Muesli is an incredible energy source, not to mention one tasty ‘cereal’ – which can be life in a dish. And we don’t mean sugar-laden junk from the grocery store. We mean muesli that you make for yourself that is loaded with healthy and life-giving ingredients, not to mention being delicious.
The late John H. Tobe wrote an excellent article explaining the glories of muesli better than we ever can, plus he has an excellent recipe that is easy to assemble once you have all the ingredients at hand.
Probably the most frequent complaint that I’ve heard from people is that they lack energy. Men, women and children of all ages seem to have this common affliction. Some people just assume that it is natural and there is nothing they can do about it and carry on from there never showing a spark of life and just sort of dragging themselves through from day to day.
I came across a lady in New Zealand who told me that every day for years she had just dragged herself on from one day to the next. She was in her early 60’s when I met her and she just accepted it as one of these things that she had to live with until she died and there was nothing she could do about it. This was a tragic mistake. A genuine, tragic mistake because the woman didn’t have to suffer through all these years. What was even worse was that the woman was an intelligent woman in practically every way… she raised a family, she had everything to live for and her husband was an influential, wealthy lawyer, they has the most beautiful of homes — everything and yet she just had no energy. The doctor couldn’t tell her why and that was the way she lived and she didn’t care whether she lived or died. In fact, she told me that she didn’t care if she died that night.
Well I want to assure you that this chronic fatigue and lack of pep and energy are definitely not normal and they certainly are not an indication of health. The story I told you is a true story but the big tragedy is that it is multiplied hundreds of thousands of times in America today let alone in Britain and in other advanced nations throughout the world. I’m telling you here and now it doesn’t have to be and the remedy, the means of ending this is at hand and it’s as simple as eating a handful of living grains. I should also stress that this affects, as I mentioned at the start, people of all ages starting in their teens. Furthermore, let me tell you this. When this happens to you or anyone else you get sick, really sick. Basically you are suffering from malnutrition. Here you’ve been kidding yourself that you’re perfectly well fed because you eat the best and the richest and the most expensive of food.
Allow me to suggest that you may be eating what are normally considered proper foods in wide variety and still you’re lethargic and sort of dead to the world from the neck up. Yes, and from the neck down, too.
It is not my intent to try and give you a picture of the way the body acts and reacts to food and about the chemistry of the body and the machine the body is which most doctors and nutritionists try to pawn off on people to prove how smart they are and how much schooling the’ve had. All they succeed in doing when they finish is beclouding and fogging up the true picture and they haven’t convinced you nor themselves of anything.
Listen here, whether you eat three or four meals a day or whether you eat 6 meals a day or only 1 meal a day is of little consequence. It is what you eat. Let’s even take it a step further. You can eat all of the right foods… even if I told you what foods to eat to give you energy… yes, you can eat all of them and still have no energy and still feel as bad as ever.
So let’s start at the beginning. The energy goods are carbohydrates. Yes, people who eat lots of proteins seem to do all right too and foods generally contain protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins. All of these names that nutritionists throw at you to impress you are truly meaningless. What you need is live, whole food and that’s just what you do not get when you buy commercial food.
Normally speaking if you want energy you eat carbohydrates and grains are among the best of the carbohydrates. So the solution is an easy one, isn’t it? Just get lots of grains into your system. But yet if you took and fragmented or refined the carbohydrates and cooked them the chances of getting any genuine energy out of them are remote, if not absolutely nil.
If you are lacking in energy you can restore your vitality and whether or not you ever had any great strength you can be filled with vim. Now let me tell you of my 3-V breakfast cereal.
This formula is based upon the early Bircher-Benner Muesli system. The first time that I tried muesli my remark was, “If I’ve got to eat stuff like this to be healthy, then I don’t want to be healthy!”
I don’t expect to be given any laurels for a remark like that. In fact, I’m thoroughly ashamed of that remark. However, I’m not trying to hide it… that is what I said and that is what I am telling you that I said.
Of course, it so happened that the party who made this mixture for me at the time didn’t practice the best means and methods of preparation and there was no great attempt made to make it palatable. It was supposed to be good for you and that meant, it seems, i didn’t have to be appealing or tasty. Nevertheless, my remark was positively not justified. Later, why, I gained some knowledge and experience.
