The Road to Wellville/Chapter 9
The Food Manufacturer’s Opportunity
he day of miscellaneous drugging has passed. The era of dietetics has dawned. Foods are the materia medica of the new school of preventive medicine, and with the new discoveries along these lines (made possible by the biological laboratories), the importance of food in the health program has grown apace. General education in food values has spread this knowledge among the people; it has not been hidden in the laboratory. Food is everybody’s business, and it must be chosen mainly by the women in the home.Although standards for the purity and composition of foods are set under the food law, those can only be standards of average excellence that may be legally enforced. Standards of high excellence—exceeding legal requirements—must be set by manufacturers themselves. It is they who have the opportunity, and the duty, of establishing quality standards and of adapting foods to the habits of life and economic needs of the people as they change.
With the passing of the coal and wood stove, and the coming in of gas and electricity and the small kitchen, there are fewer long cooking operations in the home. Soup making and cereal cooking, especially, have passed largely out of the home into the manufacturer’s care; also the servant problem has meant less cooking in general, as well as putting a premium on easily prepared and served foods. The refining and packing of foods, to protect them from spoilage and make their merchandising and sale more sanitary and the products more safe and sound for wide distribution, have necessitated specially prepared foods to balance the elements so lost, which are just as important as are the gains in availability and cleanliness.
How One Food
Manufacturer
has Pioneered the
WayThe Postum Cereal Company was founded thirty-one years ago by C. W. Post, who foresaw the day when men and women would select their food with better understanding of its relation to health.
Starting with Postum, a healthful cereal beverage for those who did not drink tea or coffee and for those with whom these beverages did not agree, he built a line of health products, selecting each because it filled a particular need in our diet.
The steady growth of The Postum Cereal Company during the years that followed testifies to the success this company has had in the meeting of real dietary needs. The “little white barn” where the project started in 1895 still stands, a striking contrast to the towering grain elevators, spotless manufacturing departments, and packing, shipping, and administration buildings that make up the great Postum Cereal Company plant today. The specialized food values of Post Health Products meet outstanding demands in the American dietary. Postum Cereal and Instant Postum offer aid to a nervous, overactive people in their attempt to turn away from caffein-bearing beverages with their artificial stimulation. Post’s Bran Flakes balances the deficiencies of overrefined diet, and helps overcome the sluggishness due to lack of exercise. Grape-Nuts affords a crisp food, notably needed for tooth health, and offers the body-building essentials of wheat and barley in a temptingly delicious and easily digested form. Post Toasties, the double-thick corn flakes, meet the ready-to-serve demands of the domestic situation, offering a most palatable energy supply, in a less heavy cereal to serve with milk and fruits.
Just a glance at the modern sanitary methods used and the materials that go into Post Health Products.
Much light, space, and white enamel paint make cleanliness a necessity, and white-clad workers fit into the picture.
Grape-Nuts is made by a process which every good housekeeper will appreciate. Wheat flour, malted barley flour, yeast, salt, and pure artesian well water are made into a bread. Electrical dough mixers give it a thorough kneading, and it is baked in eight-pound loaves. Here the barley malt plays its valuable part in converting some of the starch into dextrins and maltose, two easily digested carbohydrates. Twenty-five large ovens turn out over 40,000 such loaves a day, and it is baking day every day at the Postum plant!
When cool, the loaves are sliced and rebaked very slowly. Then Grape-Nuts is ready for the last process—to be ground into the crisp, brown kernels that come to the consumer in sanitary wrapped boxes.
Postum Cereal is also made from wheat. Whole wheat, and wheat bran which has been moistened with sugar-cane molasses, are roasted separately, ground, and mixed. No coffee or flavorings or any other ingredients are added. It is just a roasted wheat product, sweetened with wholesome molasses, and ground finely. Instant Postum is the same material, brewed for you and then reduced to a soluble powder. Again a step to save the housekeeper time and trouble, especially in the morning.
Post Toasties, double-thick corn flakes, are made from hulled white corn (corn grits) cooked with a very little salt and sugar in great steam cookers, most carefully controlled. At times as many as five hundred thousand bushels of grain are kept on hand to meet the demands of those cookers! The cooked grits are dried by hot air, “cured” for ten hours, and then rolled into uniform flakes and carefully toasted. From the “roasting ears” of the summer camp to the corn flakes of the table, we all know what “toasting” does for corn flavor. Because Post Toasties are double-thick corn flakes, they stay crisp in milk or cream. They come in the triple-wrapped, red and yellow package (inner bag, box, and wax-wrapping) that keeps them crisp as well as clean until they reach the table.
There was a time when “No Admittance” signs hung on many food factory doors! There was a time when “practical men” mistrusted the findings of the scientist in the laboratory. Gone are those days, long since.
Now the entertaining of guests and the proud display of factory perfection are a notable feature of such an institution as the Postum Cereal Company’s plant at Battle Creek, Michigan. An air of homelike hospitality pervades the place. In a kitchen, trained workers test out the usability of the products, and scientists with laboratories well equipped for chemical and biological work check up on every point of production, from the standard quality of the incoming raw material to the composition of the finished product.
Composition
of Post
Health
ProductsNot content with this, careful animal-feeding observations are made, as well as analyses, to determine Health just what food values are being produced. At the same Products time ceaseless research work goes on, looking to constant improvement of the products. A glance at the following table shows the food values of the Post Health Products.
| Name of Product | Protein per cent | Fat per cent | Carbohydrate per cent | Fibre per cent | Ash per cent | Water per cent |
| Post’s Bran Flakes | 11.8 | 1.6 | 74.5 | 3.7 | 3.9 | 4.6 |
| Grape-Nuts | 11.9 | 0.6 | 82.5 | 1.7 | 2.0 | 1.3 |
| Post Toasties | 8.1 | 0.4 | 85.1 | 0.6 | 2.9 | 2.9 |
| Postum Cereal | 12.9 | 2.4 | 63.5 | 10.7 | 5.5 | 5.0 |
| Instant Postum | 7.9 | 0.2 | 81.5 | 00.0 | 8.0 | 2.4 |
| Post’s Bran Chocolate | 8.1 | 25.8 | 60.5 | 1.4 | 2.1 | 2.1 |