Subject: Our Breakfast Birthright

From: [email-masked] (Gen. Halftrack)
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 1994 22:56:54 GMT

[email-masked] (Maui/Your Sisters House) writes:
> If the story behind Grape Nuts is not in the FAQ, would someone please 
> arrange that? I would rather the newcomers be able to read it without 
> having to ask something (that's been asked too often) that will get them 
> flamed... 

	It's not just a simple story about Grape Nuts, but an
exploration of how breakfast shaped us as Americans.  Our forefathers
(and mothers) gave their LIVES so that we could eat breakfast free
from tyranny and I daresay we are commemorating their Sacrifice
every time we Anoint the Flakes of Life with the milk of American
cows.

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    "In 1876, a typical middle-class breakfast demanded a heavy,
cooked meal:  beefsteak, bacon and eggs, fried potatoes, wheatcakes
and sausage, porridge, donuts, and fruits.  By 1915, many took
breakfast out of a box of ready-to-eat, "cold," brand-name cereal.
Part of this change in the everyday diet of Americans came about
because of the competition among health reformers, particularly
John Harvey Kellogg and C. W. Post, who, in the 1890s, launched the
breakfast-food industry in Battle Creek, Michigan.

    "Kellogg, a Seventh-Day Adventist, joined the city's Western
Health Reform Institute as its nutritionist, later heading and
re-naming it the Battle Creek Sanatorium, which thousands of health
seekers and food faddists affectionately called "the San."  Besides
prescribing large doses of bran, zwieback, Graham crackers, and
caramel cereal coffee for everyone, Kellogg advocated his own health
foods, such as Granola and "Granose," his variety of wheat flakes
developed in response to Henry Perky, a Denver vegetarian
restauranteur who created Shredded Wheat in 1892.

    "Earlier in the decade, C. W. Post had come to the "San" for
treatment of heart trouble.  He stayed nine months, but found no
relief and so, in 1892, he established his own health home, La Vita
Inn, where he banned tea, coffee, and physicians.  By 1895, Post
entered the health-food business, manufacturing a coffee substitute
(made from bran, wheat, and molasses) called Postum Cereal Food
Coffee, which became known to millions as Postum.  He next introduced
Grape-Nuts (1898).  In 1906, he also began marketing corn flakes that
he first called "Elijah's Manna," with a picture on the box showing a
raven dropping food into the hands of the prophet Elijah.  Complaints
from the clergy and the religious press forced him to change the name
to Post Toasties.

    "William K. Kellogg, John Harvey's brother, countered Post with a
corn-flake cereal that he named Kellogg's Toasted Corn Flakes, with
the punning slogan, "the sweet heart of the corn."  By 1915, American
stores stocked numerous cereals that were unknown thirty years before,
despite critics who called the new breakfast foods "shredded
doormats," "Gripe nuts," and "Eata-heapa-hay."

%A Thomas J. Schlereth
%T Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life
%I HarperCollins
%C New York
%D 1991
%P 219-220

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From: [email-masked] (Mike McNally)
Date: 28 Aug 94 13:26:29 GMT

[email-masked] (Gen. Halftrack) writes:
>"Eata-heapa-hay."

I'd buy this.

-- 
| GOOD TIME FOR MOVIE - GOING ||| Mike McNally <[email-masked]>       |
| TAKE TWA TO CAIRO.          ||| Tivoli Systems, Austin, TX:        |
|     (actual fortune cookie) ||| "Like A Little Bit of Semi-Heaven" |

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From: [email-masked] (Spatch)
Date: 28 Aug 1994 18:37:53 -0400

>[email-masked] (Gen. Halftrack) writes:

*munch munch* I think I already DID.

- spatch, so much for cereals with triple coupons -

-- 
_____         [email-masked]
|\ /| My idea of God is the Voltron Lions.  You got 5 different concepts, 5
| O | different colours, each serving a different purpose in society, but when
|/ \| need arose they'd join together to form a giant deity who could beat the        snot out of any demon who came in their way.