Granola
Encyclopedia
Granola is a breakfast
food
and snack food
, popular in North America, consisting of rolled oats
, nuts
, honey
, and sometimes rice
, that is usually baked until crisp. During the baking process the mixture is stirred to maintain a loose, breakfast cereal-type consistency. Dried fruit
s, such as raisin
s and dates
, are sometimes added.
Besides serving as food for breakfast and/or snacks, granola is also often eaten by those who are hiking
, camping
, or backpacking
because it is lightweight, high in calories, and easy to store; these properties make it similar to trail mix
and muesli
. It is often combined into a bar form.
Granola is often eaten in combination with yogurt, honey, strawberries
, banana
s, milk
, and/or other forms of cereal
. It can also serve as a topping for various types of pastries
and/or dessert
s. Granola, particularly recipes that include flax seeds, is often used to improve digestion.
and Granola were trademark
ed terms in the late nineteenth century United States
for foods consisting of whole grain
products crumbled and then baked until crisp; in contrast with the contemporary invention, muesli
, which is traditionally not baked or sweetened. The name is now trademarked only in Australia
(by the Australian Health & Nutrition Association Ltd.'s Sanitarium Health Food Company
).
Granula was invented in Dansville, New York, by Dr. Connor Lacey at the Jackson Sanitarium in 1894. The Jackson Sanitarium was a prominent health spa that operated into the early twentieth century on the hillside overlooking Dansville. It was also known as Our Home on the Hillside; thus the company formed to sell Jackson's cereal was known as the Our Home Granula Company. Granula was composed of Graham flour
and was similar to an oversized form of Grape-Nuts
.
A similar cereal was developed by John Harvey Kellogg
. It too was initially known as Granula, but the name was changed to Granola to avoid legal problems with Jackson.
The food and name were revived in the 1960s, and fruits and nuts were added to it to make it a health food
that was popular with the hippie
movement. At the time, several people claim to have revived or re-invented granola. A major promoter was Layton Gentry, profiled in Time
as "Johnny Granola-Seed". In 1964, Gentry sold the rights to a granola recipe using oats, which he claimed to have invented himself, to Sovex Natural Foods for $3,000. The company was founded in 1953 in Holly, Michigan
by the Hurlinger family with the main purpose of producing a concentrated paste of brewers yeast
and soy sauce
known as "Sovex." Earlier in 1964, it had been bought by John Goodbrad and moved to Collegedale, Tennessee
. In 1967, Gentry bought back the rights for west of the Rockies
for $1,500 and then sold the west coast rights to Wayne Schlotthauer of Lassen Foods in Chico, California
for $18,000. Lassen was founded from a health food bakery run by Schlotthauer's father-in-law. The Hurlingers, Goodbrads, and Schlotthauers were all Adventists, and it is possible that Gentry was a lapsed Adventist who was familiar with the earlier granola.
In 1972, Jim Matson, an executive at Pet Milk (later Pet Incorporated) of Saint Louis, Missouri, introduced Heartland Natural Cereal, the first major commercial granola. At almost the same time, Quaker
introduced Quaker 100% Natural Granola. Within a year, Kellogg's had introduced its "Country Morning" granola cereal and General Mills
had introduced its "Nature Valley."
In 1974, McKee Baking (later McKee Foods
), makers of Little Debbie snack cakes, purchased Sovex. In 1998, the company also acquired the Heartland brand and moved its manufacturing to Collegedale. In 2004, Sovex's name was changed to "Blue Planet Foods."
"Granola bars" were invented by Stanley Mason and have become popular as a snack. Granola bars are usually identical to the normal form of granola in composition, but differ vastly in shape: Instead of a loose, breakfast cereal consistency, granola bars are pressed and baked into a bar shape, resulting in the production of a more convenient snack. The product is most popular in the United States and Canada, parts of southern Europe, Brazil, South Africa and Japan. Recently, Granola has begun to expand its market into India and other southeast Asian countries.
A variety of the granola bar is the "chewy granola bar." In this form, the time during which the oats are baked is either shortened or cut out altogether; this gives the bar a texture that is chewier than that of a traditional granola bar. Some manufacturers, such as Kellogg's, have been shown to prefer usage of the terms "cereal bar" and "snack bar" to refer to them.
A similar bar exists in Germany and the United Kingdom, known as a flapjack or muesli bar, and other varieties on names with similar ingredients, such as cereal bars, oat bars, and snack bars, exist.
