Granola is healthier than most other cereals

Recipe here!

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/good-you-granola

Home made granola is lovely and you can control how much sugar you make it with.

I use this recipe but half the maple syrup and raisins not sweetened dried fruit. I eat with full fat Greek yoghurt and fresh fruit in summer. Delicious.
Winter I usually have porridge and frozen fruit and prunes.

Anyway, if people want a lower-fat, lower-sugar alternative to granola, why not just have muesli? Easy to make your own too, no need to cook or add syrup, honey or fat.

Same here, have to have it or I have a massive tantrum in my kitchen if I run out of porridge oats🤣

I think some versions are quite processed and they often have high-sugar ingredients... Personally, I won't eat it because I managed to crack a tooth whilst enjoying a bowl during a 'health kick' which cost me a lot at the dentist lol.

What? Who doesn't consider evidence that's more than 10 years old? I'm in research and that's certainly not the case. In practice we consider anything that's online as no o e can be bothered to traipse to the basement of the Library. But most research from the 70s onwards is online now

I think the whole point is that there was much less upf eaten in the 60s and 70s than now. Diets have got much worse. And people are dying as a result

Why would you try to avoid sugar in whole fruit though? There's no reason as fruit is full of fibre and nutrients and the sugar that's in it is bound to other constituents.

Avoiding eating fruit will not improve your health.

I wasn't talking about honey or maple syrup. The honey found in most granolas is probably poor quality and no better than white sugar anyway

I don't think avoiding E numbers is thought of as silly now- there's still case for avoiding foods which contain them as they are on the whole a signifier of artificial additives and often in foods which are processed and not very healthy.

I think the realisation that eating a heavily processed diet is bad is not going to go away either. it's not really a fad to eat natural foods- it's common sense.

shop Bought granola is not healthy and on the same par as cornflakes. If you make your own using natural ingredients this is better than cornflakes

While I can sort of see the good sense of eating foods as close to the natural source as possible, I agree that the whole 'UPF' obsession is getting a bit boring now.

I wonder if anyone else here is ancient enough to remember the 'E numbers' hysteria a few decades ago? There was even a handbook that you'd take to the supermarket to check the numbers on the ingredients list. It would probably be an app or a QR code these days. But it was generally accepted that 'E numbers' were the harbingers of doom, at least among the middle classes with plenty of time and money on their hands. It seems a bit silly now, but was all the rage then.

I suspect a few years from now, we'll look back at the trendy obsession with 'UPF' in much the same way.

Raw ingredients that also came in a plastic bag or a cardboard box and would also have kept a long time. The longevity of the ingredients is not the issue, surely? It's what else has been added to them since they were harvested, and what's been done to them.

Hello, RS! I do agree with the general tenor of this post. When I think what we ate routinely back in the 1960s and 1970s I am amazed that we're here at all, and yet my Mum is still with us at nearly 92 and enjoying a cuppa soup most days (UPF central).

Breakfast cereals ranked best to worst - BHF

My husband. I mentioned him in earlier posts when talking about his granola habits. Then I moved on to his muesli habits. That's enough about him now, though!

It's still sugar.

If you're trying to avoid it, then large amounts of dried fruit, honey or maple syrup are a bad idea, 'processed' or not. That would rule out most granolas, even the 'healthy no added sugar' ones.

Commercial granola varies greatly. Some will have way more sugar than cornflakes. Homemade granola would be better.

Agree. In fact it would be fair to say I have a porridge addiction 😂

I don’t consider any shop bought and/or mass produced cereal to be a healthy option. I don’t think either of you are being unreasonable, you just have different opinions. But, if you want me to take a side, I’d say your husband has the stronger argument. Either way, ditch the cereal.

As someone who has previously had an ED and wasted about 8 years of my life meticulously reading labels or calculating the calories in sonething, I find the UPF topic quite stressful

I know they are bad for you and I try to cook and eat healthily but use eg shop bought mayonnaise, ketchup, teriyaki sauce etc, however I'd never have considered stewed apple as a processed food, or something to be avoided.

MN is generally pretty anti carb from threads I've read and I've seen cereal described as "shit in a box" before, which I'm not sure is entirely helpful, although I accept that things like kitkat cereal or very sugary cereals will be pretty unhealthy

Will I really be annoying and say I use the strained whey to make a protein loaf?

Yes, unless you share the recipe.

No, sugar in raisins is not comparable to processed sugar in its effects on the body

"Wanging on" 😆😆

It depends what you mean by ‘healthy’. Granola is much higher in calories and usually contains a lot of sugar.

Cornflakes, despite people wanging on about ‘upf’ are basically just maize with a very small amount of sugar and salt for flavour. They’re not full of weird additives at all. You know what’s in them. But they’re lower in fibre than granola and probably less filling.

Neither are a balanced meal.

given the listing of ingredients, added sugar is somewhere between 14% and 19%, plus honey, sounds vile.
The term granola covers such a wide variety of products, it depends on the individual brand/variety - or making your own so you know what's in it.
personally I eat oats with berries in winter and bran flakes in the summer if I eat breakfast.