Heart Healthy Granola Recipe

Eating a Heart Healthy Breakfast

A healthy breakfast is a great way to start your day – and granola may be the most delicious way to take care of your heart.

Finding heart-healthy breakfast can be challenging, as many of those offered at your local grocery store or corner market are ultra-processed, high in calories, and low in nutrition. Even health food standards, such as packaged orange juice and yogurt, are not as healthy as you might think. Cereal contains processed grains and sugars that don’t add any nutrition, but do add plenty of unwanted calories. Other processed foods may even contain unhealthy chemicals.

Granola for Heart Health

Granola may be just what you need for a healthy weight and lower your heart disease and cancer risk. This healthy breakfast food has been around since 1896, when John Harvey Kellogg (of Kellogg’s Cereal fame) patented a recipe for cornmeal, flour, and oatmeal that would become the world’s first cold breakfast food.

Granola is usually rich in protein and fiber that help you to feel full and satisfied after eating, so you’ll eat less - and eating less could lead to heart-healthy weight loss. The protein, fiber and other nutrients in granola provide other heart health benefits. Fiber and other ingredients in granola may help fight systemic inflammation, for example, to address swelling and puffiness throughout your body. Systemic inflammation can lead to inflammation around your heart, and can affect the valves that control blood flow through your heart, affect the heart muscle, or cause problems with the tissue surrounding your heart.

This toasted treat usually contains a tasty mixture of rolled oats and nuts, along with sugar, honey or another sweetener to provide other health benefits. Coconut oil contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) that your body can use as instant energy, for example. Maple syrup and honey contain antioxidants that help fight heart disease.

Eating healthy foods like granola can even cut your cancer risk. Research shows that eating 90 grams (about 3 ounces) of certain whole grains, like those found in granola, every day reduces colorectal cancer risk by 17 percent. The protective value of whole grains is largely due to the fiber, vitamin E, selenium, lignans, phenols and other compounds found in whole grains.

Benefits of Fiber for Maintaining a Healthy Weight for Older Adults

Fiber helps lower cancer risk and reduce cardiovascular disease in several ways. First, high fibers foods fill you up so that you eat less, and this can help you maintain a healthy weight.

There are two types of fiber: soluble and insoluble. Both are important to maintaining a healthy weight and reducing the risk for heart disease, but each works in a different way.

Soluble Fiber

Soluble fiber attracts water and turns to gel in your digestive system. This type of fiber also slows down digestion, which means it slows down the rate at which your digestive system releases sugar into your bloodstream. This translates into lower blood sugar. Soluble fiber also lowers “bad” LDL cholesterol levels, reduces blood pressure, and decreases inflammation.

Oats and oat bran, barley, nuts and seeds, and some fruits and vegetables contain soluble fiber. Adding soluble fiber to a healthy breakfast can decrease your risk of heart disease, decrease your cholesterol levels, and get better control over your blood sugar.

Insoluble Fiber

Insoluble fiber adds bulk to stool and helps speed up digestion. Whole grains, wheat bran, and vegetables contain insoluble fiber.

Insoluble fiber also interacts with beneficial bacteria living in your gut to make butyrate, a chemical that provides energy to the cells living in your intestines and helps the cells stay healthy. In short, butyrate makes cancer tumors less likely to develop.

Heart Healthy Granola Recipe

Grains, dried fruit, seeds, puffed rice, spices, or nut butters can make a heart healthy recipe, but some granola ingredients can actually be bad for your heart. Many commercially-available granolas contain oils, preservatives and other chemicals, for example, and they may also contain a large amount of dried fruit that adds a whole lot of unwanted sugar. This granola recipe is infinitely healthier than anything you can buy, and making it may be easier than you might realize.

Before you start:

• Preheat your oven to 350°

• Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper

• Assemble your ingredients

Key ingredients include:

• 4 cups Rolled oats

• 1½ cup of raw nut mixture of your liking (pecans, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds are all good choices)

• 1 tsp salt – fine sea salt works best, but you can use any salt

• ½ tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 tsp vanilla

• ½ cup coconut oil – binding agent

• ½ cup maple syrup - flavoring

• ½ cup unsweetened coconut flakes

• 2/3 cup roughly chopped dried cranberries

Instructions

Combine the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

Measure maple syrup into a small cup and swirl the vanilla into the syrup. Pour the syrup/vanilla mix into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Add coconut oil last, as the granola will set up quickly after you add the coconut oil.

Spread the mix into an even layer and pop it into the oven. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, stir, and put it back into the oven to finish baking.

• Total bake time: 21 – 24 minutes

Perhaps the best thing about this granola recipe is that you can add anything you like to make it fit your needs, whether you would like to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, increase your fiber intake, or just be more heart healthy in general. Add almonds, sunflower or flax seeds to boost fiber intake, for example, or pop in a handful of nuts for heart healthy fatty acids.

Find more healthy and delicious recipes through Mighty Health! You can match with your very own health coach for personalized nutrition and exercise guidance geared towards those 50 and above. Get started today!