Granola

Granola is very popular as a "health food". It originated with Dr. Sylvester Graham, who reintroduced whole grain wheat flour in the 1800s (which is now called graham flour and made into graham crackers). In 1863, Dr. James C. Jackson of New York developed what he called "Granula"--Graham flour formed into sheets, baked until dry, broken up, baked again, and broken up into even smaller pieces.

Meanwhile, the Seventh Day Adventists took over a sanitarium formerly run by followers of Dr. Graham in Battle Creek, Michigan and in 1876 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg--son of prominent Adventist--became director. To make the vegetarian and whole grain diet more palatable, Dr. Kellogg experimented with foods. He also developed a breakfast food of whole grains, baked and ground up, which he named "Granula". After he was sued by Dr. Jackson, Kellogg renamed his whole grain ceral "Granola". In 1898, Charles W. Post used Dr. Jackson's basic recipe for Granula to develop Grape Nuts. A similar cereal called "Muesli" was developed in the late 19th century by Dr. Bircher-Benner, a Swiss doctor and nutritionist.

Kellogg and Post continued to successfully develop breakfast cereals, but they evolved into products full of refined grains and sugar. In the 1960's when the "health food" market revived cereals of natural whole grain ingredients, they were generically called "granola".

Today's granola, however, contains a lot of sugar in various forms. My husband and I went label-reading the other day and found that the typical granola cereal contains both brown sugar and corn syrup as well as dried fruits. Given that ingredients are listed in the order of the amount contained in the product, that the sweeteners are usually ingredients #2 and #3 could mean that there is more sugar in granola than the healthy whole grain oats!

Granola bars contain even more sugar. One major brand listed sugar, corn syrup, barley malt, molasses, honey, dextrose and high fructose corn syrup on the label. The worst was a national brand with "Nature" in the brand name and "heart-healthy" on the label: the #1 ingredient was corn syrup!

We can do better than that...and it's very easy to make...

There are thousands of recipes for granola, but the basic recipe is very simple. You can choose whatever ingredients you like and make a different granola every day if you want.

Granola contains:

• grains--usually mostly rolled oats, but you can also add rolled wheat or rye, wheat germ, any type of bran, or unsweetened whole grain cereal.
• nuts and/or seeds--almonds, walnuts, pecans, filberts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, shredded coconut and others...one or more per recipe
• dried fruits--raisins, dates, dried figs or apricots, prunes...
• spices and flavorings--cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice are delicious, as well as vanilla, almond, and other extracts.
• sweetener--traditionally this is brown sugar, but evaporated cane juice and date sugar are excellent substitutes. You could use xylitol, but it lacks the depth of flavor--if you want you could replace part of another sweetener with xylitol and still have some flavor. You can also use liquid sweeteners, including honey, maple syrup, barley malt syrup or brown rice syrup or a combination of the two, or a bit of molasses for flavor.