I studied the formula carefully and came up with the rhyme and the reason behind Dr. Bircher-Benner’s great introduction. He certainly was way ahead of his time, but it proved that mankind was slow in recognizing its true merit. Actually, from my reading it was the first time a man had recognized the value of raw food in the human diet. Therefore, I began to use it and I still couldn’t take it to my breast, so to speak. It was all right and I could eat it but it was a sort of a chore or should I say, a bore.
But I kept saying to myself, “I want health — I want it badly — so I’ll have to put up with a bit of food that isn’t so appetizing. So what if it doesn’t taste so hot?”
Then a more advanced thought occurred to me, “Why not try to make it palatable? You’ve got access to good food and you know a bit about it, so work on it.”
I did just that and I got my wife interested and we began a series of experiments. Every day we tried a new batch for breakfast. Sometimes we added and sometimes we subtracted. Sometimes we put more of this and less of that and other times we put less of this and more of that. Well, after monkeying around for about two years we came up with the answer to what I was seeking… (a) 100% nutrition, (b) palatability, (c) availability, In fact it was so good and tasteful to eat that there was a great temptation to overeat. The most important thing about this breakfast food, or 3- V cereal as I call it, is that it fulfills the basic needs of mankind. It is 100% nutrition and the items it contains are generally available everywhere. Therefore, no one need be undernourished, not even the poor.
Now if you were to go out tomorrow to one of the health food stores and buy some of the Bircher-Benner Muesli (it goes under various names) you’ll say, “What in blazes was Tobe squawking about when he said it didn’t taste good?”
But hold it a jiffy! The package of muesli that you buy is by no means anything like the original Bircher-Benner formula. In the first place, the Bircher-Benner original formula, like my 3-V cereal, was 100% alive. You can readily understand that if the Bircher-Benner Muesli that you buy in the store was 100% alive then they couldn’t keep it on the shelves, simply because it would soon be crawling with various living organisms, especially at store temperatures of 70 and 80 degrees. Even under refrigeration it does not keep well enough.
Now the ingredients contained in the store-bought Bircher-Benner Muesli are excellent but they are dead. In my 3-V cereal, as in the original Bircher-Benner Muesli, they are alive. Besides, most of these mueslis are imported and very expensive. The recipe I will give you will enable you to have a much, much better muesli at a very low price. Ounce for ounce it will cost you even less than any packaged crummy cereal on the market.
Anyway, when I wound up with my 3-V cereal, it contained a lot more than the Bircher-Benner formula. I made the additions and subtractions for definite, positive reasons. To begin with, we are living in America, not in Switzerland, and we have access to a much greater variety of food than they have in Switzerland. We must also recognize that Bircher-Benner, having discovered this about 100 years ago, did not have the benefit of the scientific knowledge that we have today… but basically the idea behind the Bircher-Benner Muesli was one of the greatest forward steps in the history of mankind. This is a sincere statement on my part.
I have learned the value of variety. I have learned that soils do become depleted, and most commercial grains are not thoroughly nutritionally balanced. Therefore, I felt that by having a wide selection of different grains from different areas of the country perfect balance could be attained.
One of the big shortcomings that I found in the Bircher-Benner Muesli was the lack of chlorophyll. I have taken the trouble to dig deeply and study the merits of chlorophyll and they are tremendous… I should say, earth0shattering. I pondered as to how to get this into a muesli. I found the solution and that’s why you find alfalfa herb in the formula.
I learned that the Scotch people had kept alive and virile and mentally alert on a diet that leaned fairly heavily on oats. That is why oats are one of the main ingredients of my cereal. I’ve also learned that oats are better flavored, creamier and more palatable than most other grains. I also found out that oats lose less in the cooking than most other grains, although this cereal is supposed to be used uncooked.
Then I began to study the ways and means of making it palatable. This was accomplished by adding fresh and dried fruits.
You may wonder why I put so many things together in one formula. The reason, I figured most people would if necessary deign to take those formula for one meal a day so I made it a one shot deal and I put all my eggs in one basket. I calculated that you might tackle my cereal for one meal a day, so I had one chance and I was going to hit as hard as I possibly could, with all my might, with that one blow.
