August 31, 2020 • 58 mins
These often sugary, heavily advertised products all root from an ascetic health food movement in the 1800s. Anney and Lauren explore the strange history and gun-puffed science of breakfast cereals.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection for I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vocal Bam and today
we're talking about breakfast cereals. I love breakfast cereals. Oh
my gosh. This emotional reaction is exactly what this episode
is all about. And I love it so hard because
I don't. I mean, like, I think they're fine, but
(00:29):
but you have like this look on your face that
even thinking about these products is just a state of bliss. Yes. Yes,
And I think also in this is I I live
by myself, and so having milk around, I don't really
drink milk, so I just don't have it around, which
means I don't really have cereal anymore. And at our office,
(00:52):
I frequently think about how there's a lot of cereal there,
but we're not going there anymore. It's sometimes I consider like,
is it worth checking out there to take some cereal
for my own? Is it still good? Oh? Well, okay,
(01:12):
if I do make it over there and I do
a delivery for you, I will totally bring you some
cereal if such still exists. I know that we uh.
I know that our team has made some donations to
food banks of stuff that was in our pantries. So yes,
well I'm assuming and I'm happy to hope that the
unopened boxes went to that. But I don't say know
(01:34):
to to open boxes. I have qualms. Yeah, I think
I said before on the show. When I was a
college student, my dinner was usually a buffet of just cereals,
oh yeah, and occasionally fries for the catch up, healthy, healthy,
(01:56):
healthy um. And when I was a kid, we didn't
really have it for breakfast. It was a dessert item, yeah,
which I loved, and my favorites cinnamon toast crunch, that's
my absolute favorite, um. But also a big fan of
Captain crunch, Captain honey bunches of oaths with the almonds
(02:17):
all right, lucky charms, honeynut cheerios, and apple jacks. Uh.
And in my house, we had to fight over who
got to choose the cereal. And I remember my brothers
both loved corn pops and I just thought that was
the weirdest thing, like they're fine, what are you telling
me you're gonna choose corn pops over cinnamon toast crunch.
(02:40):
Get out of my house anyway, I present no argument.
This is clearly something you feel strongly about and I
encourage you to do so, Thank you, thank you. Oddly enough,
we did used to get Reese's puffs towards the end,
(03:00):
and I refused to eat them because I thought they
were too sweet. But I love Reese's and I love Cereal.
I don't know too much was going on there. I
guess I did have a Cookie Crisp board game, which
was very funny. Had it motorized like long because the
Cookie Crisp mascot is like that chef and he had
(03:22):
these long arms that was spin around and you had
to try to get the Cookie Crisp without getting hit
by the arms. That sounds frightening, but it's pretty intense. Yeah. Um,
And a friend of mine always got the knockoff frands,
and the knockoff frands like no shade to them at all,
because I've done a taste test where I couldn't really
tell the difference between them, but the names of them
(03:44):
made me laugh. Yeah, yeah, they're quite funny. I wish
I could remember. There's like honey Smacks, but they're the
name for honey Smacks. That's the knockoff frand used to
make me laugh a lot. Um and also the doughnut.
You remember the donut, Lauren, that the doughnut. Yes. So
when we got the idea for the show, originally we
were in Austin, Texas. Yes, one night we went super
(04:09):
late to Voodoo Donuts and my biggest I was like,
the biggest winer that we have to get the Captain
Crunch donut. I was adamant. And we got a bunch
of them, but that was the one that I was
super excited about. And we bring them back to the
house and they're about five of us. They're including Caroline
of a lady like the podcast and past host of
(04:31):
stuff I never told you. And I remember going excitedly
to open the donut box realizing the Captain Crunch donut
was missing, looking up and there was Caroline, and you
know what, she was eating it. And the biggest, the
biggest thing about it was she said it wasn't even
she didn't make an impression on her, she didn't even care.
(04:54):
But anyway, I was so upset and then you, Lauren,
one night, you like magically because I was. It was
kind of a drunken evening and you have presented me
with one of these stone nuts, and it was the
best thing oh, yeah, we were in Atlanta. We weren't
anywhere near two Donuts branch, so it must have seemed
very uh like and magical. Yeah, but it was like
(05:18):
months later, maybe longer than that, and I think like
a full year. Yeah. My friend Bridget, who travels frequently
for for work, had gone to Austin and had discovered that, um,
if you arrive at a branch of Voodoo Donuts or
at the time, I'm not sure what is going on
due to COVID right now, but but at the time,
(05:41):
if you arrived near shift change, they were trying to
cycle all of their stock. And so so she came
home to Atlanta with these like five gallon buckets filled
with Voodoo Donuts, which is just what they'll give you
(06:02):
for for like not a lot of dollars. Like they're
just like, yeah, I just give us like ten bucks
and take this bucket. Just take as many donuts as
you can off of our hands. And so she did. Um,
and I specifically went and picked some up because I
was like, I need to get this French donut for
any It's very important. And it was I remember like
(06:25):
just feeling so this cannot be and indeed it was delicious,
So thank you, Lauren, I'll still remember it. You're very welcome.
I'm glad to make at least one or two of
your donut dreams come true. Yes, wrong was righted that day?
(06:46):
Oh gosh um yeah. Oh. When I was a kid,
my my dad wouldn't let me have like like junk cereals,
like anything with that much sweetener, or like like fruit
flavoring or chocolate flavoring. But the two that he did allow,
we're like frosted miniweats and honeynut cheerios, And I'm pretty
(07:07):
sure that those aren't less egregious, like if you read
the labels, so I don't know. Strangely enough, perhaps the
cereal that I have the most nostalgia for is just
a bowl of plain rice crispies with a sliced banana,
because that's the thing that I would get at my
uh frequently aforementioned grandparents house when I would go and
(07:30):
visit during the summer when I was a kid. That's
pretty healthy take on that cereal. I know I've mentioned
it before, but one of my favorite things about rice
crispy treats is that, in theory has less sugar. But
like everyone I know, would just get like a not
not a spoonful, but like one of those whole fourth
cups of sugar. Yeah, yeah, we fell away. Yeah, sugar
(07:55):
does find a way, It's true. Um. Oh. And I
and another thing that I always associate with Cereal now
is so um in a in a In a previous
uh employment life, um, I was an editor um of
fiction and a copy editor for medical journal stuff like that.
And my my dear friend Adam P. Knave wrote this
(08:18):
novel about about three cartoon Cereal mascots like road tripping
through the multiverse to find their lost friend and themselves.
And I think it's like the second thing I ever
edited for money. Um so it holds a very dear
place in my heart aside from just enjoying it. The
characters were were Berry, the Strawberry Werewolf, Choco raw the
(08:43):
Chocolate Mummy, and the creature from the Fruit Lagoon. Oh
mm hmm, it's excellent. It's the book is called Stays
Crunchy and Milk And uh, please don't at me about
all of the superfluous commas that I edited in there
should you happen to read it, but uh, but but
(09:05):
do do look up Adam P. Knaves k n a V.
His comics and novels. If you're looking for something to read,
his recent stuff is real aces h extra aces Um.
I am biased because I still do editing for his novels,
so I feel very very close to him. But I
mean that sounds like something up our listeners Alley, Yeah,
(09:29):
not all of them are about food. Well, it's a
good entry point at least. I am certainly curious about
many of the mascots in the serial world. Similarly to
uh kool aid Man, I got some questions. Oh my
heck yes. Uh. Meanwhile, here in the United States, National
(09:52):
Serial Day is March seven. Huh all right, yep, good
at time? Is any Yeah? Sure? And uh recommended extra
listing if you haven't listened to it or want to
really listen. See our Graham Cracker episode one where I
got I wouldn't say unreasonably angry, but I was pretty mad.
(10:13):
You were surly, Yeah, Curtaly for sure, Curtly for sure,
it surely Curtaly. All right, let's get to rock question. Yes,
breakfast cereals. What are they? Well, breakfast cereals are a
(10:34):
category of foods made from the edible seeds of cultivated grasses,
processed to varying extents, and packaged for relative ease of
incorporation into a morning meal. Um, but let's let's perhaps
unpack that sentence a little bit. Uh So okay. Uh.
Cereal is a catch all word for for grains like wheat, oats, barley, rice,
(10:59):
and worn um. These these are the starchy seeds of
plants in the in the wide and weird grass family,
and they are pretty useful to humans overall. Um. Cereal
grains don't generally require a whole lot of processing to
be used, part of why they're so cool. Um. But
they are often processed and in this case meaning husked,
(11:22):
milder ground, and cooked in order to create desired flavors
and textures in the final product, or to cut down
on the consumers preparation time of the actual meal that
they're making. And how fine they are milder ground, and
how they're cooked makes a really huge difference. Like take
take oats and corn for example. Um, you can cook
(11:43):
these just enough to dry them out, grind them up
fairly rough, and then just sell that as oatmeal or grits. Um,
and you know the consumer may have to cook them
further often into like a hot porridge type breakfast cereal UM,
or at least rehydrate them, as in the case of
UM easily. As a manufacturer. You can also part cook
or chemically process the oatmeal or the grits to shorten
(12:05):
the consumers cooking time, or you can cook them completely
as with a granola, and then mix them with flavorings
and additions for a complete ready to eat product. But
you know, so, so that's that's a minimalist kind of
kind of approach. But one of the super fun things
about cereal grains is that those starches that they contain
(12:28):
can and will form up into really interesting structures if
you treat them right. Exactly how you treat them will
depend on what kind of cereal you're making flaked, shredded, puffed,
or extruded um. But but basically what you're what you're
looking to do is remove the fibrous outer hull or
brand of the seed and then cook up that the
(12:51):
starchy inner part, along with water and any flavoring, sweeteners, colors,
and enrichments that you want in the final product. UM
do all of that in a pressure cooker, giving you
a sort of dough that you can then UM roll
out into flakes or kind of comb into long ribbons
or shreds, or bake up into puffs. You can also
(13:12):
push that dough through a number of different heated high
pressure devices UM, so that when it comes out of
the opposite end of this heated high pressure tube, that
the steam that will be in the dough and the
sudden release of pressure from being outside of the tube
will make it puff up. UM. And you can use
(13:33):
this this process to create shapes too, by forcing the
dough through shaped tubes. Yeah. Sometimes like a blade at
the end will cut pieces off as they emerge. And
that's the basic process for both gun puffed and extruded cereals.
