Food and Fitness, January 2012

January brings with it thoughts of New Year’s Resolutions, and for most of us, those new resolves involve diet and exercise. While searching out the back story about these subjects, I came upon great stories about some of the personalities related to food and fitness. I will share with you a bit about the Kellogg and Post families, Clarence Birdseye, and Jack LaLanne, the father of fitness.

In February I’ll be profiling African-American leaders and in March I’ll do the same for inspirational women. To receive these stories by email please check off your preferred list on the ACA home page or send me an email: kate@americacomesalive.com

Kellogg and Post: Big Names in Cereal Linked by History
The Kellogg story begins with two brothers who grew up in a family of Seventh Day Adventists. The older, John Harvey (1852-1943), was provided an education and became a doctor. Younger brothers like Will Keith (1860-1951) often did not have the same educational opportunities as older brothers, however John hired Will as a bookkeeper at the Battle Creek (Michigan) Sanitarium where John had become superintendent.

The sanitarium was run according to the principles of the Seventh Day Adventists and advocated no meat or caffeine or liquor, and a regimen of daily exercise. (T.C. Boyle’s novel, The Road to Wellville, presents a fictionalized version of Battle Creek Sanitarium.)  The sanitarium itself was quite well-known and many famous people made their way to Battle Creek to seek remedies for improved health. The famous included former president William Howard Taft, arctic explorer Roald Amundsen, broadcaster Lowell Thomas, aviator Amelia Earhart, playwright George Bernard Shaw, and actor Johnny Weissmuller.

Both brothers became quite interested in dietary theories. Dry cereal had been introduced in this country by Dr. James Caleb Jackson who created a product he called “granula” in 1863. The brothers wanted to expand on this and develop a method for processing cooked grains. One day they accidentally baked the dough too long but decided to try to salvage it anyway. When the dough was put through its final stage, they found they had created “toasted flakes.” They incorporated as the Sanitas Food Company to sell breakfast flake cereal. (This concept was a change for most of society; at this time, breakfast for the wealthy would have been eggs and meat; the poor would have eaten porridge or gruel.)

After working together on the initial products, the brothers came to a parting of the ways. In 1906 Will created the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company and John formed the Battle Creek Food Company which primarily marketed soy products. (John maintained his position at the sanitarium.) In 1909 Will changed his company’s name to Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Company and soon added Bran Flakes (1915) and Rice Krispies (1928).

In 1920 John challenged Will for the use of the name, taking the Kellogg Food Company for his company’s name. Will sued John and won the exclusive right to use “Kellogg” but lost the right to the bestselling “Toasted Corn Flakes” product, which the court deemed belonged to John.

This fight led to an estrangement between the two brothers. Each went on to follow different paths. John wrote books on health which espoused some rather odd beliefs as to what kept people healthy (celibacy was a big one). He was also active in the eugenics movement.

Will went on to build a very successful food company. During the Depression he established the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. At that time, he gave a $46 million grant to be used for the well-being of children. He also gave to millions of other causes.

Post Follows Kellogg Lead
Charles W. Post was a patient of John Kellogg’s and took what he learned to heart. He not only brought out his own brand of flake cereal, but he opened his own sanitarium as well, establishing it in 1913 in Garza County, Texas southeast of Lubbock.

At Battle Creek, Post had learned that caffeine was unhealthy, so he soon created Postum, a drink made primarily from wheat bran and molasses. Postum became very popular during World War II when coffee was tightly rationed.  The drink was discontinued in 2007, however there are still occasional petitions to bring it back.

The Post Cereal Company eventually became General Foods and General Foods and Kraft were combined by Philip Morris in 1990.

Frozen Foods Courtesy of Clarence Birdseye
Most American families would be seriously lost without frozen foods. While “buying fresh” is ideal, many times we’re racing home to heat up “whatever.”

The fact that our evening meal can involve decent-tasting frozen food is attributable to Clarence Birdseye II (1886-1956). When Birdseye was a young man, there were methods for freezing food but the food tended to change in look and taste—neither for the better. The food was also more likely to be contaminated once thawed. A particular challenge was seafood. Without freezing, fish could really only be eaten soon after catching which meant those who ate fish usually lived near the coast or near a river or lake.

