Müesli

Müesli is an extremely healthy food. It combines oats with nuts and fruit. Now that it is Summer with so many excellent fresh, organic fruits available it’s like peak müesli season.

How to make müesli: Start with quick oats. You only need 1-2 handfuls to serve as the base. Raw rolled oats are good for you but because of the fiber content eating too much can be a strain on your digestive system. You definitely want to go with quick oats and not regular oats.

It is this author’s opinion that raw rolled oats are much better than the baked or toasted rolled oats found in granola. Müesli is superior to granola. Because granola is typically loaded with sweetener it is more immediately gratifying than müesli but that doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse. It’s quite sad to see so much space in “health” food stores devoted to granola.

Because müesli is superior it is not as immediately gratifying and it communicates well with your body so your body knows how much it wants and how much it doesn’t want, unlike disgusting granola. Any time something is artificially sweetened is screws up the communication with the body and is basically fattening as hell.

I like to keep bowls of nuts out on my counter and when I’m making müesli I then will take a small amount and add them to it. I currently have one bowl of walnuts and another of sprouted almonds. Having them out on the counter, they can also serve as a very powerful little mini snack of which it’s important to eat only a small amount as too many nuts are irritating to the digestive system, although in small amounts they are extremely beneficial. I completely avoid cashews and pistachios.

I almost always use organic Thompson raisins in müesli. Now that it’s Summer and there are so many other fruits available, I cut down on raisins.

As for other fruit – you can add so many things. Bananas are good all year round. And of course you can add any tree fruits: peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, etc. Blueberries are excellent in müesli.

One thing I like about eating müesli is that it spaces out my eating of fruits. For example I may only use 1/4 or 1/3 of a banana in one bowl of müesli. Similarly, I may only use a portion of a peach or nectarine. So müesli helps extend my fruit and I tend to enjoy it more in the smaller portions mixed in with müesli.

You can also get exotic with müesli and add raw cacao powder to it. I don’t do this often but sometimes I’m in the mood. You can obviously add other things such as nutmeg, cardamon, or high-quality cinnamon.

Finally, I always add either unsweetened organic soy milk or unsweetened organic almond milk to müesli. Although you could go the trad Euro way and use milk or yogurt, I recommend going the California way and keeping it vegan.

Müesli is inexpensive, easy to prepare, and very healthy.