And it is fascinating and a little bit startling because
the pieces tend to like shoot out and have to
be caught by nets. We talked about this in our
(13:55):
Cheetos episode. Oh yeah, and that's cool to watch. Oh gosh, yeah,
Oh I love it. Um uh we we could I
could go further into into detail, and I suspect we
will in the future for very specific serial treatments. But
that's that's the overview. Yeah. And I will say that
advancements in technology, UM, including ways that the dough moves
(14:17):
through those pressurized tubes and um. The use of computers
that can control the temperature and pressure have reduced production
time for some of these cereals from as much as
twenty four hours to as little as twenty minutes. Wow science,
And like Cheetos, you can also add sweet or otherwise
(14:39):
flavored coatings after you've created your shapes. Indeed, wow. Speaking
of what about the nutrition? Oh gosh, okay, um, Well, alright, alright,
Because they are seeds, Whole cereal grains are this really
cool packet of a strong fiber encasing proteins that would
(15:01):
code for creating a plant, and these good fats to
help protect it and help it grow, and starches to
feed that growing plant. Whole grains are pretty good for you.
But uh, the processing of grains into cereals often removes
a lot of the things that aren't just starch um
and adds a lot of salt and sugar. Many ready
(15:24):
to eat breakfast cereals on the market are enriched, meaning
that they have vitamins and minerals added to to make
the more nutritious and make up for some of those
nutrients lost during processing. But these these breakfast cereals have
come under a lot of scrutiny over the years for
exactly how much sugar and salt they contain. And part
of the problem here is it sugar isn't just a
(15:46):
flavoring right like, It's also a texturing agent and preservative,
which is more important to some formulations than to others.
Like um, like corn based products and flaky products are
particularly dependent upon sugar. And when you have sugar, it
helps the flavor if you balance it with salt. So
(16:08):
it can be like an arms race of stuff that
isn't good for you being added into these things, um
and the loser is your nutrition every time. Ah. And
of course, like different cereals sold in different markets to
different demographics will contain more or less sugar and salt,
and in general they're the worst in the United States
(16:29):
because why not? Of course, of course other places are
catching up though, because Uh, read your dang labels, people,
That's That's what I'm saying. If you want to know
what's anything, read the label. I'll tell you. I guess
also recommend going back to our sugar episode, because yeah,
you get a good primer in that for I feel
(16:51):
I feel like most of us know now, But for
a long time I wasn't really sure how much sugar
was an obscene amount. Now I feel pretty confident. Um.
Also because people have called me out for it, I
haven't made a Seinfeld reference in a minute. Um. There
is an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is stopped up,
has constipation, desperately tries to eat brand cereal um and
(17:15):
it doesn't work, and he says the brand isn't working
for me. Terry. Think about that line a lot. That
was a pretty decent Cramer that was. It depends on
the what's that the cadence? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
also did a gesture that he did still encompassed a
(17:36):
lot of what he is. Um, I'm working on It's
on my list of impressions. But all right, what about
some numbers. So breakfast cereal is a big business. As
of sixteen, the global breakfast cereal market value, including both
hot and cold cereals and related bars and biscuits, um,
was some thirty seven billion dollars. Oh hand of that,
(18:02):
cold ready to eat cereals, along with related bars and biscuits,
accounted for about sixty of that market. You know, I
used to eat those like every every day at Marching
Band band camp and then every practice at band camp.
So I have a really bad association with him. It's
not that I think they taste bad, but you know
when you have like that memory, and so just thinking
(18:24):
about them makes me like, oh no, oh, no, thank you,
back in the heat, feeling like I'm going to pass
out all those drama. I don't need that. Oh you don't, Annie,
it's in the past. You're safe now, thank you. Safe
from Marching Band memories. Well not the memories. I can't
help you with the memories, but you're safe from Marching Band.
(18:45):
They do lurk around every corner, You're right, um uh
and uh so. So cold cold, ready to eat breakfast
cereal is a fairly American phenomenon, but his has also
been picked up intensely in the British Isles. Um as
of and I couldn't find more recent numbers or I
(19:07):
don't know, like there's some conflicting numbers out there, as
there are in any kind of market research category. But yeah,
um as Ireland eight the most cereal in the world
per capita um like dry cold breakfast cereal um an
average of eight point four kilos per person per year. Um,
that's about eighteen and a half pounds dang. At the time.
(19:31):
Other European countries, though, we're averaging like a kilo per
person per year or less. So North America still dominated
the market as a whole. Wow. Yeah, um and uh,
and that that has been changing. Um. Westernization and urbanization
have been increasing the number and the varieties of cereal
(19:52):
sold around the world over the past couple of decades. UM.
China and Russia are also now very big markets like
top five and Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market
area and globally it is a growing market. In the
US it's been dropping a little bit every year, but globally, um,
it's it's increasing about four percent per year. I guess
(20:13):
another episode, you could we listen to his Breakfast because
I was reading about how breakfast is the one meal
that's kind of consistently been going down in the US
of people who eat it, and so there's just all
of this marketing focus and cereal, I would argue, is
just very marketing focus and as it is. And I
(20:34):
remember reading a quote I can't remember from where, but
it's like if you own if if because breakfast is
kind of ritualistic. If somebody chooses your product, then you
own their breakfast. Um. So yeah, there's just this fight
for it. And then and they were saying, like, um,
fast food restaurants have been putting more and more money
(20:55):
into breakfast items because that's where the growth is and huh. Yeah,
it's a cutthroat world in the world of breakfast. Of
one of the tops is Cheerios. I suppose the Cheerios
brand made about one million dollars in sales. That's a
billion with a B, folks, billion with a B. They're
(21:17):
the best selling cereal in America. That includes all of
their cheerios hunting out cheeros. But okay, yeah, that's a lot. Yeah,
um and uh and and in general, breakfast cereals are
a high profit item. Um. They rake in a gross
margin of like forty and a profit margin of seventeen percent,
which is which is comfy. That's real comfy. And uh
(21:41):
and yet note that that is after factoring in the
costs of marketing cereals, which account for twenty tocent of
the total sales value of the product. That's a fifth
to a quarter of the money that it takes to
make cereal. Going to convincing you to buy it. Yeah.
I mean, I know a lot of us don't watch
(22:02):
commercials anymore, but any time I turn on like Nickelodeon,
you're going to see a serial commercial, and like every
break I would say yes. Um. And the story of
how we got to hear uh is fascinating because like,
like you may have noticed that a lot of that marketing, well,
(22:23):
a lot of the marketing is like funny cartoon characters
like delivering one liners, and the rest of it is
convincing you how just absolutely stoically healthy. These products are um,
even if they're flavored with like chocolate or marshmallows or whatever.
Right yeah, um and uh. And that duality goes back
(22:47):
to the very beginning of the serial story. It does,
it does, and we will get into that history, but
first we're going to take a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(23:09):
thank you so um. Of course, people have been cooking
cereal grains in various ways and eating them for breakfast
for pretty much ever, right uh. And the story of
modern breakfast cereal yes, is really a case of advertising,
and particularly health advertising and changing attitudes around food health
(23:29):
and breakfast in particular, and perhaps in America in particular. Yeah. Yeah,
So in brief to kind of sum up from our
Graham Cracker episode, and if you're very confused about why
we're mentioning Graham Crackers, I'll tell you. Um So, so,
there was this whole like health and morality movement that
(23:51):
kicked off in the early to mid eighteen hundreds in
the United States in particular. UM. That includes, but is
not limited to the temperance movement, which um which here
in the US is what led to prohibition there. You know,
there were just a whole bunch of changes going on
in society at the time, um, what with industrialization and
urbanization and the changes that those things rought in how
(24:14):
we eat and drink and medicate. Um. Drinking, alcohol and
especially distilled alcohol was on the rise, both for for
for leisure and for medicine. People were spending more time
indoors and in polluted environments, and there was a pushback, yes,
and one of the people who pushed back here in
the United States was um one Sylvester Graham. That guy.
(24:40):
He was, this this minister who preached virtue and good
health via abstaining from alcohol and tobacco and meat and
white bread and via taking in exercise and fresh air
and a vegetarian diet. I mean, he wasn't wrong about
those things, but he was a jerk about it. Okay,
um is he just he hated well I think like
(25:05):
like women as part of it, but but he he
really but more than women, he hated bread. Um. He
hated everything the commercialized manufactured bread stood for. You know,
like like contemporary manufacturing processes made it easy to to
separate the components of whole wheat grains and therefore made
it easy to make fluffy, delightful white bread. And so
(25:25):
he didn't like that you were removing the good parts
of the grains. And he furthermore thought that the only
good bread was made by wives and mothers with love
and care, which would then lead to a happy digestive system. Um.
He wrote in in this seven thing that he published
called um U Treatise on Bread and Bread Making, he wrote,
(25:46):
thousands in civic life will four years and perhaps as
long as they live, eat the most miserable trash that
can be imagined in the form of bread. Who wow,
strong words. I have strong feelings about bread, and I've
never felt that strongly about bread. No, I don't think
(26:08):
so either. But his alternative to this miserable trash that
was bread was products made of what came to be
known as graham flower, which is coarse ground, whole wheat flour,
more more like a meal than a flower really, um.
And it lends itself therefore to to crackers more than
to bread. And his original graham crackers contained no fat
(26:32):
and no sugar. Pretty different from what we're dealing with today. Yep,
he'd be rolling in his grave, and good on him.
I remember in that episode I came out so vehemently
against this, and I think you less so, but you know, um,
and we had such a kind listener. I can't remember
(26:53):
your name, but if you're still listening, I still remember this.
The sent as a shipment Bob's Bob's Mill, Grandpa bob
read Mill, a whole bunch of their products so that
we could make our own graham crackers and kind of
like come back to it had like a better place
that it made me laugh and I appreciated it both.
(27:14):
So yes, thank you if you're still this thing. That
stuff was so good. Oh my gosh. Anyway, okay, yes, alright,
So moving on to a fellow named James Caleb Jackson.
He invented a product he called Granula with a you
at a sanitarium he ran in New York in sixty
Perhaps his mother invented it. I feel like that's the
(27:35):
case throughout most of these stories, is perhaps someone else
in the family invented it. But yeah, yeah, Jackson was
a very conservative, very religious vegetarian who he created this
granula out of dried gram flour that he then broke
into shapes um orkin perhaps his mother did. It was
so tough it had to be soaked in milk overnight
(27:57):
before it could be eaten. And something that's something that
stuck around even when the toughness is no longer there.
M hm. And yeah. This was during industrialization, when labor
was undergoing a really massive upheaval and life was becoming
more fast paced, and cereal offered a more convenient, quicker
breakfast option, and it was heavily touted that it was
(28:20):
easier to digest and breakfast was like prior to this
from what I read, this huge meat heavy meal. Um yeah,
because there was also simultaneously this rise of yeah, this
focus on wellness and and cereal really revolutionized how we
saw breakfast here in the United States. Weird. Yeah, I know,
(28:44):
I know, but it's about to get whirred over. At
his Battle Creek, Michigan SPA, the Battle Creek Sanitarium, surgeon
John Harvey Kellogg. Yep, that one made his own version
of Granula. Originally he called it Granula, but he had
to change his name to Granola, allegedly after a lawsuit
(29:06):
forced him to change the name. Yeah, and I wanted
to put in here. Uh. Sanitarium is a word that
we've we've come to associate with like a like a
mental health hospital. Um, I think modern le but um.