Breakfast
Breakfast is the first meal taken after rising from a night's sleep, most often eaten in the early morning before undertaking the day's work...
food
Food
Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...
and snack food
Snack food
A snack is a portion of food oftentimes smaller than that of a regular meal, that is generally eaten between meals. Snacks come in a variety of forms including packaged and processed foods and items made from fresh ingredients at home....
, popular in North America, consisting of rolled oats
Rolled oats
Rolled oats are traditionally oat groats that have been rolled into flat flakes under heavy rollers and then steamed and lightly toasted. The oat, like the other cereals, has a hard, inedible outer husk that must be removed before the grain can be eaten. After the outer husk has been removed from...
, nuts
Nut (fruit)
A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...
, honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
, and sometimes rice
Rice
Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
, that is usually baked until crisp. During the baking process the mixture is stirred to maintain a loose, breakfast cereal-type consistency. Dried fruit
Dried fruit
Dried fruit is fruit where the majority of the original water content has been removed either naturally, through sun drying, or through the use of specialized dryers or dehydrators. Dried fruit has a long tradition of use dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and is prized...
s, such as raisin
Raisin
Raisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world. Raisins may be eaten raw or used in cooking, baking and brewing...
s and dates
Date Palm
The date palm is a palm in the genus Phoenix, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit. Although its place of origin is unknown because of long cultivation, it probably originated from lands around the Persian Gulf. It is a medium-sized plant, 15–25 m tall, growing singly or forming a clump with...
, are sometimes added.
Hiking
Hiking is an outdoor activity which consists of walking in natural environments, often in mountainous or other scenic terrain. People often hike on hiking trails. It is such a popular activity that there are numerous hiking organizations worldwide. The health benefits of different types of hiking...
, camping
Camping
Camping is an outdoor recreational activity. The participants leave urban areas, their home region, or civilization and enjoy nature while spending one or several nights outdoors, usually at a campsite. Camping may involve the use of a tent, caravan, motorhome, cabin, a primitive structure, or no...
, or backpacking
Backpacking (wilderness)
Backpacking combines the activities of hiking and camping for an overnight stay in backcountry wilderness...
because it is lightweight, high in calories, and easy to store; these properties make it similar to trail mix
Trail Mix
Trail mix is a combination of dried fruit, grains, nuts, and sometimes chocolate, developed as a snack food to be taken along on outdoor hikes....
and muesli
Muesli
Muesli is a popular breakfast cereal based on uncooked rolled oats, fruit and nuts. It was developed around 1900 by Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner for patients in his hospital...
. It is often combined into a bar form.
Granola is often eaten in combination with yogurt, honey, strawberries
Strawberry
Fragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. Although it is commonly thought that strawberries get their name from straw being used as a mulch in cultivating the plants, the etymology of the word is uncertain. There...
, banana
Banana
Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....
s, milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
, and/or other forms of cereal
Cereal
Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...
. It can also serve as a topping for various types of pastries
Pastry
Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...
and/or dessert
Dessert
In cultures around the world, dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food. The word comes from the French language as dessert and this from Old French desservir, "to clear the table" and "to serve." Common Western desserts include cakes, biscuits,...
s. Granola, particularly recipes that include flax seeds, is often used to improve digestion.
History
The names GranulaGranula
Granula was the first manufactured breakfast cereal invented by James Caleb Jackson in 1863. Granula was an early version of Grape-Nuts, consisting of heavy grains of bran-rich Graham flour. The grains had to be soaked overnight before use....
and Granola were trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
ed terms in the late nineteenth century United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
for foods consisting of whole grain
Whole grain
Whole grains are cereal grains that contain cereal germ, endosperm, and bran, in contrast to refined grains, which retain only the endosperm. Whole grains can generally be sprouted while refined grains generally will not sprout. Whole-meal products are made by grinding whole grains in order to make...
products crumbled and then baked until crisp; in contrast with the contemporary invention, muesli
Muesli
Muesli is a popular breakfast cereal based on uncooked rolled oats, fruit and nuts. It was developed around 1900 by Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner for patients in his hospital...
, which is traditionally not baked or sweetened. The name is now trademarked only in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
(by the Australian Health & Nutrition Association Ltd.'s Sanitarium Health Food Company
Sanitarium Health Food Company
The Sanitarium Health & Wellbeing Company is the trading name of two sister food companies . Both are wholly owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church....
).
