How To Make Your Own Healthy Trail Mix, and Why Raw and Organic is Better | Vegan

Have you ever made your own trail mix? Or do you buy them pre-made?

I’ve been making my own trail mixes for a while now. It is after all, very easy to make, but there’s also another reason why it’s best to make it ourselves.  Let’s consider this, and then I’ll share with you my recipe to make your own healthy raw trail mix.

Why avoid commercial trail mix?

I discovered a few years back about the added chemicals on dried fruits and trail mix. A lot of dried fruits have synthetic sulphites on them, a chemical that more and more people are increasingly becoming allergic to (although some foods naturally produce a small amount of sulphites, the kind that is used in prepared foods is synthetically made — i.e., NOT natural). Myself included.

I always knew that my face would get red when I’d drink wine, especially white, but I’ve never paid too much attention, mostly because I’ve been eating from-scratch and healthy for so long, until last year when I was in Europe, and I wanted to eat those little cornichons as a treat. I couldn’t find any organic ones, so I bought a small bottle of non-organic cornichons at the grocery store to put in our sandwiches. All of the rest of the ingredients were organic and I had it in the days previous to that. Within 5 minutes after eating my sandwich, my face was red as a beet, swollen a bit, and burning!!! My face was on fire! I wondered why it was doing that, so I started going through all the ingredients of my sandwich, until I realized that the only new part of that sandwich were the baby pickles (cornichons). I looked at the ingredient list, and there it was… the last ingredient: sulphites! Since this event, I’ve had a couple of other food-related allergic reactions with other ingredients that contained sulphites.

Also, unless you’re buying organic trail mix, these would be made with nuts that have been sprayed with pesticides/herbicides, etc. That is toxic for us and is also killing the bees (almonds grown in California are one of the worst culprits for that), and, unless these nuts come from outside of the U.S., they would’ve been irradiated. In case you’re not familiar, irradiation is like pasteurization, they heat the food to a high temperature that makes them sterile. All the nutrients are dead. Irradiated almonds cannot be sprouted. On top of irradiation, most of the commercial trail mixes have roasted nuts. Just in case if there were any nutrients or enzymes left in the nuts, they are now dead, plus roasted nuts go rancid pretty fast, so we end up eating nutrient-deficient and rancid oil nuts. Not very appealing and definitely not as healthy as eating raw organic nuts. 😉

Some other foods and drinks which contain sulphites:

• Canned or frozen fruits and vegetables
• Fruit or vegetable juices
• Jams, jellies and other preserves
• Dried fruits or vegetables
• Cereal, cornmeal, cornstarch, crackers and muesli
• Potatoes which are dehydrated, mashed, peeled and pre-cut
• Tomato pastes, pulps and purees
• Condiments like ketchup, mustard, and relishes
• Vinegar
• Alcoholic and non-alcoholic wine, beer and cider
• Baked goods like granola bars
• Deli meats, hot dogs and sausages
• Dressings, gravies, sauces and soups
• Dehydrated fish, crustaceans and shellfish
• Noodle and rice mixes
• Soy products

You may also find sulphites in items like gelatin or pectin, sweeteners like dextrose, glucose solids and syrup or molasses and even in medications and pharmaceuticals!

Sulphites may be labelled as:

• Potassium bisulphite
• Potassium metabisulphite
• Sodium bisulphite
• Sodium dithionite
• Sodium metabisulphite
• Sodium sulphite
• Sulphur dioxide
• Sulphurous acid
• Sulphites
• Sulfiting or sulphating agents

(Source: EatRightOntario.com)

So how do I get my trail mix?

I make a big batch for my husband in an airtight glass container that he keeps at his desk, and he can just munch on it every day as a snack. It takes 2 minutes to make!

Just make sure to buy raw & organic nuts and dried fruits!

Enjoy!

ECP xo

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How To Make Your Own Trail Mix | Vegan

Course: Snack

Cuisine: Canadian

Prep Time: 2 minutes

Total Time: 2 minutes

Servings: 8 servings

Very important to buy raw & organic nuts.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup European almonds raw organic
• 1/4 cup walnuts raw organic
• 1/4 cup hazelnuts raw organic
• 1/4 cup cashews raw organic (if you wish to add a roasted element to your mix, you could buy pre-roasted organic cashews)
• 3 Tbsp pumpkin seeds raw organic
• 2 Tbsp sunflower seeds raw organic
• 3 Tbsp organic raisins
• 3 Tbsp organic dried cranberries (no sugar added)
• 2 Tbsp dried goji berries (these will add a nice crunch to your mix and are super healthy)
• 3 Tbsp organic semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 tsp unrefined sea salt

Instructions

1. Simply mix everything in a large mixing bowl, and transfer to a glass airtight container to keep.
2. Will stay fresh at room temperature for a while, but if you can, keep it in the fridge to preserve maximum freshness.

Recipe Notes

Look for European almonds to make sure they are raw.

Note: I do not believe anyone should worry about counting calories, but here is the nutritional information for one serving
Calories: 197kcal | Fat: 14g | Saturated fat: 2g | Sodium: 76mg | Potassium: 224mg | Carbohydrates: 16g | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 6g | Protein: 4g | Vitamin C: 0.6% | Calcium: 30% | Iron: 1.7%