But at the time sanitariums focused on both physical and
mental health. They were more like retreats the hospitals really. Yeah. Yeah,
(29:26):
And you do see the word spa used frequently. I
think they're more medicinally focused, perhaps in how we see
spas today. Yes, neither the word sanitarium nor spa are
being used in the way that we think of now. Yes,
I think of it's somewhere in between. And that's probably
what you've got. Yes. Oh, the yogurt episode is another
(29:50):
one you could check out. Oh my god. Alright, So
Kellogg was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, and he
incorporated Adventist beliefs around health into his sanitarium, things like vegetarianism,
avoidance of tobacco and alcohol, and a focus on exercise.
On top of that, he was really, really, really focused
(30:12):
on digestive health. He was a proponent of regular enemas
and staying away from fatty, spicy, salty, and greasy foods.
And he thought granola would promote digestive wellness. After his
first attempt at this biscuit led to a patient breaking
a tooth, he twice baked a mixture of cormell oats
(30:34):
and flour and then broke them up into smaller pieces.
And this was around eighteen seventy seven. Oh yeah, and
he thought granola might prevent people from wanting sex or masturbating,
which he believed were bad. Yeah. Yeah, Kellogg bought in
on a lot of what Graham and his contemporaries were
thinking about all of that sex and masturbation thing. Um.
(30:57):
They they thought it was a bad real like like
not good for your health at all. Um. And he
thought specifically the latter would lead to um. As scholar
Verne L. Bullog or blow rights and get ready to
uh to mark list off of your bingo cards, savor
listeners because here we go. Oh, general disability, consumption like symptoms,
(31:22):
premature and defective development, sudden changes in disposition, lassitude, sleeplessness,
failure of mental capacity, fickleness, untrustworthiness, love of solitude, bashfulness,
unnatural boldness, mock piety, easily being frightened, confusion of ideas,
aversion to girls and boys, but a dedicated liking of
boys and girls, round shoulders, week back and stiffness of joints,
(31:48):
paralysis of the lower extremities, unnatural gait, bad posture in bed,
lack of breast development in females, capricious appetite, fondness for
unnatural or hurtful irritation articles such as salt, pepper, spice, is, vinegar, mustard, clay, slate, pencils, plaster,
and chalk, disgusted simple food, use of tobacco, unnatural paleness,
acne or pimples, biting of fingernails, shifty eyes, moist cold hands,
(32:12):
palpitation of the heart, hysteria in females, corrosis or green sickness, anemia,
epileptic fits, bedwetting, and use of obscene words and phrases.
Oh dear. Yeah, you know, there's some real interesting things
on here. But the one that really stood out to
me for some reason is disgusted at simple foods because
(32:37):
it's kind of the product he's trying to convince people
they need. Not he was not really selling about it.
He wasn't really about selling it. But it's just funny.
He's like, that's why you don't like this thing that
I made? Yeah, yeah, um and yeah. And so he
thought that, you know, eating granola would prevent you'res actual
(33:00):
desires and therefore prevent all of these ailments. Yes. Um.
According to some things I read, he also recommended tying
children's hands behind their backs. Um. So that's a it's
a different podcast. But he has a very storied, in
many ways upsetting history, if you want to look that up.
But when it comes to this, he was a believer
(33:22):
in that. He was a true believer. Uh. And he
wanted reform of how we ate in this country and
how we viewed health. H and he that went as
far as him handing out recipes for his gredola. He
did try to, I believe he tried to patent it,
but he never succeeded, but he wanted to protect it,
but also was willing to share it. However, C W Post,
(33:47):
one of Kellec's patients, also riffed on this idea and
came up with grape nuts, which went on to become
the first popular product to run a discount coupon campaign.
Uh yeah, but Kellogg really didn't like this, and it
accused him of stealing the recipe from his safe. But
again from what I read, he was handed them out,
so I think he just didn't like he was like
(34:09):
profiting off of it. Yeah. Yeah, because Posts set up
this rival retreat in Battle Creek called La Vita in
mm hmm, Well, Killog wasn't done in the serial world.
He and his brother will Keith Kellogg or W. K.
Kellogg innovated a flaked cereal or that's one version. Many
(34:29):
members of the Kellogg family and employees at his sanitarium
also a claim to inventing the cereal. The official story,
according to the company's website, puts the date at when
some wheat based cereal dough was accidentally left out for
a decent amount of chime unspecified um and it fermented.
(34:50):
The dough was then rolled out into thin flakes that
crisped up when baked. The recipe was refined over the years,
the doe swapped out for corn dough um. Dr Kellog
called the flakes um for eating at a sanitarium granose flakes.
The tagline enriched the Blood. There was this big focus
(35:14):
on blood around that time. Other other taglines for various
products included keeps the blood cool and makes red blood redder. Okay,
not sure. I'm not sure about it. It sounds like
you're marketing to vampires. Not it does. Indeed, can you
imagine you're watching children's cereal commercial and it's like, keeps
(35:37):
their blood cool? Okay, alright, but okay. Tired of the
treatment um he received the hands of his brother, Will
pivoted toward the commercial sector with corn flakes after purchasing
the recipe and founding the Battle Creek Toasted corn Flake
(35:57):
Company in nineteen o six, and part of the shift
corn was simply because it was cheaper than wheat at
the time, as it was largely still considered a food
for animals, not people, and Will got the idea to
add sugar, offered the first prize in the box and
started mass marketing and it worked. By nine, the company
(36:20):
was producing one twenty thousand cases a day. There were
one hundred cero companies in Battle Creek alone by night three.
I love this just in this one area. Yeah, I
see you. I'm going to do it too, about to
do a better and it's just I'll multiply. Perhaps not surprisingly,
(36:41):
Dr Gellogg related a roof of this. He objected to
the addition of sugar, which he viewed as a vice uh,
and he took his brother to court over the use
of the family name. However, the court ruled and Will's
favor in nineteen twenty and Will renamed the company the
Kellogg Company in nineteen twenty five. Around the same time,
(37:03):
Post debuted their product Elijah's Manna, but after some protests
by religious groups, they renamed it to Post toast Ees
Yes by a turn and I love yesh yeah and
great nuts. Uh. When they came out in seven, they
(37:23):
came with the promise of curing all kinds of things,
including maulvaria and alcoholism. Yeah uh. Post once said, um,
the sunshine that makes a business plant grow is advertising,
and the company went all in on that. UM. One
(37:44):
advertising tract that they printed was titled the Road to
Willville UM. By nineteen o three, dude was making a
million bucks a year. Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh.
It's funny too, because to this day eyes have an
association that grape nuts are the healthier cereals. I don't
(38:06):
know if that's any truth to it, but I have
the association. I they are low in sugar, and from
what I recall from being a child, they taste like dirt.
So take that great nuts. Post also purchased the exclusive
rights to the production of the serial rolling machine needed
(38:27):
for the process being used at the time, a product
that will Kellogg originally had a hand in designing. This
again cut through world here cereal um jumping to a
different continent for a second. In the early nineteen hundreds,
Swiss Dr Maximilian Bircher Benner came up with a mixture
of uncooked oats, dried fruits and nuts, originally served with
(38:48):
orange juice but later milk called musically. He got the
inspiration for this from a dish he had while traveling,
so it existed in some form before this UM and
probably could be his own. Episode. Usually was documented in
the UK by and its popularity really took off in
the ninete sixties. Before that, it was sort of seen
as this fringe alternative health food. Um. I have to
(39:12):
say I had usually a lot when I was in
Australia and I loved it. Oh, sure, yeah, I is.
It's great. By the nineteen tents, Quaker Oats Company introduced
puffed rice and puffed wheat after they acquired a technique
that caused grains of rice to explode under pressure. They
marketed as this amazing scientific innovation, touting it as the
(39:37):
first quote food shot from guns and quote the eighth
wonder of the world. M Uh Americans and their guns, y'all.
Even the cereal, even cereal mm hmm mm. In the
nineteen twenties, some of the very earliest radio programs aired
(40:01):
sponsorships from Kellogg's. Also in the nineteen twenties, and accident
led to the creation of wheaties when a health clinician
knocked over some wheat brand onto a hot stove. By
the nineteen thirties, their slogan Breakfast of Champions was being
used in marketing materials, first on a billboard for minor
league baseball team in Minnesota. Rice Crispies entered the scene
(40:24):
soon after that. Yeah, and in um, Snap, crackle and pop,
We're designed by this um, this cartoonist by the name
of Vernon Grant or or artist of Vernon Grant, And
they would go on to become the first cartoon marketing
characters for Cereal, for Rice crispies, UM, and supposedly Grant's
(40:45):
work largely influenced none other than Walt Disney. Wow, M
I mean I still remember those characters? Oh yeah, yeah,
they're still around. Um. Also in the nineteen thirties, Kellogg's
opened its first British manufacturing plant in Manchester, UM to
create the then already popular in the area of corn
(41:07):
flakes and other products. Perhaps the first iteration of wheat checks,
called shredded Ralston, was invented by Rawston Peering, a company
in the nineteen thirties, and this product was intended for
followers of Rawstonism, which was the social movement entrenched with
racism that also believed in mind control. Uh yeah um.
(41:28):
It wasn't until the nineteen fifties and a rice version
that the name checks showed up mhm h. In the
nineteen forties, cheeriots made their way to shelves, but they
were soon renamed Cheerios. Grape Nuts introduced the eat a
good Breakfast, Do a Better Job campaign in As a
(41:49):
part of this, shoppers received pamphlets espousing the health benefits
of breakfast, and radio announcers declared nutrition experts say breakfast
is the most important meal of the day. We've all
heard it. Yeah, that's where it comes from, Thanks Grape Nuts. Ironically,
the nineteen forties is also when we saw the introduction
(42:11):
of sugary coatings on cereals, on posts cereals specifically, and
during this time, Tony the Tiger debuted and Post licensed
Mickey Mouse for use on its cereal boxes. Several things
happened that changed the serial world after World War Two
in the fifties that led to an increase in consumption. First,
(42:34):
there was a push for sugar and sugared products. Second,
the advent of television in American households and the commercials
that came with that. Yeah. Legend has it that in
nine the then share of Kellogg's met atman Leo Burnett
on a train by total chance, and their relationship just
(42:57):
absolutely changed both television and advertising, and like serial advertising
in particular as we know it, I feel like we've
talked about him before. Well, in either case, Kellogg and
Tony the Tiger was in some of these very early
television commercials for Cereal um and yeah, the first of
(43:17):
many advertised Cereal mass advertised animated Cereal mascots to come. Uh.
