Application of Wet Granulation Processes for Granola Breakfast Cereal Production

The present review discusses the attributes of granola breakfast cereal produced by wet granulation. Granola is an aggregated baked food product often eaten as a breakfast cereal containing natural ingredients such as oats, nuts and honey. Wet granulation is a unit operation where fine primary particulate materials (powders, grains etc.) agglomerate in the presence of a liquid binder to produce larger granules. High-shear granulation and fluidised bed granulation are the most common mode of wet granulation. Granulation prevents the segregation of co-agglomerated components, resulting in an improvement in content uniformity. In addition, the compression and dissolution characteristics, product attractiveness of the product are improved. The granulation process and operation conditions are discussed in detail and a case study employing granola production is presented.