Granula was invented in Dansville, New York, by Dr. Connor Lacey at the Jackson Sanitarium in 1894. The Jackson Sanitarium was a prominent health spa that operated into the early twentieth century on the hillside overlooking Dansville. It was also known as Our Home on the Hillside; thus the company formed to sell Jackson's cereal was known as the Our Home Granula Company. Granula was composed of Graham flour
Graham flour
Graham flour is a type of whole wheat flour named after the American Presbyterian minister Rev. Sylvester Graham , an early advocate for dietary reform...
and was similar to an oversized form of Grape-Nuts
Grape-Nuts
Grape-Nuts is a breakfast cereal developed by C. W. Post in 1897. Post was a patient and later competitor of the 19th-century breakfast food innovator, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Despite its name, the cereal contains neither grapes nor nuts. The cereal is actually made from wheat and barley, in later...
.
A similar cereal was developed by John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg was an American medical doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan, who ran a sanitarium using holistic methods, with a particular focus on nutrition, enemas and exercise. Kellogg was an advocate of vegetarianism and is best known for the invention of the corn flakes breakfast cereal...
. It too was initially known as Granula, but the name was changed to Granola to avoid legal problems with Jackson.
The food and name were revived in the 1960s, and fruits and nuts were added to it to make it a health food
Health food
The term health food is generally used to describe foods that are considered to be beneficial to health, beyond a normal healthy diet required for human nutrition. However, the term is not precisely defined by national regulatory agencies such as the U.S...
that was popular with the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
movement. At the time, several people claim to have revived or re-invented granola. A major promoter was Layton Gentry, profiled in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
as "Johnny Granola-Seed". In 1964, Gentry sold the rights to a granola recipe using oats, which he claimed to have invented himself, to Sovex Natural Foods for $3,000. The company was founded in 1953 in Holly, Michigan
Holly, Michigan
Holly is a village in north Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 6,086 at the 2010 census. The village is located within Holly Township. It is about south of Flint and northwest of Detroit.- Demographics :...
by the Hurlinger family with the main purpose of producing a concentrated paste of brewers yeast
Yeast
Yeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with 1,500 species currently described estimated to be only 1% of all fungal species. Most reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by an asymmetric division process called budding...
and soy sauce
Soy sauce
Soy sauce is a condiment produced by fermenting soybeans with Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds, along with water and salt...
known as "Sovex." Earlier in 1964, it had been bought by John Goodbrad and moved to Collegedale, Tennessee
Collegedale, Tennessee
Collegedale is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 8,282 at the 2010 census. Collegedale is a suburb of Chattanooga and is part of the Chattanooga, TN–GA Metropolitan Statistical Area...
. In 1967, Gentry bought back the rights for west of the Rockies
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
for $1,500 and then sold the west coast rights to Wayne Schlotthauer of Lassen Foods in Chico, California
Chico, California
Chico is the most populous city in Butte County, California, United States. The population was 86,187 at the 2010 census, up from 59,954 at the time of the 2000 census...
for $18,000. Lassen was founded from a health food bakery run by Schlotthauer's father-in-law. The Hurlingers, Goodbrads, and Schlotthauers were all Adventists, and it is possible that Gentry was a lapsed Adventist who was familiar with the earlier granola.
In 1972, Jim Matson, an executive at Pet Milk (later Pet Incorporated) of Saint Louis, Missouri, introduced Heartland Natural Cereal, the first major commercial granola. At almost the same time, Quaker
Quaker Oats Company
The Quaker Oats Company is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago. It has been owned by Pepsico since 2001.-History:Quaker Oats was founded in 1901 by the merger of four oat mills:...
introduced Quaker 100% Natural Granola. Within a year, Kellogg's had introduced its "Country Morning" granola cereal and General Mills
General Mills
General Mills, Inc. is an American Fortune 500 corporation, primarily concerned with food products, which is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The company markets many well-known brands, such as Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Totinos, Jeno's, Pillsbury, Green...
had introduced its "Nature Valley."
In 1974, McKee Baking (later McKee Foods
McKee Foods
McKee Foods Corporation is a privately held United States company headquartered in Collegedale, Tennessee.-History:McKee Foods began in 1934 in Chattanooga when O.D. McKee purchased Jack’s Cookie Company....
), makers of Little Debbie snack cakes, purchased Sovex. In 1998, the company also acquired the Heartland brand and moved its manufacturing to Collegedale. In 2004, Sovex's name was changed to "Blue Planet Foods."
Granola bar
A variety of the granola bar is the "chewy granola bar." In this form, the time during which the oats are baked is either shortened or cut out altogether; this gives the bar a texture that is chewier than that of a traditional granola bar. Some manufacturers, such as Kellogg's, have been shown to prefer usage of the terms "cereal bar" and "snack bar" to refer to them.
A similar bar exists in Germany and the United Kingdom, known as a flapjack or muesli bar, and other varieties on names with similar ingredients, such as cereal bars, oat bars, and snack bars, exist.