Cereals processing technology

Breakfast cereals 161
words. Jobbers and brokers were enlisted in the sale of the products. Great sales
pressure was applied by the Kelloggs and Posts, and the competition was hot and
heavy. One innovation introduced was the house-to-house sampling of products.
Product samples were delivered door-to-door, often by whole crews employed
just for this purpose. Another was the use of multi colors in magazine ads.
Newspaper ads were used extensively.
A switch of emphasis occurred early in the 1900s from promoting corn flakes
as a health food to a breakfast food that ‘tastes good’. This occurred especially
after barley malt extract and sugar were added to enhance the flavor of the basic
toasted corn flakes. Cereal producers in those early 1900s also turned to
prominent artists to paint scenes of ‘the wholesome life situations’ that always
included the product being advertised in a prominent position. This avenue,
however, was short lived due to the high cost of the artists’ talents.
The one single event, however, that was the real explosive force propelling
breakfast cereal marketing was the widespread development of radio in the mid
to late 1920s. Its use as ‘the’ marketing and sales tool continued on through the
1930s and 1940s. The other big promotional event which occurred was the use
of premiums, or ‘gimmicks’ as they came to be known, inserted in each cereal
box. These giveaway premiums in the cartons were all directed at children. They
were heavily advertised on children and all family radio programs, as well as in
magazine and newspaper ads.
Several events also took place outside the cereal industry which would in
later years have a major impact. Among these was the discovery that vitamin B1
or thiamin, was the missing nutrient when the disease beriberi struck. Enriching
rice with B1 did a lot to correct this public health menace in the early 1900s.
Likewise niacin was shown to prevent pellagra. Vitamin C, of course, earlier had
been known to prevent scurvy on board trading ships. In the 1920s it was
discovered that ultraviolet irradiation activated the vitamin D in cereals and then
when fed to rats prevented rickets. All these developments would later play a big
role in breakfast cereal nutritional improvement and marketing tactics.
8.2.2 Developments after World War II
The breakfast cereal industry really blossomed with maturity during and after
World War II. So many men and women of all ages were involved in the war
effort that nutritional intake was a major concern of government. It was early in
the 1940s that government food scientists in the US decided that breakfast
cereals were a food, along with bread, that was well received by large segments
of the population, and would be good vehicles for vitamin restoration. The cereal
and flour milling industries were approached, therefore, about their ‘restoring’
certain vitamins, and the mineral iron which were lost during normal
manufacturing processes to cereal and flour products. Thus the B vitamins,
thiamin, riboflavin, and niacin, and the mineral iron were added to breakfast
cereals and wheat flour, i.e. ‘enriched flour’, in levels sufficient to restore them
to the natural whole grain level.