Of hearts and muesli

Somehow the February issue of the Heart-to-Heart Email Newsletter landed in my e-mail in-tray. The bulletin is put out by WomenHeart, the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. I learn that February is Heart Month in the US (also Canada). I also learn that - contrary to the accepted wisdom that heart attacks are mainly a male thing - plenty of women get heart attacks, in their 30s, 40s and up.

Perusing further, I spot recipes described as “totally scrumptious and completely guilt-free”. They are also high-fiber. Eating more high-fiber meals each week helps lower cholesterol, says the newsletter. And that pertains to everybody; it’s not just a woman thing.

I’m all for healthy eating. Healthy eating may be a useful prevention tactic but quite frankly it makes me feel so fantastic that as far as I’m concerned, eating healthy every day - with ‘treat days’ so I don’t feel like an abstainer from the full smorgasbord of life - is the way to go.

Since I’m always on the look-out for new tasty healthy dishes, I lost no time logging on to www.womenheart.org to check out those tempting, good-for-you recipes for Green Tea Oatmeal Pancakes and Spiced Salmon Tacos. That’s when I saw a tie-in to this blog about food in Switzerland: a recipe for Fruity Muesli.

Bircher muesli, that great Swiss invention! We have Dr. Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867-1939) to thank for it, a pioneer in matters nutritional. It’s taken mainstream medicine nearly a hundred years to fully embrace what Bircher-Benner espoused, e.g. cut back on meat-eating and white bread. Instead, eat more vegetables and fruit, and of course muesli (invented some time around 1900), and combine with lots of exercise and communing with nature for best results.

It is said that the good doctor got his ideas from observing the way shepherds lived in the Swiss Alps. His Zurich clinic is now the Zurich (as in the insurance company) Development Center, www.zurich.com/developmentcenter; click on About Us.

If you do a Google search under “Bircher muesli” you’ll find hundreds of recipes. You can even watch people preparing muesli, like Louis and Fred on YouTube.

Dry muesli cereal - one cereal or a mixture of different cereal flakes - can be mixed with things like nuts and raisins. By adding milk or yogurt to moisten it, and all kinds of fresh fruit, you turn the basic cereal mix into a delectable dish. It makes a great lunch, too, in addition to being a delicious breakfast op.

Before I go any further, here are some of the classic cereals used in a single-cereal or mixed cereal mix:

• barley, orge, Gerste
• millet, millet, Hirse
• oats, avoine, Hafer
• rye, seigle, Roggen
• wheat: hulled wheat, épeautre, Dinkel; whole grain wheat, froment, Weizen

Soy flakes are also included in some mixes, and can also be bought separately.

Louis and Fred’s muesli consists of oat flakes, natural yogurt, orange juice, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and honey. WomenHeart’s Fruity Muesli is also made with oats to which soymilk, flaxseeds and fruit dried and fresh are added. The possibilities are endless.

You can get different single-variety flakes as well as pre-pared cereal mixtures - organic and not - in the cereal section of Swiss supermarkets.

A word of caution, though: pre-prepared muesli mixes, including organic, may contain things purists frown on, like refined sugar or even E numbers. If you really want the whole organic + everything-else-good-for-you enchilada, er, muesli, make sure to mix your own out of organic single-variety cereal flakes, or buy one of the health food store mixes. And of course if you have any allergy issues with certain cereals, check out with an expert what you can and cannot do on the muesli front.

The picture of three glass hearts is by Petr Kratochvil, www.publicdomainpictures.net