A history of granola that comes to this!

"in the popular imagination, granola is to the world of mainstream breakfast cereals what folk music is to throwaway pop ... it's unprocessed and authentic"

This was going to be a more general article about the evolution of muesli, ending up with this very expensive granola, but then, as I was looking into this particular product I found a few other interesting things, so I'm going to be a bit more specific. I'll come back to the evolution of muesli another time. This is more about the evolution of granola - a subset of muesli.

First of all a little bit of background history. I must admit I thought that granola - otherwise known (to me anyway) as toasted muesli was a relatively modern product. But no - it was invented back in 1863 in America when it was called granula (from granular). The inventor was Dr. James Caleb Jackson who operated a spa called the Jackson Sanitarium. It was apparently somewhat similar to grape nuts, so not really granola as we know it. Then the Kellogg company copied it but changed the name to granola for copyright reasons. This granola was "a flour and grain biscuit that was crumbled into small pieces", so again, not really what we think of as granola.

Granola as we know it today came in with the hippies of the 60s when fruit and nuts were added to what was a base of oats, toasted in the oven with honey. I then went to the Irrewarra site and found a fascinating - and probably somewhat biased account of the history of granola in Australia. Some of it was factual and blowing their own trumpet, some of it was an attack on Uncle Toby's which owned the trademark 'granola' for a product they made when they first came here. This was like the original granola, not the crunchy, hippy one. Before I go on to that - did you know that Uncle Toby's is owned by Seventh Day Adventists, with the implication from Irrewarra, that they therefore do not pay company tax - because they are a charity - well church - I guess? So that's probably something I should look into sometime as well.

When Irrewarra and a whole lot of other cereal producers started marketing granola (the crunchy hippy version) Uncle Toby's threatened to sue them all and most of them stopped using the name, but Irrewarra challenged them and won, so now anyone can use it - it's a generic description of a product not a particular product it seems.

Irrewarra, who started out as a sour-dough bakery, now have their granola being sold by Woolworths in their Victorian produce area at $22.10 per kg. Yes $22, not $2.00! Who on earth buys granola at that price I wondered? According to the company it became one of Woolworth's biggest selling products in its Sydney Thomas Dux stores, and they claim that they are "now the biggest manufacturer of granola in Australia and growing". I had not heard of the Thomas Dux stores - we only have one here in Victoria in Armadale, but it must be an expensive gourmet food store, but owned by Woolworths. So maybe it is a big seller there. But in Woolworths supermarkets - which is where I saw it, surely not? I mean even the more expensive granolas are somewhat less than $10 - more than half the price, and the home-brand ones are down to about $5.00. I'm willing to bet it's not on sale in all their supermarkets - just the ones with an well-off demographic. I find it very intriguing. Why would you buy it? For surely if you are truly into being authentic you would make your own.

And I will conclude with a link to the wonderful Felicity Cloake in The Guardian who summarises all the authorities and shows you how to do it. As she says:

"if you make your own, you can add as much or as little sticky stuff as you like – and leave out all those horrible banana chips or dried pineapple chunks in favour of something you'll actually be pleased to spot on the spoon. In the case of this recipe, once you've got the base, the other elements are largely a matter of personal preference, so muck about with it."

Personally I don't eat cereals of any kind - largely because I don't like milk. But I do sometimes like granola or toasted muesli sprinkled on stewed fruit - I sometimes do this on those very rare occasions when I am staying in an expensive hotel with a huge breakfast buffet. And I have made it every now and then. It's pretty easy.