This decade also gave us corn pops and tricks. Hmm.
If you go into the sixties, Quaker debut products like
capt'n Crunch and now discontinued product called Quake that featured
a series of commercials depicting battles between an alien named
(43:40):
Quisp and a minor named Quake. Um. Yeah. Both of
these products were essentially sweetened corn and oat dough molded
into shapes. However, one of the reasons I want to
bring this up is in the FCC decreed that children's
cartoon characters could not give marketing messaging during the show itself.
(44:01):
Yeah yeah, relegating it to commercials only. Um. And there's
a lot of scrutiny around around uh products marketed to
children at the time. In v an advisor on nutrition
to then President Nixon testified to Congress that rats fed cereals,
these sugary breakfast cereals. Those rats were less healthy than
(44:23):
other rats that he fed ground up paperboard cereal boxes.
If that paperboard was mixed with milk, sugar and raisins.
I have a lot of questions. What was President Nixon
dowing here? You have all these rats? It wasn't It
wasn't Nixon. It was his advisor did who did the
(44:45):
testifying and the hypothetical experimentation. Not Nixon? Yeah, oh man,
all right, I like where you took it. I like that.
Oh jeez. I was just imagining him in the Oval office,
like eat this cardboard rats. Oh man, I should That
(45:08):
was an opportunity to try and nix an impression. I
really didn't do it, but I work on that. Cool.
That's when I can manage. Also in the seventies we
see just this whole Smories board of fruity monster based
cereals like frank and Berry and Booberry, which was a
Halloween products that I really didn't know that was the case. Yeah,
(45:31):
I think I think it's seasonal these days. Anyway, it's seasonal,
but I don't know. And Interesting Count Chocola was also
in this a decade. Also non monster varieties like fruity
Pebbles and Coco pebbles um. And all of this was
happening as Granola's commercial sales were on the rise, and
the Federal Trade Commission was yes scrutinizing the marketing tactics
of these products. When it came to children, Honeyout Cheerios
(45:56):
debuted in nineteen seventy nine. In the seventies we had
these monster and Fruit bas cereals, But the eighties was
all about these tie ins and co branding, like having
Mr T as a spokesperson for Mr T shape Cereal,
and then you had things like Smurfberry Crunch and the
(46:17):
California Raisins for Post Raisin brand. The California Raisins have
always creeped me out. Yeah, I claymation in general really
creeps me out. Um, and I just don't I I
don't know, I don't know. Man, they move wrong. It's
not cool. I remember a listener sent as a clip
(46:38):
for commercial from that and I was I was highly disturbed.
So I'm on, I'm on the same train. And as
a kid, my brother loved Gumby. I couldn't watch it
disturbed me so much. Oh yeah, yeah, Gumby too. It
always okay, all right, this is a different show. But
speaking of disturbing UM in these Uh, Neil Gaiman wrote
(47:02):
a serial convention into his comic book Sandman, and yes,
cereal was a pun. No one was there to talk
about cereal. They were they were serial killers of course, yeah,
UM and in topical pun news. But much later, UM
London had a pair of serial killer cafes UM c
(47:24):
e r e A l Killer cafes from UM. These
kind of like nineties themed sweet nostalgia joints that UM
that collectively sold over a million bowls of cereal before
going online this year. UM in response to COVID nineteen
mm hm m hm, and nostalgia really did become a
(47:45):
focus of the market and the post market. UM. In
the two thousand's a fellow who we mentioned in our
Molecular Astronomy episode of Ferran Andrea made what he called
Kellogg's Paea at l W E UM. This was a
reduced seafood broth over rice crispies. UM. Yeah, there's the
(48:08):
there's the Mammafuku offshoot Milk Bar that has ice creams
made from dairy steeped in cereals. Uh. There are vodkas
flavored like fruit loops, they really taste like fruit loops
if that's what you're into. Um, I like the I've
had the Mama. I think they have like milk, cereal
(48:29):
milk flavored something. I've had it. It was good. I
liked it. Oh cool, give that review I read. I
read in one place ice creams, but then I felt
like it was something else, somewhere else anyway. In kind
of running along that theme, m Kellogg's opened to museum
or like a roadside attraction in Battle Creek called Cereal
(48:51):
City USA. Um and this uh, this followed the company
shutting down tours of its nearby real production silly due
to fears of rivals stealing trade secrets. Yes, lug Worth
in there. Yeah. The The attraction was set up to
look like a twentie century factory and told the story
(49:15):
of of cereals creation. Visitors could also tore Battle Creek
from a little go kart train. Yeah, meet the mascots.
Of course, samples some cereals. But but it closed in
two thousand seven. Little attendants. Yeah, well, if anyone who
happened to go before then let us know. Yeah, if
you've got photographs or memorabilia or just memories, absolutely let US. Know. Yes,
(49:40):
Puffins was introduced by a small Northern California natural foods
bakery in the nineteen nineties and this molassas sweetened corn cereal.
They really rode the wave, the rising wave of organic
and a desire for healthier serial alternatives. And I have
to say I've had him and I really enjoyed them. UM.
And I can't speak to those things, but I actually UM.
(50:01):
The trend of natural and organic foods continued into the
two thousands. The acquisition of Caushi by Kellogg's really exemplifies that.
As part of this. UM. Yeah, there's been this continued
conversation around marketing towards kids and accurate labeling sugar. Yeah. Yeah,
that the changes in nutrition labeling laws UM. Specifically in
(50:25):
the UK and the US I can speak to, but
I'm pretty sure it's been happening the world over over
the past couple of decades have resulted, UM in further
scrutiny of breakfast cereals. UM. And then in uh, breakfast
cereals were labeled a thing, what millennials are killing another thing. Yeah,
(50:46):
there's this market survey where these lazy millennials reported that
it's inconvenient to eat breakfast cereals because you have to
clean up afterwards. Yeah, and I will remind you that
that even and I mean even in s like millennials
were already like thirty four years old. So I'm not sure, right,
(51:10):
this is the thing that bothers me all the time.
It's fine, it's fine, but but yes, um, Over the
past couple of decades, a lot of new development has
indeed been focused on repackaging cereal into bars or whatever,
for for on the go eating, to appeal to us
tricksie millennials who are killing everything. Yeah, you know, it's
(51:32):
a big plot. We're all in on it, and uh,
you're just gonna have to anovate to keep up. Yep, yep, sorry,
not sorry, that's right, that's right, I do. I'm gonna
(51:54):
go look up after this a picture of all the
mascots together, and I think we should just have a
food mascot horror comic. Like I feel it. I feel
pretty good. Actually yeah, yeah, yeah, I will. We were
saying before we started recording that, like we didn't even
(52:14):
go that deep on the on the mascot and it
could be like a whole other like we could just
have a whole episode of like these cereal mascots and
they're like backstories as they are, and how weird they are.
Oh yeah, I mean I remember it being a large
topic of conversation when I was in school that how
mean the kids were to the tricks rabbit because they
(52:36):
wouldn't share the tricks. So I bet he sits at
home at night and the lights are off and he's
just plotting like, oh, one day those kids will pay.
Oh no, all right, yeah, put that in the back burner.
All right, well, cool, cool, cool cool. We'd below do
(53:00):
your ideas from listeners about this, and he thoughts, uh
and speaking of we do have some listener mail. We do,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
(53:22):
thank you, And we're back with trying to do this.
Nineties commercials they're so in your face. We talked about
them before, like the skateboarding and the bright zig zagging colors.
Oh yeah, yeah, lots of vocal fry um, lots of
(53:42):
like kind of kind of like like dovetailing with the
whole like extreme sports kind of thing. They're kind of
yelling at you to be honest. Yeah, there was a
lot of yelling in the nineties. If anyone hasn't seen
the nineties Kids commercial, go look it up. You will
be shocked. It's high energy. High energy is a good
(54:03):
way to describe it. Uh huh uh huh um. Okay.
So to preface these letters, I love how many people
have been emailing about salt and pepper shakers and also
specifically the one that Lauren mentioned. It's fantastic, So Sarah Roote,
I will say I was excited immediately when the episode
(54:25):
on salt and pepper shaker episode showed up in my
podcast feed. My mom is a collector of salt and
pepper shakers. For any given family meal where we are
sitting at the dining room table, there is at least
two sets on the table. For holidays, at least four
or more sets to make an appearance. Yeah beautiful. A
common gift for my mom is salt and pepper shakers.
(54:47):
The salt and pepper shakers are all displayed prominently in
the China cabinet. Highlights include the creepy, snowy al salt
and pepper shakers that belonged to my great grandmother. I
think the silver ones that were one of my mom's
friends family members. Her friend knew she would appreciate them,
and my personal favorite the humping turtles that my sister's
then boyfriend now husband bought from my mom on a
(55:10):
trip to Florida. I mean those are pretty fantastic. Yeah,
not having seen your mother's full collection, UM, I'm gonna
say that those have to be standouts, good choices. Oh yeah,
(55:33):
And Michael wrote, I listened to your podcast on salt
and pepper shakers and wanted to share the story of
my great granny's salt and pepper shakers. She had something
like fifty sets and my mother was said to inherit
them upon her mother's passing. Needless to say, throughout the years,
pairs were taken and or broken by other family members,
and my mother only received twelve or so sets. My
(55:55):
mother also received a photo album, and behind a middle
school picture of my mom, there was a black and
white photo of the salt and pepper collection. Over the years,
thanks to the picture and eBay, I have been able
to replace almost all of the salt and pepper shakers,
and now my mom has almost eighty sets. My personal
favorites are the donkey figure where the saddle bags are
(56:18):
the salt and pepper shaker, and the poodle figure where
the six puppies that hang off the side are shakers. Ingenuity.
It's so impressive, you know. It's that's the thing. It's
such a simple thing, but there are endless ways to
create it. Yeah, it just feels like this kind of doofie.
