Clean Eating Granola

The problem with today is that most of our food is heavily processed. We are taught to be more concerned about the calorie amount rather than the ingredients that are in an actual product. The problem with that is that most ingredients in our food today contains chemicals and preservatives. Most products wont say that they contain GMOs, but they will list chemicals and preservative that are likely produced with GMO foods. Once I figured that out, I changed the way I purchase my groceries completely.

I started with something as simple as my green smoothies. I looked through the list of ingredients that I add in my daily smoothies  and one common preservative that came up multiple times was citric acid. Before I thought nothing of it and would buy products that contained it, but with GMOs being in most products I try my best to avoid it now. Citric acid is a common preservatives that we can find in multiple products, but do we really know what’s in it? If you do, please let me know!

So the next time I went to the store I specifically looked for frozen fruits that contained no citric acid or other preservatives. Luckily that was easy to find at the stores I frequent. I began with my smoothies and started to clean out my snacks next.

So when it came to my snacks I switched out the candy-bars and chips to  seeds, dried fruit and nuts. This week though i decided to switch it up and make granola. This is basically an everything but the kitchen sink type granola but all the ingredients used are either organic,raw and unsalted and contains no additional chemicals or preservatives. Check out the recipe below:

Clean Eating Granola

• 2 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 1/2 stick of unsalted organic pasture-fed butter
• 3 tbs flax-seeds
• 2 tbs chia seeds
• 1/3  dried apricot (chopped)
• 1/3 dates(chopped)
• 1/3 dried cranberries
• 1/3 raw unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1/3 raw unsalted pumpkin seeds
• 1 cup raw almonds
• 1 cup raw pecans
• 1/3 cup of peanuts
• 1 cup of honey

(FYI: To make this vegan friendly replace the butter with coconut oil and the honey with maple syrup.)

1. Preheat the oven to 350degrees. Grease and line a sheet of parchment paper on your baking pan.
2. Melt the butter and honey in a saucepan. Add all the remaining ingredients and mix well.
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking pan and bake in the preheated oven for about 10-20 minutes. Remove when brown and toasted. When cooled store in an airtight container.

Eat as is or sprinkled on oatmeal, cereal, and even yogurt.

P.S.: If you’re wondering where you can find these ingredients that are raw and unsalted. Trader Joes, Whole Foods and Publix sell most of these by the pound or in bulk bins. Remember whatever you do, read the ingredients!

Happy Baking!