Hey {{first_name}},
Granola is one of the biggest cons in the breakfast aisle.
It gets sold to you as the healthy option. Wholesome, nutty, good for you. But flip most boxes over and you'll find a mountain of sugar, dried fruit stacked way past a sensible portion, and more often than not a sneaky bit of inulin or chicory root fibre added in to bump up the fibre count. Which is basically a one way ticket to a bloated, gassy morning if your gut is sensitive.
So like most things, I just make my own.
This is my mixed nut and seed granola. Crunchy, lightly sweet, with melted dark chocolate running through it. It actually tastes like a treat but it's built to be kind to your gut and keep you full for hours rather than spiking you and dropping you an hour later.
The oats and seeds give you a proper hit of fibre that your gut bacteria love, the flax and walnuts bring omega 3s which are brilliant for gut and brain health, and the nuts and peanut butter add enough protein and fat to actually keep you satisfied. No 10am energy crash, no second guessing what's in it.
The recipe
Serves: 10
Prep time: 5 mins
Cook time: 15-20 mins
Ingredients:
220g rolled oats
25g flaxseeds
25g coconut
25g almond
25g walnut
25g pecans
25g pumpkin seeds
80g peanut butter
100g dark chocolate
25g sunflower seeds
80g maple syrup
3 tsp cinnamon
salt to taste
Method:
Preheat your oven to 160°C
Tip everything except the dark chocolate into a big bowl and mix it all together until the oats, nuts and seeds are evenly coated in the peanut butter and maple syrup
Spread it out flat on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes
Take it out and leave it to cool for 20-25 minutes (this is what gets you those crunchy clusters, so don't rush it)
Once it's cooled, chop your dark chocolate, stir it through and you're done
Why it works for your gut
The trick with granola isn't really the ingredients, it's the portion. Almost everything in here is naturally lower FODMAP, but the nuts, seeds and maple syrup can stack up if you sit there eating bowl after bowl. So the amounts in this batch are balanced to give you a proper bowl-sized serving that stays within lower FODMAP ranges, rather than something you have to eat by the teaspoon.
Oats, flax and the seeds give you a good mix of soluble and insoluble fibre that helps keep things moving gently and feeds your good gut bacteria. The flaxseeds and walnuts bring the omega 3s, and there's no hidden inulin, chicory root fibre and no dried fruit dose that tips you over the edge. Just whole food doing what it's supposed to.
The one thing I'd say is stick to a normal bowl-sized portion, especially if your gut is sensitive at the moment. A giant bowl of any granola, lower FODMAP or not, is a lot of nuts and seeds for your gut to deal with in one go.
Make it yours
Have a bigger portion if you know you tolerate the FODMAPs in the nuts and seeds (Fructans and GOS)
Swap the maple syrup for honey if fructose isn't a trigger for you
Leave the dark chocolate out if you want less calories and use 20g less peanut butter
Serve it with lactose-free milk or lactose-free yogurt to keep the whole bowl low FODMAP
Macros
Carbs: 30.5g
Protein: 8.2g
Fat: 17.8g
Kcals: 303
Fibre: 5.8g
If you’re loving these recipes:
If these recipes have been sitting right with you, no bloating, no racing to the loo an hour after eating, you'll know how rare that feeling is. The annoying part is holding onto it. You make something that doesn't set your gut off, then a few weeks later you can't remember if you left the onion out or used half the garlic, and you're back to guessing all over again.
That's why I built Olara. Every recipe from the book is in there, and I'll add a new one each month as I make them. Each recipe has a notes section so you can write down what you changed and what worked, somewhere you'll actually find it again instead of trying to piece it back together. You can turn any recipe into a shopping list and change the serving sizes too, so the ingredient maths sorts itself out.
First week's free, so if it's not for you, you can leave anytime (only on App Store at the moment but will be on android in a few weeks).
