John Myers
I like to eat fresh grain muesli. I ground the grains myself and soaked them in water the night before. My husband recently prepared the fresh grain porridge and put the ground cereal with yoghurt and fruit in the fridge overnight. Can you do that too?
Fresh grain mueslis are made from unheated, ground or crushed grain. This can contain disease-causing (pathogenic) germs, such as Shiga toxin-forming E. coli, which can be transferred to the grain through the faeces of wild animals.
Although the risk of becoming infected is not very high, it should not be underestimated either.
Pathogenic germs are not killed by the overnight soaking process. If you store the porridge in the refrigerator, these germs have no chance of multiplying, but they don’t die either.
For safety reasons, cereals should therefore be better heated before consumption. We therefore advise against the preparation of fresh grain muesli.
However, if you still want to eat fresh grain porridge, then you should soak the meal for a maximum of one night, and only do so in the refrigerator. You should only keep the finished porridge with other ingredients in the fridge for a short time – if at all. We also recommend this if the porridge contains yoghurt or sour milk, because the lactic acid it contains does not reliably kill the germs.
