How Did That Happen?

This week I take a look at cereal! Come along for the ride as I ask, cereal, how did that happen?

Wikipedia defines cereal as any grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain. 

The roman goddess Ceres, who was the protector of grain is where we get the term cereal.

Roman Goddess Ceres

The early neolithic or New Stone Age shows evidence that they would process grains all the way back then too.

Wheat originated in the cradle of civilization in the Tigris & Euphrates river valley near present day Iraq.

Archeological findings show that wheat first occurred in parts of Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, the Levant, Israel, Egypt and Ethiopia. Domesticated Einkorn wheat in Turkey dates back to 9,000 B.C.

Evidence of the existence of wild barley (Hordeum sp) goes as far back as 23,000 B.C. Cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent after about 8000 BC.

Wheat reached Greece, Cyprus and India by 6500 BC, Egypt shortly thereafter, followed by introductions in Germany and Spain by 5000 BC. 

The early Egyptians were developers of bread and with the use of oven technology, developed baking into one of the first large-scale food production industries. 

By 3000 BC, wheat had reached England, and Scandinavia. A millennium later it reached China. Recent findings of wheat grains in the Kunming area of Yunnan Province, China date the wheat at around 4000 BC. 

These processed grains would be used to make things like oatmeal, porridge, gruel and other warmed grain based cereals. This would continue for thousands of years until civilization modernized. The idea of breakfast in the household has changed over time. In the Middle Ages breakfast could be something as simple as a chunk of bread and a bit of wine. As time went on other things were added to the menu such as anchovies and fish fillets.

Ferdinand Schumacher Ale Anchovies – smoked or preserved. Beef Beer Bread – any variety. Cheese Herring – smoked or preserved. Salmon – smoked or preserved. Salt Fish – preserved pieces of filleted ling, hake, cod, or whiting. Sop in Wine – toast or bread in wine. Trout – smoked or preserved. Wine

One that may be well known is the kippered herring  from Britain. It was breakfasts like these that were popular when inventors went looking for more healthy breakfast alternatives.

Modern Cereal

Food reformers in the 19th century called for cutting back on excessive meat consumption at breakfast. They explored numerous vegetarian alternatives.

Ferdinand Schumacher, a German immigrant, began the cereals revolution in 1854 with a hand oats grinder in the back room of a small store in Akron, Ohio. 

Ferdinand Schumacher was born in Celle, Hanover, Germany March 30, 1822, son of a merchant. He completed high school locally, and apprenticed in the grocery business. He pursued this, and clerked in a manufacturing business until age 28, when he and his brother Otto emigrated to the United States.

He farmed for two years and established a grocery trade in Akron, Ohio in 1852. Remembering that back in Germany he used to grind oats and sell them as breakfast food. 

He decided to do the same in Akron, Ohio and in 1854, Ferdinand Schumacher started selling his oatmeal, and from there it branched out to the rest of the United States His German Mills American Oatmeal Company was the nation’s first commercial oatmeal manufacturer. 

In 1877, Schumacher adopted the Quaker symbol, the first registered trademark for a breakfast cereal. 

In 1863, James Caleb Jackson, a religiously conservative vegetarian who ran a medical sanitarium in western New York, created a breakfast cereal from graham flour dough that was dried and broken into shapes so hard they needed to be soaked in milk overnight.

He called it granula. John Harvey Kellogg, a surgeon who ran a health spa in Michigan, later made a version and named it granola. 

KELLOGG

John Harvey Kellogg

John Kellogg, a staunch vegetarian who only wore white and was especially interested in bowel movements, advocated eating everything from seaweed to yogurt to nuts and grains—a radical turn from America’s meat-centric diet. 

He believed that eating meat was dangerous to the health of humans.

He also had other ideas for where you could put yogurt as well. They were said to be doing yogurt enemas at his sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Which some have called the “birthplace of the American breakfast.”

A sanatorium is defined as an establishment or facility offering usually long term medical care and/or treatment.

Kellogg took over the management of the Battle Creek Sanatorium in 1876 with his bother Will, known as W.K. Kellogg. W.K. is the one credited with adding milk to cereal. 

We owe this man a trophy, and his own day on the calendar. He was always the second fiddle to his older brother. This was partly because when he was growing up he needed glasses but didn’t know it so the people around him thought he was dumb.

A-lot of famous people frequented this place. Including the original J.C. Penney and Booker T. Washington. Amelia Earhart and Thomas Edison as well as Henry Ford. He treated Presidents of the time as well.

C.W. Post

John Kellogg was always coming up with different treatments and inventions. He is said to have created the first exercise tapes. He would put them on records. While recording exercise techniques for the public he would have a brass behind him.

As stated earlier, Kellogg had worked on a perfected his recipe for granola by combining flour, oat meal and corn meal. He would mix it together, bake it into dry flat cakes and then smash them. Hiking trails would never be the same again.

Of course, most of us know the Kellogg name from Corn Flakes, which, the story goes, were first invented at “The San” after some dough turned stale and they tried to bake it anyway. It was originally made with wheat but switched to corn because it tasted better.

W.K. Kellogg had the idea to put sugar on the corn flakes. So without this guy we would be eating dry, plain cornflakes. Which might be fine for some people, but I’m a Frosted Flakes guy.

Using the same idea, a former Kellogg patient, C.­W. Post, created Grape-Nuts, which would become the first popular product to offer a discount coupon. C.W. Post used to be a patient at Kellogg’s sanitarium in Michigan.

Not only was he a patient, but when Post first came to Battle Creek he was very sick and had no money. So he would work off some of debt from his room in the kitchen with W.K. Kellogg. 

He basically spent time with the original inventor. Wrote his recipes down and then left and started his own business selling the exact same thing.

In 1897 Post debuted Grape Nuts which he called that because they used grape sugar. That combined with the crunchiness of the granola is what gives us the name.

In 1906 W.K. Kellogg created the Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake Company. This would go on to become Kellogg’s. 

Other cereals through the years: 

1930s The Ralston Purina company introduced an early version of Wheat Chex, calling it Shredded Ralston. It was intended to feed followers of Ralstonism, a strict, racist social movement that included a belief in controlling the minds of others.

At their height they had about 800,000 followers and it was their idea that they were creating a new caucasian world that would castrate all non white males. Sorry if it just got dark, but that’s where this Information leads you sometimes.

1940s Cheerios appear as CheeriOats but were quickly renamed.

1950s After World War II, cereal consumption increased with the advent of the baby boom, and sugar became a selling point. Kellogg’s invented Frosted Flakes and its pitchman, Tony the Tiger, and a new era of television advertising began.

Tony the Tiger was introduced in 1952. He initially had a whole gang of other animal friends that helped to market Kellogg but after a year they got rid of them.

He was designed by a group of animators that used to work for Disney and they designed other things like the snap crackle pop elves from rice crispy treats and one of the Baltimore orioles logo.

Work Cited

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/22/dining/history-of-cereal.html

https://www.seriouseats.com/history-of-breakfast-cereal-mascots

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/03/10380335/breakfast-cereal-history-future-strange-facts

https://www.history.com/news/cereal-breakfast-origins-kellogg

https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-of-cereal/

https://cablevey.com/what-is-the-origin-story-of-the-breakfast-cereal/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_the_Tiger

https://www.britannica.com/topic/breakfast-cereal

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2225411015000401

https://www.postconsumerbrands.com/post-cereal-history/