Granola is healthier than most other cereals

[Aliceisagooddog]

Ongoing argument with dh. He thinks granola is bad because its high sugar. I think it's not as bad as cornflakes etc because it's much less processed, you can actually see what it's made of.
Who's being unreasonable?

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

Recipe here!

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

I'm wary about low sugar and no added sugar foods.
"No added sugar" = but lots in the raisins and honey. Expect a blood sugar spike shortly.
"Low sugar" = but contains artificial sweeteners.

At the risk of breaking mumsnet, I have been known to eat porridge with JAM. 1tsp of jam = half a t spoon of sugar. It's quick and cheap alternative to commercial cereals and still has less sugar.

@suki1964

Will I really be annoying and say I use the strained whey to make a protein loaf? lol A loaf of bread that tastes like sour dough, really high protein, absolutely delicious and only takes the time of a normal loaf to make :)

Could you post the recipe please? I have been looking at ways to use up whey and that sounds delicious.

Granola is to cereals as filter cigarettes are to roll ups.

Mine is fairly healthy, but I make it myself and so I control the amount of sugar.

I mean in the group I see, neighbours, friends, colleagues
Most are just grabbing a bowl of whatever cereal they like and getting on with their day
I don't hear anyone talking about processed food. I know people that don't eat any fruit or veg, some that are fitness fanatics and usually eating a protein bar...

That's what we do!

Rotate through;
Dippy eggs and sourdough soldiers - sometimes cheese in toast soldiers.
Scrambled or poached eggs on sourdough toast
Cheese tomato and spinach omelette

I don't know how old you are, but in my experience of growing up at that time there was a huge amount of processed food eaten back then, and it was being heavily pushed in supermarkets and in adverts. Spaghetti hoops, Findus crispy pancakes, Angel Delight, Instant Whip, frozen pizzas, Nimble bread, Vesta curries - I could go on. I have no idea what the food labelling regulations were, but even if the ingredients were listed most people didn't look at them, or not in the circles where I grew up.

As women started to work more outside the home and electrical equipment like freezers and microwaves became affordable and widely used it was a huge boon to have convenience foods. It was also considered the modern, scientific way.

When a few lone voices started trying to point out back then that there were all sorts of problems with eating this highly-processed, not very nutritious food, they were pooh poohed as killjoys, not living in the real world, old-fashioned, doom-mongers, and so on and so forth. And here we are now, with huge multinational conglomerates keen to protect their extremely profitable business models, rising obesity problems across all the rich countries, and abysmal knowledge about food, cooking and nutrition embedded across the UK.

We didn't get here just in the last few years.

Granola is less healthy than other cereals because it tastes so much nicer and is in dense chunks rather than flakes or puffs so you're bound to eat way more of it than you should.
The only exception is if you have a mere spoonful as topping for fresh fruit and Greek yogurt, but even then you'd be better off with nuts and/or seeds.

Absolutely this. There was an excellent programme 'Back in time for dinner' on BBC 2 and the 70's saw the introduction of so much unhealthy food.

I often wonder how some of the 'old' people (in their 90's now) survived. My grandmother would have been 98 this year and she was born into a very poor family with 11 children living in a 2 up 2 down slum. She told me they lived on jam sandwiches with maybe pig head soup on a Sunday if they were lucky. I don't know how they didn't all end up with scurvy! She started work in a cotton mill at age 14 and took jam sandwiches for lunch. When the water started she worked in munitions and for the first time had money to buy vegetables.

Cornflakes is just pureed popcorn with added vitamins and preservatives. I’d argue it’s healthier than 30/40g of sugar

Nah, they pretty much all trash apart from porridge

Really depends on the type of granola. I make granola with honey.