While many of us are staying home during the coronavirus pandemic, any food that lasts a while and provides solid nutritional content is a staple. Lately, you might find yourself staring down the various nut butter options in the pantry cashew, almond and peanut and thinking, Should I be refrigerating that?

Nut butter keeps you full for hours and fulfills your healthy fat needs, but its not uncommon to feel uneasy about the way you store it. Some labels clearly state the product should be refrigerated, but then the nut butter hardens to an unusable texture. Other labels are less clear, making you wonder how to keep it food-safe.

In order to get some clear answers, we reached out to a food safety expert and a nutritionist. Heres what they had to say.

Natural and non-natural nut butters have different rules

Whether its suggested that you refrigerate nut butter doesnt depend on the type of nut used, but the method in which its prepared.

Natural nut butters the easiest way to make this distinction, other than the label, is to check if theres a layer of oil on top are generally suggested to be stored in the refrigerator. You dont want that layer of oil to go rancid and ruin the flavor of your nut butter.

If you opt for a non-natural, no stir type of nut butter (think popular peanut butter brands like Skippy or Jif), storing them in the pantry is completely fine.