By: Georgina Gustin
Practically synonymous with hippies and the counterculture of the 1960s, granola actually dates back another century, to a group of super health-conscious Christians.
In the mid-1800s, some of the country’s best health spas — then known by the insalubrious-sounding term sanitariums — were run by Seventh-day Adventists, a Christian denomination that hewed to a healthful, vegetarian diet. (Church members are still among the longest-lived people on earth.)
A Seventh-day Adventist named John Harvey Kellogg ran one of those sanitariums, in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he advocated an un-hippie-esque regimen of abstinence, and yogurt-enemas (yes). There, he came up with a grain-based cereal he called granula.
When Kellogg learned that another sanitarium manager in New York was already using the name, he changed it to granola. Eventually the recipe morphed into a flaked cereal made of corn, soon to be Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, with a little ®. (The Kellogg Company, founded by John Harvey’s brother, grew into a breakfast food titan that later branched into the likes of Cheez-It and Pop-Tarts. The estranged brothers fought over the credit for the invention of the cereal for decades.)
In the first half of the 19th century, entrepreneurs launched headlong into a kind of breakfast grain gold rush, creating cereals of all kinds. One of those, C.W. Post, had visited Kellogg’s sanitarium and soon began selling his own grain flakes.
When the 1960s rolled around, food makers, in an effort to lure more consumers to the cereal aisle, had concocted all manner of products that popped, crackled and turned milk into a pastel rainbow of colors. By the time Lucky Charms debuted in 1963, with its multi-colored marshmallows, health-minded hippies had had quite enough of the era’s sugary offerings. (Of the line-up of marshmallow shapes — called marbits, by the way — only the pink heart remains. Other marbits, including horseshoes and fish, were dropped.)
As health food stores and co-ops began popping up around the country, with their aisles of bulk ingredients — oats, nuts, dried fruit among them — health-conscious, anti-establishment types could buy everything they needed to make their own granola at home. Which they did, earning them a rep for being “crunchy,” like their breakfasts.
But, back come the Seventh-day Adventists. An apparently lapsed member of the church named Layton Gentry sold his recipe for granola to two food companies, run by non-lapsed Seventh-day Adventists, one in northern California, another in Tennessee. Both cranked out granola, by now a mix of oats, seeds, nuts and dried fruits — no longer wheat- or corn-based. The cereal landed on health food store shelves, where it caught the attention of a St. Louis-based food inventor named Jim Matson.
Matson and his collaborators launched Heartland Natural Cereal in 1972. With its promise of health and purity, and in an understated warm-hued box that captured the now-marketable hippie aesthetic, Heartland Natural became an immediate hit. Soon after its release, all the “big four” cereal makers — General Mills, Post, Quaker Oats and Kellogg’s — released their answer to it, pushing granola squarely into the mainstream.
Today’s health-conscious, DIYers are taking things full circle, cruising the bulk aisle for their own crunchy melange. Artisan, small-batch food companies are right there with them, riding granola’s latest wave.
Peruse a Whole Foods cereal aisle and you’ll find brand after brand of granola, some of them costing $10 per bag (usually a subdued brown bag).
But the Seventh-day Adventists would likely be horrified at the contents. Some granolas these days are among the most sugar-laden cereals you can buy, out-sugaring brands (per cup) like Cocoa Puffs and Fruit Loops.
