Socially Recognized Well Being ~ Graham Crackers

Socially speaking, the idea of eating healthy as the way to well being belongs to Christians who more than any other group in this country had/have consciously considered and practiced controlled diet as a means for a longer and a more virtuous healthy life.

As recorded... It began with Sylvester Graham a Presbyterian minister who lived from the early to mid 1800s. He spent his adult life trying to convince Americans that white bread was weakening the nation. Reverend Graham's solution, instead of white bread, was to eat a coarse brown bread and or whole-wheat crackers -Graham Crackers!

This whole grain diet he proposed was picked up by the Seventh Day Adventists around 1850 and became part of their church doctrine; whole-grain foods, no meat, limited fats (fats are necessary); no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee.

At about this same time, those Seventh Day Adventists selected Battle Creek, Michigan, as their national headquarters and started a small hospital which by 1866 had grown into a nationally renown health institution called the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

By the 1870s this spa was taken over by Dr. Kellogg adopting the Adventists doctrine. Kellogg, over the next thirty years, made it one of the leading health spas in the nation. At the Battle Creek Spa, Dr. Kellogg invented his first health food called Granola and he also invented Kellogg corn flakes.

C.W. Post, a Texas real estate developer had severe digestive problems and went to the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1891. To his delight, within a day he was able to eat his first full meal. He was convinced that the secret to good health as simply to think you are healthy and to eat in moderation.  He shared in Dr. Kellogg's belief in pre-digested, non stimulant food so he had the BC kitchen invent a substitute coffee - Postum. And, C.W. felt it necessary to create a complimentary cereal to his coffee - Grape Nuts.

Source ~ Advertising in America: The First 200 Years. Harry N. Abrams. Inc. publishers NY