04/12/2025
When I started making granola 10 years ago, my goal was to make granola that people would actually eat, didn’t have unnecessary chemicals, and was priced at a point that people could afford.
Because of that, I try to use ingredients without added chemicals. I only use olive oil (no seed oils), real butter, unsulphured dried fruit (no sulfur dioxide), natural coconut (no sodiium metabisulfate), crispy rice without malt flavoring, etc.
One thing that I never worried about were oats. Oats are the main ingredient in all granola. In mine, oats make up about 45% of each bag. But oats are not a Roundup Ready crop, so I always assumed that when I was buying oats and the ingredients listed simply said “oats” and nothing else, that’s what I was getting.
About 5 months ago I learned that while oats are not a GMO crop, most industrial farms spray the oats with glyphosate prior to harvest to dry them out. I had no idea. It’s claimed that “most” of the glyphosate is removed during dehulling of the oats, but the fact remains that some amount of glysophate is found in all commercial oats. I honestly felt betrayed.
Once I knew this, it put me in kind of a “Hotel California” situation, because now that I know, I can never UN-know.
Corporations frequently do things to maximize profits without regard to the consumer. I realized that if I did nothing, I would be, in effect, just like them. But that’s not who I am, and that’s not the kind of product I want to make.
In searching for an alternative, I came across Azure Standard. Through them, I could purchase organic oats for slightly more than I had previously been paying for oats (the cost of which I could absorb). So, as of 3 months ago, all Staat’s Granola uses ONLY organic oats. And that will not change.
Just thought you might want to know.
Update: Since the change, I have also discovered that many oats are treated with another pesticide called “chlormequat”, which is used on oats to keep the plants from bending over prior to harvest. While not legal in the United States (yet; the USDA is considering making it legal), it is legal in many other countries, and oats sprayed with it are routinely imported into the United States. And yes, it is just as toxic as its name would suggest. So none of that s*** either.