(56:42):
And I say that in the most loving way, like doofie,
like doofie here, but like putting this thought in effort
and care. I love it like a condiment shaker. It's
so good. Gosh, that's beautiful. Yes, I love that you
helped create the collection with a the help of a
(57:03):
photo she must have taken. Oh gosh, I love. I
love all of the enabling, all of the like like
like loving enabling that goes on in these stories about
salt and pepper shakers meet meat. So please keep sending
those in our way. You can email us at hello
(57:23):
at favorite pod dot com and thanks to those listeners
for emailing us. Yes, you can also get in touch
via social media. We are on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
at savor pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio For more podcasts
my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(57:44):
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard,
who waited patiently for the entire second half of the
episode to break in when we took our listener mail
break talking about how terrible of a dude Kellogg. Yes,
it was top notch. Was thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(58:05):
your way. H
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection for I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vocal Bam and today
we're talking about breakfast cereals. I love breakfast cereals. Oh
my gosh. This emotional reaction is exactly what this episode
is all about. And I love it so hard because
I don't. I mean, like, I think they're fine, but
(00:29):
but you have like this look on your face that
even thinking about these products is just a state of bliss. Yes. Yes,
And I think also in this is I I live
by myself, and so having milk around, I don't really
drink milk, so I just don't have it around, which
means I don't really have cereal anymore. And at our office,
(00:52):
I frequently think about how there's a lot of cereal there,
but we're not going there anymore. It's sometimes I consider like,
is it worth checking out there to take some cereal
for my own? Is it still good? Oh? Well, okay,
(01:12):
if I do make it over there and I do
a delivery for you, I will totally bring you some
cereal if such still exists. I know that we uh.
I know that our team has made some donations to
food banks of stuff that was in our pantries. So yes,
well I'm assuming and I'm happy to hope that the
unopened boxes went to that. But I don't say know
(01:34):
to to open boxes. I have qualms. Yeah, I think
I said before on the show. When I was a
college student, my dinner was usually a buffet of just cereals,
oh yeah, and occasionally fries for the catch up, healthy, healthy,
(01:56):
healthy um. And when I was a kid, we didn't
really have it for breakfast. It was a dessert item, yeah,
which I loved, and my favorites cinnamon toast crunch, that's
my absolute favorite, um. But also a big fan of
Captain crunch, Captain honey bunches of oaths with the almonds
(02:17):
all right, lucky charms, honeynut cheerios, and apple jacks. Uh.
And in my house, we had to fight over who
got to choose the cereal. And I remember my brothers
both loved corn pops and I just thought that was
the weirdest thing, like they're fine, what are you telling
me you're gonna choose corn pops over cinnamon toast crunch.
(02:40):
Get out of my house anyway, I present no argument.
This is clearly something you feel strongly about and I
encourage you to do so, Thank you, thank you. Oddly enough,
we did used to get Reese's puffs towards the end,
(03:00):
and I refused to eat them because I thought they
were too sweet. But I love Reese's and I love Cereal.
I don't know too much was going on there. I
guess I did have a Cookie Crisp board game, which
was very funny. Had it motorized like long because the
Cookie Crisp mascot is like that chef and he had
(03:22):
these long arms that was spin around and you had
to try to get the Cookie Crisp without getting hit
by the arms. That sounds frightening, but it's pretty intense. Yeah. Um,
And a friend of mine always got the knockoff frands,
and the knockoff frands like no shade to them at all,
because I've done a taste test where I couldn't really
tell the difference between them, but the names of them
(03:44):
made me laugh. Yeah, yeah, they're quite funny. I wish
I could remember. There's like honey Smacks, but they're the
name for honey Smacks. That's the knockoff frand used to
make me laugh a lot. Um and also the doughnut.
You remember the donut, Lauren, that the doughnut. Yes. So
when we got the idea for the show, originally we
were in Austin, Texas. Yes, one night we went super
(04:09):
late to Voodoo Donuts and my biggest I was like,
the biggest winer that we have to get the Captain
Crunch donut. I was adamant. And we got a bunch
of them, but that was the one that I was
super excited about. And we bring them back to the
house and they're about five of us. They're including Caroline
of a lady like the podcast and past host of
(04:31):
stuff I never told you. And I remember going excitedly
to open the donut box realizing the Captain Crunch donut
was missing, looking up and there was Caroline, and you
know what, she was eating it. And the biggest, the
biggest thing about it was she said it wasn't even
she didn't make an impression on her, she didn't even care.
(04:54):
But anyway, I was so upset and then you, Lauren,
one night, you like magically because I was. It was
kind of a drunken evening and you have presented me
with one of these stone nuts, and it was the
best thing oh, yeah, we were in Atlanta. We weren't
anywhere near two Donuts branch, so it must have seemed
very uh like and magical. Yeah, but it was like
(05:18):
months later, maybe longer than that, and I think like
a full year. Yeah. My friend Bridget, who travels frequently
for for work, had gone to Austin and had discovered that, um,
if you arrive at a branch of Voodoo Donuts or
at the time, I'm not sure what is going on
due to COVID right now, but but at the time,
(05:41):
if you arrived near shift change, they were trying to
cycle all of their stock. And so so she came
home to Atlanta with these like five gallon buckets filled
with Voodoo Donuts, which is just what they'll give you
(06:02):
for for like not a lot of dollars. Like they're
just like, yeah, I just give us like ten bucks
and take this bucket. Just take as many donuts as
you can off of our hands. And so she did. Um,
and I specifically went and picked some up because I
was like, I need to get this French donut for
any It's very important. And it was I remember like
(06:25):
just feeling so this cannot be and indeed it was delicious,
So thank you, Lauren, I'll still remember it. You're very welcome.
I'm glad to make at least one or two of
your donut dreams come true. Yes, wrong was righted that day?
(06:46):
Oh gosh um yeah. Oh. When I was a kid,
my my dad wouldn't let me have like like junk cereals,
like anything with that much sweetener, or like like fruit
flavoring or chocolate flavoring. But the two that he did allow,
we're like frosted miniweats and honeynut cheerios, And I'm pretty
(07:07):
sure that those aren't less egregious, like if you read
the labels, so I don't know. Strangely enough, perhaps the
cereal that I have the most nostalgia for is just
a bowl of plain rice crispies with a sliced banana,
because that's the thing that I would get at my
uh frequently aforementioned grandparents house when I would go and
(07:30):
visit during the summer when I was a kid. That's
pretty healthy take on that cereal. I know I've mentioned
it before, but one of my favorite things about rice
crispy treats is that, in theory has less sugar. But
like everyone I know, would just get like a not
not a spoonful, but like one of those whole fourth
cups of sugar. Yeah, yeah, we fell away. Yeah, sugar
(07:55):
does find a way, It's true. Um. Oh. And I
and another thing that I always associate with Cereal now
is so um in a in a In a previous
uh employment life, um, I was an editor um of
fiction and a copy editor for medical journal stuff like that.
And my my dear friend Adam P. Knave wrote this
(08:18):
novel about about three cartoon Cereal mascots like road tripping
through the multiverse to find their lost friend and themselves.
And I think it's like the second thing I ever
edited for money. Um so it holds a very dear
place in my heart aside from just enjoying it. The
characters were were Berry, the Strawberry Werewolf, Choco raw the
(08:43):
Chocolate Mummy, and the creature from the Fruit Lagoon. Oh
mm hmm, it's excellent. It's the book is called Stays
Crunchy and Milk And uh, please don't at me about
all of the superfluous commas that I edited in there
should you happen to read it, but uh, but but
(09:05):
do do look up Adam P. Knaves k n a V.
His comics and novels. If you're looking for something to read,
his recent stuff is real aces h extra aces Um.
I am biased because I still do editing for his novels,
so I feel very very close to him. But I
mean that sounds like something up our listeners Alley, Yeah,
(09:29):
not all of them are about food. Well, it's a
good entry point at least. I am certainly curious about
many of the mascots in the serial world. Similarly to
uh kool aid Man, I got some questions. Oh my
heck yes. Uh. Meanwhile, here in the United States, National
(09:52):
Serial Day is March seven. Huh all right, yep, good
at time? Is any Yeah? Sure? And uh recommended extra
listing if you haven't listened to it or want to
really listen. See our Graham Cracker episode one where I
got I wouldn't say unreasonably angry, but I was pretty mad.
(10:13):
You were surly, Yeah, Curtaly for sure, Curtly for sure,
it surely Curtaly. All right, let's get to rock question. Yes,
breakfast cereals. What are they? Well, breakfast cereals are a
(10:34):
category of foods made from the edible seeds of cultivated grasses,
processed to varying extents, and packaged for relative ease of
incorporation into a morning meal. Um, but let's let's perhaps
unpack that sentence a little bit. Uh So okay. Uh.
Cereal is a catch all word for for grains like wheat, oats, barley, rice,
(10:59):
and worn um. These these are the starchy seeds of
plants in the in the wide and weird grass family,
and they are pretty useful to humans overall. Um. Cereal
grains don't generally require a whole lot of processing to
be used, part of why they're so cool. Um. But
they are often processed and in this case meaning husked,
(11:22):
milder ground, and cooked in order to create desired flavors
and textures in the final product, or to cut down
on the consumers preparation time of the actual meal that
they're making. And how fine they are milder ground, and
how they're cooked makes a really huge difference. Like take
take oats and corn for example. Um, you can cook
(11:43):
these just enough to dry them out, grind them up
fairly rough, and then just sell that as oatmeal or grits. Um,
and you know the consumer may have to cook them
further often into like a hot porridge type breakfast cereal UM,
or at least rehydrate them, as in the case of
UM easily. As a manufacturer. You can also part cook
or chemically process the oatmeal or the grits to shorten
(12:05):
the consumers cooking time, or you can cook them completely
as with a granola, and then mix them with flavorings
and additions for a complete ready to eat product. But
you know, so, so that's that's a minimalist kind of
kind of approach. But one of the super fun things
about cereal grains is that those starches that they contain
(12:28):
can and will form up into really interesting structures if
you treat them right. Exactly how you treat them will
depend on what kind of cereal you're making flaked, shredded, puffed,
or extruded um. But but basically what you're what you're
looking to do is remove the fibrous outer hull or
brand of the seed and then cook up that the
(12:51):
starchy inner part, along with water and any flavoring, sweeteners, colors,
and enrichments that you want in the final product. UM
do all of that in a pressure cooker, giving you
a sort of dough that you can then UM roll
out into flakes or kind of comb into long ribbons
or shreds, or bake up into puffs. You can also
(13:12):
push that dough through a number of different heated high
pressure devices UM, so that when it comes out of
the opposite end of this heated high pressure tube, that
the steam that will be in the dough and the
sudden release of pressure from being outside of the tube
will make it puff up. UM. And you can use
(13:33):
this this process to create shapes too, by forcing the
dough through shaped tubes. Yeah. Sometimes like a blade at
the end will cut pieces off as they emerge. And
that's the basic process for both gun puffed and extruded cereals.
