Growing up in the 1950s I quickly learned that if I didn’t bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school I risked being labeled a Communist. Like the Wonder Bread it was spread on, peanut butter was an All-American food.

We were so naïve back then it’s almost endearing.

Peanut butter is about as All-American as Montreal. Or Tenochtitlan.

Its All-American status began with a doctor who also thought corn flakes would cure masturbation.

And its first use—which you might want to keep from the kids—was as a medicine, a protein alternative for people without teeth.

Peanut butter became All-American between the 1930s and 50s when major corporations began national distribution, turning it into that most All-American of products, a commodity.

Before then, peanut butter’s history was eclectic, if not somewhat romantic.

Jon Krampner, author of Creamy & Crunchy, a history of peanut butter, credits the Amerindians of South America with the first grinding of peanuts into primal peanut butter, which was more of a paste than a smooth spread.

The absence of paper notwithstanding, the Amerindians didn’t leave much of a peanut butter paper trail. So the first official record of peanut butter we have is an 1884 U.S. Patent, Number 306727, entitled “Manufacture of Peanut-Candy.”

That patent belongs to Marcellus Gilmore Edson. Edson was as All-American as you can get, if you count Canadian chemists (pharmacists) from Montreal as All-American.

When Edson converted peanuts to peanut butter, he wasn’t thinking about bringing joy to the lunchpails of millions of workers and school children.

From the ancient Sumerians until well into the 20th century, pharmacists were the Big Pharma of their day, routinely dispensing medications of their own design.

Edson added peanut butter to his inventory of medical preparations as a protein source for customers who couldn’t chew solid food. Given the state of dental hygiene in the 19th century there’s every reason to believe there was a sizable audience hungry for this future All-American food.

Edson might have gone on to be Mr. Peanut Butter were it not for the existence of one Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

Labeled everything from a flim-flam man to a medical miracle worker, Kellogg (who with his brother, Will, formed the cereal company of the same name) was superintendent of a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Inspired by his surroundings, he came up with the idea of preparing a peanut paste he hailed as, “…a healthy protein substitute for patients without teeth.”

He filed a patent for his process of making peanut butter—actually more of a peanut porridge—from raw peanuts. That was in 1895.

Kellogg, a one-man PR machine, made up for Edson’s 11-year head start, drawing attention to himself through his fringe medical beliefs, such as the power of corn flakes to cure masturbation (something else you might want to keep from the kids).

Although Edson’s peanut butter tasted more like what we think of as jelly’s companion, Kellogg’s eccentricities afforded his version better word of mouth.

How much did Kellogg know about Edson’s peanut butter? That’s a bit murky. Kellogg wasn’t the type to kiss and tell. But in the early 1900s, Kellogg, Edson, and the Amerindians were no longer the stars of peanut butter’s history.

By 1924, two major components of peanut butter manufacturing were in place: Dr. Ambrose Straub’s peanut-butter-making machine; and Joseph Rosefield’s process for hydrogenating peanut oil.

The latter prevented peanut butter’s oil and solids from separating, leading to a peanut butter that spread easily and stayed fresh and creamy longer.

Rosefield licensed his process to the E. K. Pond Company, a division of Swift & Company, which used it to make peanut butter under the Peter Pan label.

When Rosefield’s relationship with E. K. Pond turned rancid he took the license back and sold peanut butter himself under the Skippy brand.

Big Top, the product of engineer and marketer William T. Young came along in 1946. Young realized that peanut butter was peanut butter, and he turned Big Top into a success through clever marketing. Big Top would eventually be rebranded as Jif and owned by Proctor & Gamble.

By the 1950s, the national peanut butter manufacturers were using the blandest (and least expensive) type of peanut grown. Its blandness didn’t interfere with the added sugar, salt, and other ingredients these companies used to make a consistent, if somewhat adulterated, peanut butter taste.

Just in time for the Cold War, peanut butter had achieved commodity status, a symbol of America as All-American as store-bought apple pie.