Absorption of Whole Peanuts, Peanut Oil, and Peanut Butter

Horace Fletcher, a popular 19th-century food faddist who advocated chewing food twice for each tooth, alluded to the possible dependence of absorption on thorough mechanical breakdown of food.¹ However, it is generally believed that chewing has a minor role in the digestion and absorption of food. To study the effect of mechanical breakdown of food on fat absorption, we put subjects on a diet containing one source of fat in three physical forms. Ten healthy persons were assigned to a vegetarian diet that contained a total of 80 g of fat; 76 g was in the form of whole peanuts.