And it is fascinating and a little bit startling because
the pieces tend to like shoot out and have to
be caught by nets. We talked about this in our
(13:55):
Cheetos episode. Oh yeah, and that's cool to watch. Oh gosh, yeah,
Oh I love it. Um uh we we could I
could go further into into detail, and I suspect we
will in the future for very specific serial treatments. But
that's that's the overview. Yeah. And I will say that
advancements in technology, UM, including ways that the dough moves
(14:17):
through those pressurized tubes and um. The use of computers
that can control the temperature and pressure have reduced production
time for some of these cereals from as much as
twenty four hours to as little as twenty minutes. Wow science,
And like Cheetos, you can also add sweet or otherwise
(14:39):
flavored coatings after you've created your shapes. Indeed, wow. Speaking
of what about the nutrition? Oh gosh, okay, um, Well, alright, alright,
Because they are seeds, Whole cereal grains are this really
cool packet of a strong fiber encasing proteins that would
(15:01):
code for creating a plant, and these good fats to
help protect it and help it grow, and starches to
feed that growing plant. Whole grains are pretty good for you.
But uh, the processing of grains into cereals often removes
a lot of the things that aren't just starch um
and adds a lot of salt and sugar. Many ready
(15:24):
to eat breakfast cereals on the market are enriched, meaning
that they have vitamins and minerals added to to make
the more nutritious and make up for some of those
nutrients lost during processing. But these these breakfast cereals have
come under a lot of scrutiny over the years for
exactly how much sugar and salt they contain. And part
of the problem here is it sugar isn't just a
(15:46):
flavoring right like, It's also a texturing agent and preservative,
which is more important to some formulations than to others.
Like um, like corn based products and flaky products are
particularly dependent upon sugar. And when you have sugar, it
helps the flavor if you balance it with salt. So
(16:08):
it can be like an arms race of stuff that
isn't good for you being added into these things, um
and the loser is your nutrition every time. Ah. And
of course, like different cereals sold in different markets to
different demographics will contain more or less sugar and salt,
and in general they're the worst in the United States
(16:29):
because why not? Of course, of course other places are
catching up though, because Uh, read your dang labels, people,
That's That's what I'm saying. If you want to know
what's anything, read the label. I'll tell you. I guess
also recommend going back to our sugar episode, because yeah,
you get a good primer in that for I feel
(16:51):
I feel like most of us know now, But for
a long time I wasn't really sure how much sugar
was an obscene amount. Now I feel pretty confident. Um.
Also because people have called me out for it, I
haven't made a Seinfeld reference in a minute. Um. There
is an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is stopped up,
has constipation, desperately tries to eat brand cereal um and
(17:15):
it doesn't work, and he says the brand isn't working
for me. Terry. Think about that line a lot. That
was a pretty decent Cramer that was. It depends on
the what's that the cadence? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
also did a gesture that he did still encompassed a
(17:36):
lot of what he is. Um, I'm working on It's
on my list of impressions. But all right, what about
some numbers. So breakfast cereal is a big business. As
of sixteen, the global breakfast cereal market value, including both
hot and cold cereals and related bars and biscuits, um,
was some thirty seven billion dollars. Oh hand of that,
(18:02):
cold ready to eat cereals, along with related bars and biscuits,
accounted for about sixty of that market. You know, I
used to eat those like every every day at Marching
Band band camp and then every practice at band camp.
So I have a really bad association with him. It's
not that I think they taste bad, but you know
when you have like that memory, and so just thinking
(18:24):
about them makes me like, oh no, oh, no, thank you,
back in the heat, feeling like I'm going to pass
out all those drama. I don't need that. Oh you don't, Annie,
it's in the past. You're safe now, thank you. Safe
from Marching Band memories. Well not the memories. I can't
help you with the memories, but you're safe from Marching Band.
(18:45):
They do lurk around every corner, You're right, um uh
and uh so. So cold cold, ready to eat breakfast
cereal is a fairly American phenomenon, but his has also
been picked up intensely in the British Isles. Um as
of and I couldn't find more recent numbers or I
(19:07):
don't know, like there's some conflicting numbers out there, as
there are in any kind of market research category. But yeah,
um as Ireland eight the most cereal in the world
per capita um like dry cold breakfast cereal um an
average of eight point four kilos per person per year. Um,
that's about eighteen and a half pounds dang. At the time.
(19:31):
Other European countries, though, we're averaging like a kilo per
person per year or less. So North America still dominated
the market as a whole. Wow. Yeah, um and uh,
and that that has been changing. Um. Westernization and urbanization
have been increasing the number and the varieties of cereal
(19:52):
sold around the world over the past couple of decades. UM.
China and Russia are also now very big markets like
top five and Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market
area and globally it is a growing market. In the
US it's been dropping a little bit every year, but globally, um,
it's it's increasing about four percent per year. I guess
(20:13):
another episode, you could we listen to his Breakfast because
I was reading about how breakfast is the one meal
that's kind of consistently been going down in the US
of people who eat it, and so there's just all
of this marketing focus and cereal, I would argue, is
just very marketing focus and as it is. And I
(20:34):
remember reading a quote I can't remember from where, but
it's like if you own if if because breakfast is
kind of ritualistic. If somebody chooses your product, then you
own their breakfast. Um. So yeah, there's just this fight
for it. And then and they were saying, like, um,
fast food restaurants have been putting more and more money
(20:55):
into breakfast items because that's where the growth is and huh. Yeah,
it's a cutthroat world in the world of breakfast. Of
one of the tops is Cheerios. I suppose the Cheerios
brand made about one million dollars in sales. That's a
billion with a B, folks, billion with a B. They're
(21:17):
the best selling cereal in America. That includes all of
their cheerios hunting out cheeros. But okay, yeah, that's a lot. Yeah,
um and uh and and in general, breakfast cereals are
a high profit item. Um. They rake in a gross
margin of like forty and a profit margin of seventeen percent,
which is which is comfy. That's real comfy. And uh
(21:41):
and yet note that that is after factoring in the
costs of marketing cereals, which account for twenty tocent of
the total sales value of the product. That's a fifth
to a quarter of the money that it takes to
make cereal. Going to convincing you to buy it. Yeah.
I mean, I know a lot of us don't watch
(22:02):
commercials anymore, but any time I turn on like Nickelodeon,
you're going to see a serial commercial, and like every
break I would say yes. Um. And the story of
how we got to hear uh is fascinating because like,
like you may have noticed that a lot of that marketing, well,
(22:23):
a lot of the marketing is like funny cartoon characters
like delivering one liners, and the rest of it is
convincing you how just absolutely stoically healthy. These products are um,
even if they're flavored with like chocolate or marshmallows or whatever.
Right yeah, um and uh. And that duality goes back
(22:47):
to the very beginning of the serial story. It does,
it does, and we will get into that history, but
first we're going to take a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(23:09):
thank you so um. Of course, people have been cooking
cereal grains in various ways and eating them for breakfast
for pretty much ever, right uh. And the story of
modern breakfast cereal yes, is really a case of advertising,
and particularly health advertising and changing attitudes around food health
(23:29):
and breakfast in particular, and perhaps in America in particular. Yeah. Yeah,
So in brief to kind of sum up from our
Graham Cracker episode, and if you're very confused about why
we're mentioning Graham Crackers, I'll tell you. Um So, so,
there was this whole like health and morality movement that
(23:51):
kicked off in the early to mid eighteen hundreds in
the United States in particular. UM. That includes, but is
not limited to the temperance movement, which um which here
in the US is what led to prohibition there. You know,
there were just a whole bunch of changes going on
in society at the time, um, what with industrialization and
urbanization and the changes that those things rought in how
(24:14):
we eat and drink and medicate. Um. Drinking, alcohol and
especially distilled alcohol was on the rise, both for for
for leisure and for medicine. People were spending more time
indoors and in polluted environments, and there was a pushback, yes,
and one of the people who pushed back here in
the United States was um one Sylvester Graham. That guy.
(24:40):
He was, this this minister who preached virtue and good
health via abstaining from alcohol and tobacco and meat and
white bread and via taking in exercise and fresh air
and a vegetarian diet. I mean, he wasn't wrong about
those things, but he was a jerk about it. Okay,
um is he just he hated well I think like
(25:05):
like women as part of it, but but he he
really but more than women, he hated bread. Um. He
hated everything the commercialized manufactured bread stood for. You know,
like like contemporary manufacturing processes made it easy to to
separate the components of whole wheat grains and therefore made
it easy to make fluffy, delightful white bread. And so
(25:25):
he didn't like that you were removing the good parts
of the grains. And he furthermore thought that the only
good bread was made by wives and mothers with love
and care, which would then lead to a happy digestive system. Um.
He wrote in in this seven thing that he published
called um U Treatise on Bread and Bread Making, he wrote,
(25:46):
thousands in civic life will four years and perhaps as
long as they live, eat the most miserable trash that
can be imagined in the form of bread. Who wow,
strong words. I have strong feelings about bread, and I've
never felt that strongly about bread. No, I don't think
(26:08):
so either. But his alternative to this miserable trash that
was bread was products made of what came to be
known as graham flower, which is coarse ground, whole wheat flour,
more more like a meal than a flower really, um.
And it lends itself therefore to to crackers more than
to bread. And his original graham crackers contained no fat
(26:32):
and no sugar. Pretty different from what we're dealing with today. Yep,
he'd be rolling in his grave, and good on him.
I remember in that episode I came out so vehemently
against this, and I think you less so, but you know, um,
and we had such a kind listener. I can't remember
(26:53):
your name, but if you're still listening, I still remember this.
The sent as a shipment Bob's Bob's Mill, Grandpa bob
read Mill, a whole bunch of their products so that
we could make our own graham crackers and kind of
like come back to it had like a better place
that it made me laugh and I appreciated it both.
(27:14):
So yes, thank you if you're still this thing. That
stuff was so good. Oh my gosh. Anyway, okay, yes, alright,
So moving on to a fellow named James Caleb Jackson.
He invented a product he called Granula with a you
at a sanitarium he ran in New York in sixty
Perhaps his mother invented it. I feel like that's the
(27:35):
case throughout most of these stories, is perhaps someone else
in the family invented it. But yeah, yeah, Jackson was
a very conservative, very religious vegetarian who he created this
granula out of dried gram flour that he then broke
into shapes um orkin perhaps his mother did. It was
so tough it had to be soaked in milk overnight
(27:57):
before it could be eaten. And something that's something that
stuck around even when the toughness is no longer there.
M hm. And yeah. This was during industrialization, when labor
was undergoing a really massive upheaval and life was becoming
more fast paced, and cereal offered a more convenient, quicker
breakfast option, and it was heavily touted that it was
(28:20):
easier to digest and breakfast was like prior to this
from what I read, this huge meat heavy meal. Um yeah,
because there was also simultaneously this rise of yeah, this
focus on wellness and and cereal really revolutionized how we
saw breakfast here in the United States. Weird. Yeah, I know,
(28:44):
I know, but it's about to get whirred over. At
his Battle Creek, Michigan SPA, the Battle Creek Sanitarium, surgeon
John Harvey Kellogg. Yep, that one made his own version
of Granula. Originally he called it Granula, but he had
to change his name to Granola, allegedly after a lawsuit
(29:06):
forced him to change the name. Yeah, and I wanted
to put in here. Uh. Sanitarium is a word that
we've we've come to associate with like a like a
mental health hospital. Um, I think modern le but um.
