There are so many different varieties of peanut butter on Michigan store shelves. How do you pick the one that's right for your family?

National brand or store brand? Crunchy or smooth? Organic? No sugar added?

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Regardless what drives your decision, experts say there's one choice that's worse than the rest.

What Makes Certain Kinds of Peanut Butter Worse for You Than Others?

If we're standing in Meijer, shopping for peanut butter, we want something that tastes good, right? Something with some semblance of nutritional value?

247wallst.com dug into the data jar so we don't have to.

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To boil it down - basically, the fewer ingredients the better. If you look at the label on the back of the jar and see a bunch of added sugar, salt, hydrogenated oils or other preservatives - you'd probably be better off to put that one down and look at something else.

The Least Healthy Peanut Butter on Michigan Store Shelves

There's one particular brand that's loaded with lots of extras -  things like high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, distilled monoglycerides, salt, pectin, citric acid, and the preservative potassium sorbate. All those things can be found in Smucker's Goober Grape.

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That last ingredient there is the clincher, according to the 247wallst.com study.

Potassium sorbate, a mold and yeast suppressant that is considered generally safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is heavily regulated in Europe. This is due to its status as a genotoxin. A genotoxin is an agent that causes DNA or chromosomal damage.

Who knew that's what we were sending our kids to school with? Yeesh.

So which other peanut butter brands do the experts say are among the poor choices? Here's a look, along with the reasons they're listed among the worst offenders.

Which Peanut Butter Brands Should Michiganders Avoid?

While it's often marketed as a healthy addition to your after noon snack or morning smoothie, there are some hidden ingredients that should be avoided in many of the popular brands.

Gallery Credit: Sydney Ducharme

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