Cornflake CrusadeThis extensively-researched popular history chronicles how Battle Creek, Michigan, became both a health center and the place where America's breakfast cereal industry developed at the turn of the century. Carson tells how Battle Creek first hosted a famous sanitarium run by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), under the initial sponsorship of the Seventh-Day Adventists, and featuring water cures, vegetarianism, exercise, and sexual abstinence. Kellogg, raised in an Adventist family, later parted company with that denomination over religious differences. His sanitarium encouraged other experimental medical enterprises, transforming Battle Creek into a place where entrepreneurs began to produce "healthy" foods such as crackers, coffee substitutes, and, especially, cereals. Charles W. Post, a disgruntled former Kellogg patient who practiced briefly as a healer himself, achieved early success manufacturing and marketing these new products. By standardizing sizes and recipes for such foods as Grape Nuts and Postum, and combining mass distribution methods with aggressive advertising techniques, Post achieved spectacular success with consumers and paved the way for a host of competitors. Will Keith Kellogg, the second giant among breakfast food manufacturers, produced and marketed the "corn flakes" first developed by his brother John. The W. K. Kellogg Co.'s innovative marketing campaigns emphasized product flavor, international distribution, and free toys or tokens in the cereal box. W. K. Kellogg is widely remembered for having established the philanthropic foundation that bears his name. |
Contents
Foodtown U S | 3 |
The Landing of the Vegetarian Pilgrims | 15 |
The Great American Stomach Ache | 28 |
Copyright | |
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Advent advertising American baked Battle Creek College BATTLE CREEK FOOD Battle Creek Sanitarium became biscuits Boston bran bread breakfast foods brother C. W. Post called cereal coffee Chicago church City Clubb corn flakes cornflake Dansville Detroit diet digest Doctor early Elder Ellen G Ellen White factory father Food Company grain Granose Granula Grape Nuts guests health foods Health Reform Horton and Henry idea Institute interest Jackson James James Caleb Jackson John Harvey Kellogg Journal later Lauhoff lecture LIBRARY lived magazine malt Malta Vita manufacture meal meat Michigan Miss never oatmeal patients Perky pork Post's Postum Cereal Postum Cereal Company Reverend Sanitas sell Seventh Day Adventist Shredded Wheat Sister White stomach Street Sylvester Graham tion Toasted Corn Flake took UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA vegetable vegetarian W. K. Kellogg W. K. Kellogg Foundation Water Cure York