Though Brooklyn-born, Birdseye went where he could for work and found himself employed as a fur trapper and trader in Labrador. From the Inuit people, he learned how to preserve the fish in barrels of sea water; the fish was cold when caught in arctic waters and the water with the fish froze quickly because of the cold temperatures. Birdseye noted that when cooked later — even weeks later — these quick-frozen fish tasted much better than fish frozen in warmer climates.

Birdseye began experimenting with how best he could mimic this process. In 1923, he began Birdseye Seafood Company with an investment of $7 for an electric fan, buckets of brine, and cakes of ice. A year later he went bankrupt. Birdseye had not yet figured out how to communicate the excellence of his product through what he called flash-freezing.

But Birdseye was persistent. This time he called his company General Seafood Corporation, basing it in Gloucester, Massachusetts to benefit from the excellent fishing grounds nearby. His next business push involved salesmanship of the product and developing grocery display cases from which frozen foods could be sold.

The Goldman-Sachs Trading Corporation and the Postum Company (later General Foods, as discussed above) bought Clarence Birdseye’s patents and trademarks in 1929 for $22 million. In 1930 the first quick-frozen vegetables, fruits, and meat, and of course, seafood was sold in eighteen stores in Springfield, Massachusetts under the trade name Birds Eye Frosted Foods®.

Birdseye stayed with the company and focused on research, developing better freezing techniques and improving the wrappers for frozen foods. Frozen foods went nationwide in 1944 when Birdseye suggested leasing insulated railroad cars for shipping. He further changed the grocery landscape by contracting with American Radiator Corporation to build display freezers, which General Foods then leased to stores. By the early 1950s, more than half of American grocery stores had a ‘frozen food’ section.

Fitness Movement
Jack LaLanne (1914-2011) is the father of today’s fitness movement. LaLanne was the son of French immigrants who settled in San Francisco when he was 15. His mother took him to hear a public lecture given by nutritionist Paul Bragg who spoke about the evils of meat and sugar. Jack, a self-described “sugaraholic,” was hooked. He started learning about nutrition and experimenting with weight lifting. In 1936 he opened a gym, a juice bar, and a health food store in an office building in Oakland.  This was counter to medical thinking of the day.  Doctors reached against health clubs warning that people would become severely muscle-bound and have health problems if they lifted weights as LaLanne suggested.

By 1951 he took his fitness idea to the local programmers in San Francisco and began “The Jack LaLanne Show.” Jack paid to have it air, so this show was an early “informercial.” The program was picked up as a commercial program and aired nationally in 1959, preceding Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda by many years.

His current website opens with a clip of Jack talking about the merits of America and equating the strength of America to the fitness of its citizens. Today trainers would agree with much of what LaLanne taught but they would take issue with a few items, too. For example, Lalanne did not believe in warming up. He noted “Does a lion warm up when he’s hungry? ‘Uh oh, here comes an antelope. Better warm up.’ No! He just goes out there and eats the sucker.”

From age 40 to 70, LaLanne performed various feats to prove his health often involving distance swimming while handcuffed or shackled or both. At age 70 he was handcuffed and shackled and towed 70 rowboats—one with several passengers–from the Queen’s Way Bridge in Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary, anchored a mile away.

Fast Facts about Dieting

• Weight was not a particular issue in the 19th century partly because most people had trouble getting enough to eat. The rich were more likely to be overweight. Then in 1900 insurance companies announced that there was a relationship between obesity and morbidity and this changed the attitude toward eating and excess weight.

• There were many different theories on weight loss, none of which were scientific since there was little understanding of how food is converted to energy. One weight loss method subscribed to the philosophy that if you chewed each bite a certain number of times you would lose weight.

• In the 1920s Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters (1873-1930) introduced the theory of calorie counting and restricting foods based on calorie count. In addition to writing a bestselling book, Dr. Peters laid the ground work for many dieting plans to come.

• While we would like to think people watch their weight for health reasons, Hollywood generally sets the pace for the ideal figure and weight.