Granola Bar Day

What the day is

Granola Bar Day is observed on January 21. The bar is a compressed form of granola, which is itself older and stranger than its wellness image suggests.

Origin and background

Granola began in nineteenth-century American health reform, developed at sanitariums promoting a plain vegetarian diet. The original was baked, broken up and often required soaking before it could be eaten at all, being far harder than anything sold now. The name itself was the subject of an early trademark dispute between competing health-food operations.

The bar came much later, as a convenience product, and its construction explains most of what is on the label. Oats will not hold together on their own, so something has to bind them, and that binder is almost always sugar in one form or another: syrup, honey, glucose, or a fruit concentrate. Chewy bars use a syrup that stays pliable, crunchy ones are baked further so the sugar sets hard. Fat, usually oil, coats the oats and stops the whole thing setting into a brick.

This is why the nutritional reputation and the nutritional content diverge so often. A bar can be built from perfectly good oats, nuts and seeds and still be held together by something close to confectionery, and the ones coated in chocolate or yoghurt are frankly sweets with oats in them. None of that makes them bad; it makes the health framing unreliable.

Reading the label is straightforward once you know what to look for. Sugars near the top of the ingredient list, or several different syrups listed separately, tell you what is doing the binding.

How to take part

• Read the ingredient list on your usual bar, particularly the first three entries.
• Make a tray at home, where you control the syrup and can cut it by a third.
• Press the mixture down hard before baking, which is what stops it crumbling.
• Add salt. Sweet oat mixtures taste flat without it.
• Toast the oats and nuts first, which is the single biggest flavor improvement.