issue. But the taste is wonderful. I think it would be great on celery too.

Wow, thanks for sharing that. I love pumpkin seeds but I haven't had the butter. At Thanksgiving I made a pumpkin pie with a ground up pumpkin seed crust. I liked it. Most other people thought it was a little wierd. I'll look for the pumpkin seed butter at my health food store. Thats great with 0 carbs.

The shelled pumpkin seeds I have are 4 grams of carbs, three fiber....leaving one net carb. I suppose the difference might be serving size?

Or the difference could be that the fiber is already subtracted. Unfortunately this is not regulated and it is often impossible to know if the fiber is pre-subtracted or not. I have noticed this more and more on labels. When you compare the label to a nutrition program or carb counter book you will find out whether the carb count on the label is pre or post fiber. Frustrating but important to know.

I agree fiber is already subtracted, or there is some rounding going on. Such as there are actually 1.99g carbs with .99 fiber

Take the fat grams and multiply that by 9. 8 * 9 = 72
So 72 of the 100 calories comes from fat.

Now take the protien grams and multiply them by 4. 4 * 5 = 20 So 20 of the total calories comes from protien

72 + 20 = 92. That means 8 calories are missing. These could be from fat, protien, or carbs depending on how they rounded the numbers, or a combination of all 3. Since it's a nut butter though, and nuts aren't 0 carb, there are probably some carbs.

Even so, if it is 1 net carb, that is still much better then most nut butters except for soy. Pumpkin also doesn't have the health associations soy does and you may prefer the taste. I'd say it's a good find.

The USDA lists Pumpkin Seeds as follows:

Seeds, pumpkin and squash seed kernels, roasted, without salt
Nutrient Units 1 oz
-------
28.35 g
Proximates
Water g 2.013
Energy kcal 147.987
Energy kj 619.164
Protein g 9.347
Total lipid (fat) g 11.944
Ash g 1.239
Carbohydrate, by difference g 3.807
Fiber, total dietary g 1.106
Sugars, total g 0.284

So, where do the carbs go, just because you grind them into butter?

i WAS the popcorn queen before settling into this WOL. Now I'm the pumpkin seed queen. It was a good exchange... Been doing it for a year now.

.....interesting to know