But at the time sanitariums focused on both physical and
mental health. They were more like retreats the hospitals really. Yeah. Yeah,
(29:26):
And you do see the word spa used frequently. I
think they're more medicinally focused, perhaps in how we see
spas today. Yes, neither the word sanitarium nor spa are
being used in the way that we think of now. Yes,
I think of it's somewhere in between. And that's probably
what you've got. Yes. Oh, the yogurt episode is another
(29:50):
one you could check out. Oh my god. Alright, So
Kellogg was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, and he
incorporated Adventist beliefs around health into his sanitarium, things like vegetarianism,
avoidance of tobacco and alcohol, and a focus on exercise.
On top of that, he was really, really, really focused
(30:12):
on digestive health. He was a proponent of regular enemas
and staying away from fatty, spicy, salty, and greasy foods.
And he thought granola would promote digestive wellness. After his
first attempt at this biscuit led to a patient breaking
a tooth, he twice baked a mixture of cormell oats
(30:34):
and flour and then broke them up into smaller pieces.
And this was around eighteen seventy seven. Oh yeah, and
he thought granola might prevent people from wanting sex or masturbating,
which he believed were bad. Yeah. Yeah, Kellogg bought in
on a lot of what Graham and his contemporaries were
thinking about all of that sex and masturbation thing. Um.
(30:57):
They they thought it was a bad real like like
not good for your health at all. Um. And he
thought specifically the latter would lead to um. As scholar
Verne L. Bullog or blow rights and get ready to
uh to mark list off of your bingo cards, savor
listeners because here we go. Oh, general disability, consumption like symptoms,
(31:22):
premature and defective development, sudden changes in disposition, lassitude, sleeplessness,
failure of mental capacity, fickleness, untrustworthiness, love of solitude, bashfulness,
unnatural boldness, mock piety, easily being frightened, confusion of ideas,
aversion to girls and boys, but a dedicated liking of
boys and girls, round shoulders, week back and stiffness of joints,
(31:48):
paralysis of the lower extremities, unnatural gait, bad posture in bed,
lack of breast development in females, capricious appetite, fondness for
unnatural or hurtful irritation articles such as salt, pepper, spice, is, vinegar, mustard, clay, slate, pencils, plaster,
and chalk, disgusted simple food, use of tobacco, unnatural paleness,
acne or pimples, biting of fingernails, shifty eyes, moist cold hands,
(32:12):
palpitation of the heart, hysteria in females, corrosis or green sickness, anemia,
epileptic fits, bedwetting, and use of obscene words and phrases.
Oh dear. Yeah, you know, there's some real interesting things
on here. But the one that really stood out to
me for some reason is disgusted at simple foods because
(32:37):
it's kind of the product he's trying to convince people
they need. Not he was not really selling about it.
He wasn't really about selling it. But it's just funny.
He's like, that's why you don't like this thing that
I made? Yeah, yeah, um and yeah. And so he
thought that, you know, eating granola would prevent you'res actual
(33:00):
desires and therefore prevent all of these ailments. Yes. Um.
According to some things I read, he also recommended tying
children's hands behind their backs. Um. So that's a it's
a different podcast. But he has a very storied, in
many ways upsetting history, if you want to look that up.
But when it comes to this, he was a believer
(33:22):
in that. He was a true believer. Uh. And he
wanted reform of how we ate in this country and
how we viewed health. H and he that went as
far as him handing out recipes for his gredola. He
did try to, I believe he tried to patent it,
but he never succeeded, but he wanted to protect it,
but also was willing to share it. However, C W Post,
(33:47):
one of Kellec's patients, also riffed on this idea and
came up with grape nuts, which went on to become
the first popular product to run a discount coupon campaign.
Uh yeah, but Kellogg really didn't like this, and it
accused him of stealing the recipe from his safe. But
again from what I read, he was handed them out,
so I think he just didn't like he was like
(34:09):
profiting off of it. Yeah. Yeah, because Posts set up
this rival retreat in Battle Creek called La Vita in
mm hmm, Well, Killog wasn't done in the serial world.
He and his brother will Keith Kellogg or W. K.
Kellogg innovated a flaked cereal or that's one version. Many
(34:29):
members of the Kellogg family and employees at his sanitarium
also a claim to inventing the cereal. The official story,
according to the company's website, puts the date at when
some wheat based cereal dough was accidentally left out for
a decent amount of chime unspecified um and it fermented.
(34:50):
The dough was then rolled out into thin flakes that
crisped up when baked. The recipe was refined over the years,
the doe swapped out for corn dough um. Dr Kellog
called the flakes um for eating at a sanitarium granose flakes.
The tagline enriched the Blood. There was this big focus
(35:14):
on blood around that time. Other other taglines for various
products included keeps the blood cool and makes red blood redder. Okay,
not sure. I'm not sure about it. It sounds like
you're marketing to vampires. Not it does. Indeed, can you
imagine you're watching children's cereal commercial and it's like, keeps
(35:37):
their blood cool? Okay, alright, but okay. Tired of the
treatment um he received the hands of his brother, Will
pivoted toward the commercial sector with corn flakes after purchasing
the recipe and founding the Battle Creek Toasted corn Flake
(35:57):
Company in nineteen o six, and part of the shift
corn was simply because it was cheaper than wheat at
the time, as it was largely still considered a food
for animals, not people, and Will got the idea to
add sugar, offered the first prize in the box and
started mass marketing and it worked. By nine, the company
(36:20):
was producing one twenty thousand cases a day. There were
one hundred cero companies in Battle Creek alone by night three.
I love this just in this one area. Yeah, I
see you. I'm going to do it too, about to
do a better and it's just I'll multiply. Perhaps not surprisingly,
(36:41):
Dr Gellogg related a roof of this. He objected to
the addition of sugar, which he viewed as a vice uh,
and he took his brother to court over the use
of the family name. However, the court ruled and Will's
favor in nineteen twenty and Will renamed the company the
Kellogg Company in nineteen twenty five. Around the same time,
(37:03):
Post debuted their product Elijah's Manna, but after some protests
by religious groups, they renamed it to Post toast Ees
Yes by a turn and I love yesh yeah and
great nuts. Uh. When they came out in seven, they
(37:23):
came with the promise of curing all kinds of things,
including maulvaria and alcoholism. Yeah uh. Post once said, um,
the sunshine that makes a business plant grow is advertising,
and the company went all in on that. UM. One
(37:44):
advertising tract that they printed was titled the Road to
Willville UM. By nineteen o three, dude was making a
million bucks a year. Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh.
It's funny too, because to this day eyes have an
association that grape nuts are the healthier cereals. I don't
(38:06):
know if that's any truth to it, but I have
the association. I they are low in sugar, and from
what I recall from being a child, they taste like dirt.
So take that great nuts. Post also purchased the exclusive
rights to the production of the serial rolling machine needed
(38:27):
for the process being used at the time, a product
that will Kellogg originally had a hand in designing. This
again cut through world here cereal um jumping to a
different continent for a second. In the early nineteen hundreds,
Swiss Dr Maximilian Bircher Benner came up with a mixture
of uncooked oats, dried fruits and nuts, originally served with
(38:48):
orange juice but later milk called musically. He got the
inspiration for this from a dish he had while traveling,
so it existed in some form before this UM and
probably could be his own. Episode. Usually was documented in
the UK by and its popularity really took off in
the ninete sixties. Before that, it was sort of seen
as this fringe alternative health food. Um. I have to
(39:12):
say I had usually a lot when I was in
Australia and I loved it. Oh, sure, yeah, I is.
It's great. By the nineteen tents, Quaker Oats Company introduced
puffed rice and puffed wheat after they acquired a technique
that caused grains of rice to explode under pressure. They
marketed as this amazing scientific innovation, touting it as the
(39:37):
first quote food shot from guns and quote the eighth
wonder of the world. M Uh Americans and their guns, y'all.
Even the cereal, even cereal mm hmm mm. In the
nineteen twenties, some of the very earliest radio programs aired
(40:01):
sponsorships from Kellogg's. Also in the nineteen twenties, and accident
led to the creation of wheaties when a health clinician
knocked over some wheat brand onto a hot stove. By
the nineteen thirties, their slogan Breakfast of Champions was being
used in marketing materials, first on a billboard for minor
league baseball team in Minnesota. Rice Crispies entered the scene
(40:24):
soon after that. Yeah, and in um, Snap, crackle and pop,
We're designed by this um, this cartoonist by the name
of Vernon Grant or or artist of Vernon Grant, And
they would go on to become the first cartoon marketing
characters for Cereal, for Rice crispies, UM, and supposedly Grant's
(40:45):
work largely influenced none other than Walt Disney. Wow, M
I mean I still remember those characters? Oh yeah, yeah,
they're still around. Um. Also in the nineteen thirties, Kellogg's
opened its first British manufacturing plant in Manchester, UM to
create the then already popular in the area of corn
(41:07):
flakes and other products. Perhaps the first iteration of wheat checks,
called shredded Ralston, was invented by Rawston Peering, a company
in the nineteen thirties, and this product was intended for
followers of Rawstonism, which was the social movement entrenched with
racism that also believed in mind control. Uh yeah um.
(41:28):
It wasn't until the nineteen fifties and a rice version
that the name checks showed up mhm h. In the
nineteen forties, cheeriots made their way to shelves, but they
were soon renamed Cheerios. Grape Nuts introduced the eat a
good Breakfast, Do a Better Job campaign in As a
(41:49):
part of this, shoppers received pamphlets espousing the health benefits
of breakfast, and radio announcers declared nutrition experts say breakfast
is the most important meal of the day. We've all
heard it. Yeah, that's where it comes from, Thanks Grape Nuts. Ironically,
the nineteen forties is also when we saw the introduction
(42:11):
of sugary coatings on cereals, on posts cereals specifically, and
during this time, Tony the Tiger debuted and Post licensed
Mickey Mouse for use on its cereal boxes. Several things
happened that changed the serial world after World War Two
in the fifties that led to an increase in consumption. First,
(42:34):
there was a push for sugar and sugared products. Second,
the advent of television in American households and the commercials
that came with that. Yeah. Legend has it that in
nine the then share of Kellogg's met atman Leo Burnett
on a train by total chance, and their relationship just
(42:57):
absolutely changed both television and advertising, and like serial advertising
in particular as we know it, I feel like we've
talked about him before. Well, in either case, Kellogg and
Tony the Tiger was in some of these very early
television commercials for Cereal um and yeah, the first of
(43:17):
many advertised Cereal mass advertised animated Cereal mascots to come. Uh.
