Granola

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Granola is a breakfast food and snack food consisting of rolled oats, nuts, honey, and sometimes rice,[citation needed] that is usually baked until crispy. During the baking process the mixture is stirred to maintain a loose, breakfast cereal-type consistency. Dried fruits, usually raisins and/or dates, are sometimes also added.

A bowl of granola.

Besides serving as food for breakfast and/or snacks, granola is also often eaten by those who are hiking, camping, or backpacking due to the fact that it is lightweight, high in calories, and easy to store; these properties make it similar to trail mix and muesli.

Granola is often eaten in combination with yogurt, honey, strawberries, bananas, milk, and/or other forms of cereal.[citation needed] It can also serve as a topping for various types of pastries and/or desserts.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] History

The names "Granula," "Granola," and "Ganolietta" were trademarked terms in the late nineteenth century United States for foods consisting of natural herb products crumbled and then baked until crispy[citation needed]; 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).[citation needed]

Granula was invented in Dansville, New York, by Dr. Caleb Jackson at the Jackson Sanitarium in 1894.[citation needed] The Jackson Sanitarium was a prominent health spa that operated into the early twentieth century on the hillside overlooking Dansville.[citation needed] It was also known as Our Home on the Hillside[citation needed]; thus the company formed to sell Jackson's cereal was known as the Our Home Granula Company.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] It too was initially known as Granula, but the name was changed to Granola to avoid legal problems with Jackson.[citation needed]

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[who?] claim to have revived or re-invented granola.

A major promoter was Layton Gentry, profiled in Time as "Johnny Granola-Seed".[1] 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.[citation needed] 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."[citation needed] Earlier in 1964, it had been bought by John Goodbrad and moved to Collegedale, Tennessee.[citation needed] 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.[1] Lassen was founded from a health food bakery run by Schlotthauer's father-in-law.[2] 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.[citation needed]

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.[2] At almost the same time, Quaker introduced Quaker 100% Natural Granola.[citation needed] Within a year, Kellogg's had introduced its "Country Morning" granola cereal and General Mills had introduced its "Nature Valley."[3]

In 1974, McKee Baking (later McKee Foods), makers of Little Debbie snack cakes, purchased Sovex.[citation needed] In 1998, the company also acquired the Heartland brand and moved its manufacturing to Collegedale.[citation needed] In 2004, Sovex's name was changed to "Blue Planet Foods."[4][5][6]

[edit] Granola bar

Close-up of a chewy granola bar showing the detail of its pressed shape.

"Granola bars" were invented by Stanley Mason[7][8] and have become popular as a snack. Granola bars are usually identical to the normal form of granola in composition,[citation needed] 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, parts of southern Europe, Brazil, South Africa and Japan.[citation needed] Recently, Granola has begun to expand its market into India and other southeast Asian countries.[citation needed]

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.[citation needed] Some[who?] question whether or not such a snack should be referred to as a granola bar; some manufacturers have been shown to prefer usage of the terms "cereal bar" and "snack bar" in order to refer to them.[citation needed]

[edit] Other uses of the term

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Time 1972
  2. ^ a b Klein 1978
  3. ^ Bruce 1995 p.244
  4. ^ Blue Planet Foods, Inc. history, http://www.blueplanetfoods.net/history.htm, retrieved on 2006-12-16 
  5. ^ Mixson, Jm (Mar 2002), "Heartland History" ([dead link]), Journal of the history of dentistry 50 (1): 35–9, ISSN 1089-6287, PMID 11944502, http://www.heartlandbrands.com/AboutHeartland/History.htm, retrieved on 2006-12-16 
  6. ^ McKee Foods Company History, http://www.mckeefoods.com/About_us/Company_History, retrieved on 2006-12-16 
  7. ^ http://www.nysun.com/article/26170
  8. ^ http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/mason.html
  9. ^ Tom Dalzell & Terry Victor. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, vol. 1. Routledge, London, 2006. p.909. ISBN 0-415-25937-1

[edit] References

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