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Muesli Recipes: Make Your Own Homemade Muesli!

Muesli is an inexpensive and flavorful way to get your daily grains. Learn how to make homemade Muesli with these five easy recipes.

Okay, it has a funny sounding name. But if you are looking for a high-energy, whole-grain food that will also help you get your daily dose of healthy fats and soluble fiber, and fuel your training and workouts, you have to try a bowl of Muesli … or two bowls.

Store-bought Muesli can be expensive (a 1 lb, 18-serving bag, for instance, can cost nearly $5 dollars) so it really pays off to make it yourself. Also, making your own Muesli allows you to customize the recipe based on your own particular preferences. 

And making homemade muesli is also easier than making homemade granola, since you don’t have to bake the mixture in the oven. Basically, you take the Meusli recipe ingredients, toss them together in a bowl and bag it. That’s it. It’s really that simple.

But before we actually get to the Meusli recipes, let’s take a look at the history of this cereal, as well as the health benefits that make this a great fitness food.

The Muesli Story

Muesli (pronounced muse-lee) is a breakfast cereal that has been popular in Europe — especially Switzerland — for over 100 years. It’s made from raw, rolled whole grains like oats, barley, rye, triticale, and wheat and typically contains nuts and dried or fresh fruit.

Muesli was developed by the Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner around 1900 to serve to patients in his hospital in Zurich. The diet that Bircher-Benner prescribed to his patients was heavy on whole-grains and fresh fruits and vegetables, and Bircher-Benner came up with idea of Muesli after being served a similar dish during a hike in the Swiss Alps.

While popular in Switzerland and parts of Europe for decades, it wasn’t until the health food movement of the 1960s that this tasty and uber-nutritious cereal started to gain fans in the United States. Since then, Muesli has become much more widely available not only in health food stores, but also in mainstream markets and grocery stores.

In the late-80s, Kellogg even tried to cash-in on the healthy reputation of Muesli by developing a boxed, cold cereal version of muesli called Mueslix. Unfortunately, the cereal shared very little in common with the traditional Muesli recipe, and instead had more in common with Corn Flakes than with the whole-grain masterpiece from Switzerland. Kellogg still markets Mueslix in the US and Canada, although their version is a pale-imitation of the real deal.

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Five Healthy Breakfast Ideas from Answer Fitness®

A healthy breakfast can help you stay energized during the day and keep the pounds off. Try one of these healthy breakfast ideas to jump start your day.

Why make time to eat breakfast?

Because it makes good fitness sense.

Research indicates that people who regularly eat breakfast may have less body fat and are less likely to overeat during the rest of the day. More importantly, when they lose weight, they tend to keep it off longer. 

Two studies in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association support this.

While they were funded by cereal companies, the science has been peer reviewed and seems solid: People who it breakfast have more success with weight loss over the long haul.

If the thought of trying to wrangle up a healthy meal in the morning causes you to shudder, relax. Regardless of your schedule or prowess in the kitchen, try one or more of these five breakfast ideas to get your morning off to a healthy start:

Healthy Breakfast Idea #1: Oatmeal

Oatmeal is a power food that belongs in every healthy pantry.

Inexpensive (a large container of oats will cost you less than $3), loaded with heart-healthy soluble fiber and plenty of complex carbs, oats are one of your best breakfast bets.  On their own, they can be bland, but dressed up with cinnamon, a touch of honey, dried or fresh fruit, or even a scoop of whey protein powder, they become something that transcends their humble reputation.

If you don’t care for the consistency, try Scottish Oats (which are grainier and have more texture) or provide a little crunch by adding chopped walnuts, pecans or sliced almonds.

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