Disappearing clusters - what to do?

I'm not quite sure when David eats these granola clusters, maybe at lunchtime, but anyway he had almost run out, and so whilst we were shopping this morning we looked for some. None to be seen on the shelves anywhere.

He's very picky, my husband, when it comes to muesli-like things. Well lots of things when I think about it. Hates coconut, so if it's got coconut in it it's a no-no. Well that's what he says, but these do have coconut in them. Maybe he just picks the coconut out.

There were no Arnold's Farm products on the shelves in Woolworths, so we thought perhaps we had got it wrong and it was a Coles product. But no. A mystery to be followed up for today's post.

So what did I find when I got home. Well Woolworths still has it on its online store although when you check availability there is none anywhere near here. Brunswick North is the nearest location with stock it seems. So is this Woolworths stopping this particular product, or the suppliers having a shortage? And anyway - who is Arnold's Farm?

Well actually Arnold's Farm is a Freedom Foods brand. Freedom Foods is one of Australia's large food distribution and manufacturers. Arnold's Farm is a brand that it bought from Popina Foods. I have no idea who the original Arnold's Farm people were, nor can I find out who were the founders of Freedom Foods, although it seems to have started back in 1999. And they now export to China - including the Arnold's Farm products. Coles does stock Freedom Foods granolas and clusters but under their own Freedom brand and the Heritage Mill brand. So is Arnold's Farm being replaced by Heritage Mill? We shall have to see.

In the meantime what is David going to do? It's a mini disaster. He checked out all the other brands available, but, as I said, he's picky. So I said I would look into whether we could make our own. I know you can make granola but did not know whether you can make clusters. But of course you can. And in the process of checking this out I discovered the rather horrific amounts of bad things in these products. After all they're health foods aren't they?

"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". Seb Emina

Well it's obviously not unprocessed for a start. I mean it's made in a factory. I had already appalled myself with the amount of sweet things and fats in the few recipes that I found for home-made varieties, but when you look at the nutrient information and the ingredients on the back of the Arnold's Farm packet you can be even more appalled.

The above comes from the Woolworths site. I guess they may be compelled to publish this on their site, but anyway it's all very clear. So what should you note?

Sugar - 19.8g per 100g. Choice states that the standard for 'low sugar' is 5g. And whilst you might be bamboozled into thinking there was not a lot of sugar in the ingredients, you have to take into account that dried fruit contains a lot of sugar. Choice says watch out for dried fruit in the top three ingredients - well here it is number four, but the second is glucose. Then there's the added sugar you get from things like honey and maple syrup, not to mention plain old sugar. So a big black mark against Arnold's Farm with respect to sugar.

Then there's fat - 3g says Choice. Arnold's Farm has a total of 12.6g although to be fair only 2.4g of saturated fat. The fat doesn't seem to be coming from healthy seeds and nuts though - virtually all of it is from canola oil and coconut. So also not good.

I suspect the salt is too high too and I can't tell whether it is high in fibre or not, but my guess is that the oats provide that.

But we don't really look at this information do we? I remember when my children were young I used to feed them, for breakfast, weetbix, with some rice bubbles on top, and then some nutri-grain. I think the weetbix and rice bubbles were relatively low in sugar and other evil things, but certainly not the nutri-grain. Why did I give them the nutri-grain? Because the advertising and packaging implied that it was much higher in those other good things like thiamin than other cereals. Iron Man food was the slogan. It was much higher in sugar too. I now feel guilty about that, but tell myself that they only ever had a small bit of nutri-grain on the top. I'm an intelligent person - well I like to think I am - and yet I got sucked in by the advertising.

These days we are given much more information. Those tables above are on the back of the actual packet. But we don't read them do we? And somehow or other we automatically class clusters as muesli which we also automatically assume to be super healthy. But of course granola and clusters can't be healthy because:

"Granola involves the same base of cereals, seeds, nuts and fruit as muesli, but bound together with something sticky and sweet, and, more importantly, toasted for maximum flavour." Felicity Cloake

I had been pre-warned in a way about the high sugar and fat content, by the few recipes I found. I mean lots of them even had chocolate in them. The Yummly site has heaps of recipes and not one of them looked healthy to me. They looked more like cookies.

Personally I never eat granola or toasted muesli or clusters - whatever you like to call it. Well sometimes on those very rare occasions that I am in a luxury hotel with a breakfast buffet I will sprinkle some on the top of some fruit, and I suppose you could add some to a crumble topping, but otherwise its not for me. But then I don't like milk. And I suspect Felicity Cloake - who'd did the perfect granola - is a bit the same. I notice she just uses honey and dried fruit to add sweetness and coconut oil for the fat.

"sugary big-brand crunches were never going to appeal to my puritan sensibilities – if I'm going to indulge myself at breakfast time, it's going to involve something much more interesting than cereal, thank you very much." Felicity Cloake

So what did I learn about making your own clusters?

Various people suggested various 'tricks' to make the granola clump together. Egg whites - which Felicity Cloake uses, seems to be one of the standards, although several said it wasn't sticky enough and the clusters did not stay together. Now that I have read a few I think the real trick seems to be to grind a portion of your rolled oats into a flour which will make it all stick together. Plus you should make sure the liquid ingredients are very evenly mixed into the dry ingredients, you must not stir the granola whilst it is cooking and you should press it all together before putting it in the oven. One recipe suggests that when it is cooked you cool it, stir it, and then cook it some more.

Here are the three that I thought were most promising. Jools Oliver's recipe is not strictly for clusters - it's for granola - but I guess you could change the process slightly to make it clusters. And the good thing with all of them is that you can vary the ingredients to suit your tastes. Lots of sugar and fats in them though. On the left is a recipe from One good thing, The wholesome dish and Jools ' gorgeous granola