The peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a masterwork of culinary invention. It powers NBA players to greater heights, as this ESPN article explained. It makes for a delicious late-night snack. It’s what I had for lunch. It’s also so simple that a 5-year-old can make it.

These are not fit for a King:

Apparently the Cavaliers know this. That’s why they’ve weaponized the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, one of the most popular locker-room snacks, against their opponents. From that ESPN article:

t’s a tale of two diets in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, where the Cavs, courtesy of a partnership with fellow Ohio-based outfit Smucker’s, foist about a dozen of the company’s prepackaged Uncrustables PB&J’s on opposing teams every game night. (Both the Lakers’ and Celtics’ strength and conditioning coaches tell their players to avoid those processed, once-frozen snacks.) But the Cavs fare far better with their fare, serving themselves 20 artisanal PB&J’s prior to tip-off, with homemade grape and raspberry jelly, as well as almond butter-and-banana and peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches — the power of the PB&J being wielded as a form of asymmetric nutritional warfare.

The article as a whole is fascinating, from the roots of the NBA’s addiction down to Lakers rookie Brandon Ingram being the only of the five players who shared their PB&J “recipes” to put peanut butter on both sides. (This is the proper method, and any other method is simply lazy.)

But we need to address the Uncrustable a little more. First, they are a premade version of something anyone can make in 30 seconds. Second, they are frozen and contain this set of ingredients:

Bread: enriched unbleached flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, unbleached whole wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, yeast, soybean oil, contains 2% or less of: salt, dough conditioners (distilled mono and diglycerides, datem, enzymes [with wheat starch, ascorbic acid, calcium peroxide]). Peanut butter: peanuts, dextrose, sugar, mono and diglycerides, contains 2% or less of: fully hydrogenated vegetable oils (soybean and/or cottonseed and/or rapeseed), salt, molasses. Grape jelly: grape juice, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, contains 2% or less of: pectin, citric acid, potassium sorbate (preservative).

Obviously, all those chemicals will scare any organic-only-type away. But how different is that from what’s in the not-at-all-organic PB&J that I just ate? Let’s look at that ingredient list:

Martin’s potato bread: unbleached enriched wheat flour (flour, ferrous sulfate, niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, folic acid), nonfat milk, reconstituted potatoes (from potato flour), yeast, sugar, wheat gluten, sunflower oil, contains 2% or less of: salt, butter, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, monoglycerides and diglycerides), monocalcium phosphate, calcium propionate (a preservative), guar gum, ascorbic acid, datem, calcium sulfate, enzymes, turmeric color, annatto color, sesame seeds. Skippy creamy peanut butter: roasted peanuts, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil (cottonseed, soybean and rapeseed oil). Smucker’s grape jelly: concord grape juice, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, fruit pectin, citric acid, sodium citrate.

It’s interesting that the Smucker’s grape jelly is a little different in the Uncrustable than in the regular stuff. Also, the Skippy peanut butter seems a bit simpler. But the breads are where the differences are. Yes, there’s a lot of chemicals in both, but the Martin’s contains milk, and the Uncrustable has a bunch of sugar.

Still, if you’re not going organic (which most NBA teams choose to do), the biggest difference between an Uncrustable and a regular PB&J is this: taste. And the gap there is worth the two-minute hassle and the risk of getting a smudge of peanut butter on the back of your hand.

But we’ve got to commend the Cleveland Cavaliers. They’ve managed to weaponize the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.