Long before modern influencers were ‘bio-hacking’ their diets, the giants of the 19th-century cereal industry were engaged in a high-stakes war of medical food myths. It was a time when a box of wheat and barley wasn’t just breakfast, it was sold as a ‘predigested’ cure for everything from malaria to appendicitis.
After John Harvey Kellogg became successful, a guy that was a former patient in Kellogg’s Battle Creek sanitarium, Charles Post, ended up starting his own company, which we know today as Post Foods Company.
The Invalid Who Built an Empire
Actually, to say Charles Post was a patient at Kellogg’s sanitarium is putting it lightly. The man was reportedly in such ill health that he was an invalid. He and his wife lived in a small cottage near the sanitarium, and Post had to be pushed in a wheelchair every day to get to the place.
Kellogg’s treatment regimen didn’t really help Post (gee, I wonder why?), and Post left and got help from a “Christian Science” lady named Elizabeth Gregory, who cooked meals for him every day and told him he had the power to heal himself. While Gregory used spiritual encouragement, others in the 19th century turned to imaginary wastebasket diagnoses like Blood Poison to market dubious cures that actually treated the same kind of vague, stress-induced exhaustion.
Since Post’s illness had come about after he had several very rough financial setbacks. His ailment basically seems to have amounted to a big-time nervous breakdown. I can see how a little stress-free living, home-cooking, and reading an encouraging text called Science and Health could help turn him around. (See the Science and Health (Christian Science Textbook) digital archive at the National Library of Medicine for the original 19th-century context.)
From ‘Natural Suggestion’ to Medical Food Myths
So, Post got all better and decided that he would use his new knowledge of healing to open his own clinic. Boy, the stuff people got up to in those days. Isn’t that like opening a headache clinic because your headache goes away? Anyway, it was all based on the power of positive thinking and what was called natural suggestion. He called his place La Vita Inn and undersold Kellogg, the scamp.
The Birth of La Vita Inn
He called his place La Vita Inn and undersold Kellogg, the scamp. Like many masters of patent medicine marketing, Post realized that a professional-sounding name and a ‘scientific’ backstory were often more important to sales than the actual ingredients.
The first product Post developed was a coffee substitute. Initially, he tried to get a Swiss chemist to make one for him, but he wasn’t happy with the results. He therefore played around with his own formula. In 1894, he came up with a cereal-based coffee substitute with wheat berries, glutenous bran, and molasses, which he called Postum.
You can still buy Postum today, and you know what, it’s not really all that bad. He did some clever marketing like offering free samples (pioneer!), and Postum started selling very well at the local grocery stores. He made a lot of money.
After the initial success of Postum, Post incorporated the Postum Cereal Company and set his sights on other products. The first new thing he came up with was a cereal we all know (and love?), Grape-Nuts.
Post was a true pioneer of the free sample, a strategy that would soon be perfected by other industrial giants. Much like how Wrigley used free samples to turn chewing gum into a global habit, Post understood that getting the product into the consumer’s hands was more powerful than any billboard.
Grape-Sugar and the Invention of Grape-Nuts
Grape-Nuts was based on wheat and malted barley, which sweetened the cereal a bit. Malted barley is barley that has been allowed to ferment, whereupon the starches start to turn into simple sugars. It certainly was not the same as refined sugar from sugar cane, but, since they thought it to be similar to sugar found in grapes, they called it grape sugar. So, that is how Post got the name for Grape-Nuts. He made the cereal by a similar method to granola. Some have also speculated that the name had something to do with the little nuggets of cereal looking like grape seeds.
Post’s method of baking sheets of dough and grinding them into nuggets wasn’t a new invention. It was actually a direct adaptation of the original history of granola developed by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. While Kellogg’s version was part of a strict sanitarium diet, Post saw the commercial potential, added sugar, and marketed the ‘borrowed’ recipe to the masses as a scientific breakthrough.
The Marketing of a Scientific Medical Food Myths
And here is where it gets interesting. He proceeded to make some absolutely outrageous health claims about the product, even for those days when you could get away with saying whatever you wanted, at least legally.
He called Grape-Nuts a scientific health food containing vitalizing elements. He sent out advertisements claiming the cereal cured all sorts of diseases and conditions.
Post claimed his product cured rickets, rheumatism, malaria, heart disease, consumption, appendicitis, and brain problems. He even claimed that it strengthened the teeth, which is like saying that chewing on rocks will strengthen the teeth, in my opinion. Here is a sample of some advertising copy concerning the benefits Grape Nuts afforded the teeth, which uses the premise that bad teeth are due to eating too much mushy, soft food.
But, of course, this is only a sampling of the many claims made about the product. By and large, Grape-Nuts advertising was extremely successful.
The Dental Deception: Strengthening Teeth with Cereal?
Post’s marketing didn’t just stop at curing diseases; he went after your dental health, too. He leveraged a “scientific” theory that modern soft diets were making human teeth weak and useless.
- The Exercise Myth: Advertisements claimed that because Grape-Nuts were rock-hard, they provided the “proper, normal exercise” required for gums and teeth to stay sound.
- Vital Salts: Post promised that the “vital mineral salts” in every box were the building blocks needed to develop and preserve healthy tooth enamel.
- The Reality: In truth, he was just making a virtue out of a necessity—the cereal was famously hard because of the baking process, not a dental blueprint.
🍔See Also: The Great Masticator
While C.W. Post was busy selling hard cereal for “tooth exercise,” the rest of the country was obsessed with Horace Fletcher, known as “The Great Masticator.” Fletcherism was one of the era’s most influential medical food myths, teaching that every bite of food should be chewed 32 times, once for every tooth, until it became a liquid. Post’s marketing of Grape-Nuts as a mechanical necessity for dental health was a direct attempt to capitalize on this national chewing craze.
The $50,000 Lie: Collier’s Weekly vs. The Cereal King
While most of the public swallowed Post’s “scientific” claims, Collier’s Weekly stood its ground. They famously refused to run Grape-Nuts advertisements, calling out the over-the-top claims for what they truly were: dangerous medical food myths.
John Harvey Kellogg wasn’t too impressed with Post’s promotions, either, and since Post products, and other products coming out of the Battle Creek area, were easily confused and associated with his Battle Creek Sanitarium, he was very active in disavowing any connection between himself and Post. Grape-Nuts never had any nuts, but the product sure was nutty.
In a way, Post’s entire business model was a form of hair of the dog. He took the very things that defined his era’s high-stress, industrial lifestyle and sold them back to the public as the cure. By rebranding plain grains with the same pseudo-scientific language used by the patent medicine marketing industry, he convinced a nervous nation that the secret to health was found in the same ‘scientific’ progress that was making them sick in the first place. Post helped set the stage for the various medical food myths that still plague the “worried well” today.
Key Takeaways: The Cereal Wars & Medical Food Myths
- Literal Origins: The phrase “hair of the dog” began as a literal folk remedy involving a poultice made from the hair of a rabid dog to “cure” its bite.
- The Law of Similars: This ancient logic evolved into 19th-century homeopathy, which argued that “like cures like” through extreme dilutions of toxins.
- Marketing the Miracle: C.W. Post used these existing medical food myths to brand Grape-Nuts and Postum as “scientific” cures for everything from appendicitis to broken teeth.
- The Collier’s Verdict: A landmark $50,000 libel suit eventually proved in court that these products were simple breakfast foods, not medicinal treatments.
- Modern Legacy: While the specific claims have changed, the industrial strategy of marketing food as a systemic “antidote” to modern life remains a staple of the grocery aisle.
