Cereals processing technology

8
Breakfast cereals
R. B. Fast, Consultant, Robert B. Fast Associates Inc., Poultney
8.1 Introduction
When we speak of breakfast cereals today primarily we are talking about readyto-eat
(RTE) cereals. These are cereal grains which have been processed in ways
which make them suitable for human consumption. This chapter is a brief
introduction into the varied technologies of the unit operations employed in
making the grains edible, and digestible, by the human body.
The use of grains for human consumption goes back well before the time of
Christ – both raw, in whole form; dried, in whole form or ground to flour; and in
cooked or baked form. However, the present industry as we know it really
started in the late nineteenth century in the little town of Battle Creek, Michigan,
USA. Its roots are really centered in the teachings of the Seventh-Day Adventist
Church (SDA Church). 1
In 1855 the SDA Church established a publishing office in Battle Creek, and
made Battle Creek its national headquarters. The Kellogg brothers, John Harvey
born in 1852, was later to become the physician-in-chief of the SDA Church’s
Battle Creek Sanitarium, and Will Keith (WK) born in 1860 was to become the
inventor of the modern form of breakfast cereal presented to ‘San’ (short for
sanitarium) residents as a more digestible substitute for bread. Dr John Harvey
Kellogg filed a patent application for ‘flaked cereals and a process of preparing
same’ on 31 May 1894. His patent included flakes of wheat, corn, oats, barley
and other grains.
Also in 1894 a former patient of the Sanitarium, C.W. Post, invented a coffee
substitute from a mixture of roasted wheat, bran, and molasses. 2 He called it
Postum and formed The Postum Cereal Co. Ltd. In 1898 he made a second
coffee substitute which had poor consumer acceptance so he sold it in granular