Winter is usually the time for me to eat hot cereal. Dinner when I am lazy is the time to eat cold cereal. That old line that the best thing about being an adult is I can eat cereal or cake whenever I want, and nobody checks is sooo true.
Cereal is an American invention, which surprised me since I have it on good authority that Europeans and Asians also eat breakfast, so I would have guessed one of them had invented cereal.
Native Americans cooked grits to make it edible but it wasn’t really a breakfast cereal so much as a way to maximize the harvest.
Rabbit Hole
Grits comes from the old English word grēot, meaning gravel. I like grits but I have to agree, gravel is a good choice to describe them.
End Rabbit Hole
A German immigrant invented the breakfast cereal fad in 1854. He used a hand oat grinder to make Oatmeal, which he marketed as a substitute for breakfast pork. He created a company to sell his oatmeal and eventually that company became Quaker Oats. Over the decades Quaker Oats was incredibly successful, and started buying out other companies, including Aunt Jemima, Gatorade, and Ric-A-Roni, before being bought out by PepsiCo, in 2001.
Cream of Wheat was developed in 1893, in North Dakota. Cream of Wheat is made from the farina of wheat, which is the whitest part (so, appropriate for North Dakota, I think). Cream of wheat was the second most consumed hot cereal in our house when I was a child, after oatmeal. The company that produced Cream of Wheat only made that one product its entire life, eventually being purchased by Nabisco in 1961 , which was itself purchased by Kraft Foods.
I should also point out here, the correct way to eat oatmeal is with brown sugar and cream, but cream of wheat should be consumed with white sugar and milk. True story.
The third hot cereal seen in my house as a child was Red River Cereal. Started in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1924, it’s a blend of cracked wheat, cracked rye, and cracked, and whole flax. Red River was acquired by Smuckers in 1995. Smuckers discontinued Red River Cereal in 2021. But fear not! All was not lost.
Avra Flour Mills in Avra, Ontario, Canada, is the oldest continuously operating flour mill in North America. In June 2022, they purchased the brand name Red River Cereal along with the recipe, from Smuckers, and relaunched the cereal, thus saving childhood memories for many of us. Red River Cereal is now available on line or in selected grocery stores. I personally buy it in five packs, each pack being 907grams (2 lbs.), keeping a supply in the pantry. Red River is kind of gritty and is sometimes described as eating warmed up bird seed. Flossing is recommended afterwards to get the bits out of your teeth. It’s awesome and can be eaten with white or brown sugar but tastes best with just a drop or two of honey or maple syrup.
The first cold cereal appeared in 1863, called Granula (not granola). Not overly successful, it did not really qualify as a quick breakfast food since it required being soaked overnight to tenderize the bran and other ingredients.
John Harvey Kellogg was a medical doctor who became superintendent of the Western Health Reform Institute. While there, he invented Corn Flakes which he launched in 1895. One of the patients at the institute was Charles Post, who was so impressed with the all grain diet they served, that after he was released he started playing around with grain foods. He developed Postum (which I drank regularly as a child, alternating nights I was given Ovaltine) created as a no caffeine coffee substitute, drinking caffeine being considered “wicked” by some more stringent religioins.
Post’s first cereal was Grape Nuts, which originally contained no grapes or nuts.
Sugary cereals made their appearance after World War II when the food companies started to target children. Fibre was removed (because at the time, fibre was thought to be detrimental to digestion) and sugar was added and mascots introduced.
Sugar Smacks was another of my favourite breakfast cereals despite the fact the box had a scary ass clown on it.
In 1953 Sugar Smacks was introduced; the name changed in 1982 to Honey Smacks to downplay the association with sugar, even though it contained very little honey. It does contain a lot of sugar. How much? 56% of its weight was sugar, which easily beat out the previous high sugar content cereal, Posts’ Sugar Crisp (51% sugar by weight) which was another childhood favourite.
Of course, once the cereal was in the bowl but before the milk was added it was necessary to add a spoonful or two of sugar to the cereal. At the time it never occurred to any of the adults that maybe, just maybe, all that sugar was a bad thing. Combine sugary cereals in the morning with a snack that with my grandmother would give me, caramel sandwiches (white bread, naturally, with a layer of caramel sauce in between) and it’s no wonder I had lots of cavities in my childhood.
Today I wander down the cereal aisle at the grocery store and gaze fondly upon the cereals of my childhood. As an adult the only cold cereals I eat now are Cheerios and Fruit loops because Cheerios has very little sugar and Fruit Loops are made of fruit. Right? Right? Ah, crap.
I still have oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, and Red River Cereal in my pantry and eat those on lots of mornings. Avra Mills now ships to the U.S. as well as Canada so if you’d like to try Red River Cereal it can be ordered online. But be warned, it has a high fibre content so you may end up using some of that toilet paper purchased during the pandemic and still sitting in the closet.
Here’s the link.
https://arvaflourmills.com
The crop failure I mentioned in the sub heading? Have you ever noticed how Cheerios look like mini donuts? Donut seeds in fact? Well, I planted a box of Cheerios two springs ago and there is still no sign of a donut tree anywhere. So much for my Organic, Farm Grown, All Natural Donut business. It’s tough being a farmer.
Until next time, Cheerio! :-)