If you are going to make this cereal I don’t care where you get the ingredients but my suggestion is that you get them organically grown, if possible. But, organically grown or not, make sure you get them.
Buy the best ingredients that you can. None of them is expensive and if dried fruits are too expensive, buy fresh fruits that are cheaper. If dried peaches or dried apricots are too dear, use more raisins, use more dried apples or dried pears or dates or figs.
I permit the use of a bit of milk, but not much milk is required if you will soak the 3-V cereal overnight. In fact, better still, you can soak a whole batch — enough to last a week — and keep it in the refrigerator. I don’t think it will suffer any harm and by having it soaked, a lot of water will be absorbed and you will required very little milk. Better still, do without any milk. I say that again, better still, do without any milk!
I have absolute and positive proof concerning the nutritive and the beneficial value of the 3-V cereal because thousands of people through the years have written or taken the trouble to tell me personally how much they have benefited from using it.
I am note trying to sell you the cereal. I am giving you the formula. Follow it as closely as possible and use it daily and feed it to your family. Even if you have to persuade, coax, cajole or club your children into taking it, do it for a few days. After that they’ll take it on their own and want or demand it.
If I do nothing else in my whole life for my fellow man but teach him the merits of 3-V cereal, I will have earned my reward wherever or whatever that amounts to.
I would like to clarify two points. First, the original Bircher- Benner Muesli contained ground nuts. I deliberately omitted nuts because they go rancid very quickly. Second, I now use and recommend only whole grains — not ground or cracked. I find that by soaking the whole mixture together all of the seeds soften enough to allow grinding and chewing without any great effort. Even hard cereals like barley and rice will soften enough to make them chewable and digestible.
Without boasting or exaggerating, it is the finest, the best balanced, the most nutritionous assembled food in the whole world. Be sure no flaked, rolled grains… all whole grains.
3-V CEREAL
Oats ………………… 10 parts
Barley ………………. 2 parts
Wheat ……………….. 2 parts
Rye …………………. 2 parts
Buckwheat ……………. 2 parts
Millet ………………. 2 parts
Sesame ………………. 1 part
Flax ………………… 1 part
Alfalfa Herb, Powdered … 2 parts
Dried Prunes …………. 2 parts
Dried Raisins ………… 2 parts
Dried Peaches ………… 1 part
Dried Apricots ……….. 2 parts
Dried Dates ………….. 1 part
Dried Figs …………… 1 part
Total — 15 Ingredients
Cut fruit into small pieces. Thoroughly mix fruits and grains together.
Don’t cook or heat… just add water — spring or well water preferred… let soak overnight.
Add milk, cold or warm (never hot), if desired. Eat 2 to 5 tablespoons every day or at least every other day.
It is most advisable to soak the ingredients because I want to return the water that was originally in the food and this can only be done by allowing it to soak. I get best results and the most satisfying flavor by making enough to last me a week and keeping it in the refrigerator and then every day or every other day taking out the quantity that I want for that meal. Following this recipe alone will correct the condition… that is the lack of energy and will provide you with energy, all day and all night, if you want it. Isn’t it tragic that most people in the world don’t know this simple answer to a very difficult problem?
Right now you’re thinking this is just too easy, it is just too simple and best of all it doesn’t even cost much money. You can buy the ingredients and mix the whole concoction yourself and it will only cost you pennies for a good big breakfast. Why use it only for breakfast… use it for lunch, use it for dinner and you can mix a batch of it to last you a week for less money than it will cost you to buy a big package of those cooked processed cereals that were proven by investigations to contain more energy in the package than in the food. So unless you act upon this suggestion you are depriving yourself of a body full of pep and energy.
When you eat food outlined in this recipe you are getting 100% nutrition. You are not just getting energy, you’re getting practically all of the minerals and vitamins that your body requires to maintain itself in perfect health. I have said for many long years that a handful of grains and a handful of greens can sustain you in perfect health indefinitely provided you don’t cook them or process them or chemicalize them.
Now one more point. The best energy food in the world can be knocked into a cocked hat if you drink a lot of booze and if you smoke a lot of cigarettes or cigars or smoke a pipe or take drugs. This food will work if you permit it to work, if you don’t interfere with it.
All right, now you’ve got the answer. Do something about it and be filled with pep all day, every day.
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