The History of Granola

Although commonly known as a breakfast cereal in the USA, consumers in the UK are less familiar with the term Granola and would not necessarily associate this food to the hippie culture of the 60’s rich in history!

In the 1850’s the Seventh Day Adventist Church in the Midwest USA advocated vegetarianism and healthy eating for religious reasons. The Church took over a Sanitarium and named it the Western Health Reform Institute and in 1876 the son of prominent Adventist became its director – this man was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

Because of the Sanitarium’s vegetarian and whole grain emphasis, the diet at the Sanitarium could be monotonous, and so Dr Kellogg experimented with foods. One of his developments was a breakfast food made of whole grains which were baked and then grounded which was known as Granola!

He lost interest in cereals for a while and turned his attention to nuts and Granola never became a commercial success – although Kellog did eventually come back to cereals and developed Cornflakes in 1902.

As the cereal market developed and many products became covered with sugar to attract children to breakfast time, the healthy option of Granola was left far behind until the 1960’s when the ‘health food’ market boomed in the US. Cereals of natural whole grain ingredients were reintroduced as Granola and adopted by the ‘hippie’ movement many of which were vegetarians and health and mind conscious.

At this time most of the Granola mixes were full of dried fruit and/or nuts and added sugar and honey for flavour.

Muesli was also developed at this time by a Swiss nutritionist, Dr Bircher-Benner, and is today a well recognised name on the UK market.

There is some evidence that wholegrain cereals may help reduce the risk of heart disease, and the presence of heart-healthy nuts should help here too.

The term ‘Granola man’ is widely recognised in the US as the outdoors type, takes an interest in what he eats and his physic and probably wears sandals in the summer! A caring individual who is not scared to show his emotions…so come on lets make this phonemona a recognised term this side of the pond!