This decade also gave us corn pops and tricks. Hmm.
If you go into the sixties, Quaker debut products like
capt'n Crunch and now discontinued product called Quake that featured
a series of commercials depicting battles between an alien named
(43:40):
Quisp and a minor named Quake. Um. Yeah. Both of
these products were essentially sweetened corn and oat dough molded
into shapes. However, one of the reasons I want to
bring this up is in the FCC decreed that children's
cartoon characters could not give marketing messaging during the show itself.
(44:01):
Yeah yeah, relegating it to commercials only. Um. And there's
a lot of scrutiny around around uh products marketed to
children at the time. In v an advisor on nutrition
to then President Nixon testified to Congress that rats fed cereals,
these sugary breakfast cereals. Those rats were less healthy than
(44:23):
other rats that he fed ground up paperboard cereal boxes.
If that paperboard was mixed with milk, sugar and raisins.
I have a lot of questions. What was President Nixon
dowing here? You have all these rats? It wasn't It
wasn't Nixon. It was his advisor did who did the
(44:45):
testifying and the hypothetical experimentation. Not Nixon? Yeah, oh man,
all right, I like where you took it. I like that.
Oh jeez. I was just imagining him in the Oval office,
like eat this cardboard rats. Oh man, I should That
(45:08):
was an opportunity to try and nix an impression. I
really didn't do it, but I work on that. Cool.
That's when I can manage. Also in the seventies we
see just this whole Smories board of fruity monster based
cereals like frank and Berry and Booberry, which was a
Halloween products that I really didn't know that was the case. Yeah,
(45:31):
I think I think it's seasonal these days. Anyway, it's seasonal,
but I don't know. And Interesting Count Chocola was also
in this a decade. Also non monster varieties like fruity
Pebbles and Coco pebbles um. And all of this was
happening as Granola's commercial sales were on the rise, and
the Federal Trade Commission was yes scrutinizing the marketing tactics
of these products. When it came to children, Honeyout Cheerios
(45:56):
debuted in nineteen seventy nine. In the seventies we had
these monster and Fruit bas cereals, But the eighties was
all about these tie ins and co branding, like having
Mr T as a spokesperson for Mr T shape Cereal,
and then you had things like Smurfberry Crunch and the
(46:17):
California Raisins for Post Raisin brand. The California Raisins have
always creeped me out. Yeah, I claymation in general really
creeps me out. Um, and I just don't I I
don't know, I don't know. Man, they move wrong. It's
not cool. I remember a listener sent as a clip
(46:38):
for commercial from that and I was I was highly disturbed.
So I'm on, I'm on the same train. And as
a kid, my brother loved Gumby. I couldn't watch it
disturbed me so much. Oh yeah, yeah, Gumby too. It
always okay, all right, this is a different show. But
speaking of disturbing UM in these Uh, Neil Gaiman wrote
(47:02):
a serial convention into his comic book Sandman, and yes,
cereal was a pun. No one was there to talk
about cereal. They were they were serial killers of course, yeah,
UM and in topical pun news. But much later, UM
London had a pair of serial killer cafes UM c
(47:24):
e r e A l Killer cafes from UM. These
kind of like nineties themed sweet nostalgia joints that UM
that collectively sold over a million bowls of cereal before
going online this year. UM in response to COVID nineteen
mm hm m hm, and nostalgia really did become a
(47:45):
focus of the market and the post market. UM. In
the two thousand's a fellow who we mentioned in our
Molecular Astronomy episode of Ferran Andrea made what he called
Kellogg's Paea at l W E UM. This was a
reduced seafood broth over rice crispies. UM. Yeah, there's the
(48:08):
there's the Mammafuku offshoot Milk Bar that has ice creams
made from dairy steeped in cereals. Uh. There are vodkas
flavored like fruit loops, they really taste like fruit loops
if that's what you're into. Um, I like the I've
had the Mama. I think they have like milk, cereal
(48:29):
milk flavored something. I've had it. It was good. I
liked it. Oh cool, give that review I read. I
read in one place ice creams, but then I felt
like it was something else, somewhere else anyway. In kind
of running along that theme, m Kellogg's opened to museum
or like a roadside attraction in Battle Creek called Cereal
(48:51):
City USA. Um and this uh, this followed the company
shutting down tours of its nearby real production silly due
to fears of rivals stealing trade secrets. Yes, lug Worth
in there. Yeah. The The attraction was set up to
look like a twentie century factory and told the story
(49:15):
of of cereals creation. Visitors could also tore Battle Creek
from a little go kart train. Yeah, meet the mascots.
Of course, samples some cereals. But but it closed in
two thousand seven. Little attendants. Yeah, well, if anyone who
happened to go before then let us know. Yeah, if
you've got photographs or memorabilia or just memories, absolutely let US. Know. Yes,
(49:40):
Puffins was introduced by a small Northern California natural foods
bakery in the nineteen nineties and this molassas sweetened corn cereal.
They really rode the wave, the rising wave of organic
and a desire for healthier serial alternatives. And I have
to say I've had him and I really enjoyed them. UM.
And I can't speak to those things, but I actually UM.
(50:01):
The trend of natural and organic foods continued into the
two thousands. The acquisition of Caushi by Kellogg's really exemplifies that.
As part of this. UM. Yeah, there's been this continued
conversation around marketing towards kids and accurate labeling sugar. Yeah. Yeah,
that the changes in nutrition labeling laws UM. Specifically in
(50:25):
the UK and the US I can speak to, but
I'm pretty sure it's been happening the world over over
the past couple of decades have resulted, UM in further
scrutiny of breakfast cereals. UM. And then in uh, breakfast
cereals were labeled a thing, what millennials are killing another thing. Yeah,
(50:46):
there's this market survey where these lazy millennials reported that
it's inconvenient to eat breakfast cereals because you have to
clean up afterwards. Yeah, and I will remind you that
that even and I mean even in s like millennials
were already like thirty four years old. So I'm not sure, right,
(51:10):
this is the thing that bothers me all the time.
It's fine, it's fine, but but yes, um, Over the
past couple of decades, a lot of new development has
indeed been focused on repackaging cereal into bars or whatever,
for for on the go eating, to appeal to us
tricksie millennials who are killing everything. Yeah, you know, it's
(51:32):
a big plot. We're all in on it, and uh,
you're just gonna have to anovate to keep up. Yep, yep, sorry,
not sorry, that's right, that's right, I do. I'm gonna
(51:54):
go look up after this a picture of all the
mascots together, and I think we should just have a
food mascot horror comic. Like I feel it. I feel
pretty good. Actually yeah, yeah, yeah, I will. We were
saying before we started recording that, like we didn't even
(52:14):
go that deep on the on the mascot and it
could be like a whole other like we could just
have a whole episode of like these cereal mascots and
they're like backstories as they are, and how weird they are.
Oh yeah, I mean I remember it being a large
topic of conversation when I was in school that how
mean the kids were to the tricks rabbit because they
(52:36):
wouldn't share the tricks. So I bet he sits at
home at night and the lights are off and he's
just plotting like, oh, one day those kids will pay.
Oh no, all right, yeah, put that in the back burner.
All right, well, cool, cool, cool cool. We'd below do
(53:00):
your ideas from listeners about this, and he thoughts, uh
and speaking of we do have some listener mail. We do,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
(53:22):
thank you, And we're back with trying to do this.
Nineties commercials they're so in your face. We talked about
them before, like the skateboarding and the bright zig zagging colors.
Oh yeah, yeah, lots of vocal fry um, lots of
(53:42):
like kind of kind of like like dovetailing with the
whole like extreme sports kind of thing. They're kind of
yelling at you to be honest. Yeah, there was a
lot of yelling in the nineties. If anyone hasn't seen
the nineties Kids commercial, go look it up. You will
be shocked. It's high energy. High energy is a good
(54:03):
way to describe it. Uh huh uh huh um. Okay.
So to preface these letters, I love how many people
have been emailing about salt and pepper shakers and also
specifically the one that Lauren mentioned. It's fantastic, So Sarah Roote,
I will say I was excited immediately when the episode
(54:25):
on salt and pepper shaker episode showed up in my
podcast feed. My mom is a collector of salt and
pepper shakers. For any given family meal where we are
sitting at the dining room table, there is at least
two sets on the table. For holidays, at least four
or more sets to make an appearance. Yeah beautiful. A
common gift for my mom is salt and pepper shakers.
(54:47):
The salt and pepper shakers are all displayed prominently in
the China cabinet. Highlights include the creepy, snowy al salt
and pepper shakers that belonged to my great grandmother. I
think the silver ones that were one of my mom's
friends family members. Her friend knew she would appreciate them,
and my personal favorite the humping turtles that my sister's
then boyfriend now husband bought from my mom on a
(55:10):
trip to Florida. I mean those are pretty fantastic. Yeah,
not having seen your mother's full collection, UM, I'm gonna
say that those have to be standouts, good choices. Oh yeah,
(55:33):
And Michael wrote, I listened to your podcast on salt
and pepper shakers and wanted to share the story of
my great granny's salt and pepper shakers. She had something
like fifty sets and my mother was said to inherit
them upon her mother's passing. Needless to say, throughout the years,
pairs were taken and or broken by other family members,
and my mother only received twelve or so sets. My
(55:55):
mother also received a photo album, and behind a middle
school picture of my mom, there was a black and
white photo of the salt and pepper collection. Over the years,
thanks to the picture and eBay, I have been able
to replace almost all of the salt and pepper shakers,
and now my mom has almost eighty sets. My personal
favorites are the donkey figure where the saddle bags are
(56:18):
the salt and pepper shaker, and the poodle figure where
the six puppies that hang off the side are shakers. Ingenuity.
It's so impressive, you know. It's that's the thing. It's
such a simple thing, but there are endless ways to
create it. Yeah, it just feels like this kind of doofie.
(56:42):
And I say that in the most loving way, like doofie,
like doofie here, but like putting this thought in effort
and care. I love it like a condiment shaker. It's
so good. Gosh, that's beautiful. Yes, I love that you
helped create the collection with a the help of a
(57:03):
photo she must have taken. Oh gosh, I love. I
love all of the enabling, all of the like like
like loving enabling that goes on in these stories about
salt and pepper shakers meet meat. So please keep sending
those in our way. You can email us at hello
(57:23):
at favorite pod dot com and thanks to those listeners
for emailing us. Yes, you can also get in touch
via social media. We are on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
at savor pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio For more podcasts
my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(57:44):
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard,
who waited patiently for the entire second half of the
episode to break in when we took our listener mail
break talking about how terrible of a dude Kellogg. Yes,
it was top notch. Was thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(58:05):
your way. H
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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