The Kelloggs Page 15

  Dr. Kellogg was an admirer of many explorers of the gastrointestinal tract, but two in particular caught his eye. The first was his Michigan predecessor, William Beaumont, a U.S. Army physician stationed on Mackinaw Island near the headquarters of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Trading Company.7 A horrible accident that occurred during the summer of 1822 elevated Dr. Beaumont to medical immortality. While waiting in line at the American Fur Trading company store, a French Canadian fur trapper named Alexis St. Martin was shot under his left breast. The gory results were a few shattered ribs and a gaping hole through which a part of his lung and stomach protruded. Thanks to Beaumont’s quick-witted ministrations, St. Martin survived the event but was left with a large fistula, an unhealed hole or passage that led directly into his stomach.

  Dr. Beaumont cared for St. Martin over the next two years but the wound only partially healed. St. Martin was miserable and refused any attempts by Beaumont to try and suture the hole shut. May 30, 1823, marks the date when this odd medical complication (and Alexis’s refusal for further surgical manipulation) changed everything about our knowledge of the gastrointestinal tract. It was then that Dr. Beaumont introduced a cathartic (a drug that speeds up the evacuation of the bowels) via a glass funnel through St. Martin’s fistula and into his stomach, “as never medicine was administered to man since the creation of the world.” What the army surgeon realized was that by peering into the window that was St. Martin’s fistula, he had access to a living, working stomach.

  Over the next decade, Beaumont used St. Martin’s fistula to administer all sorts of foods followed by analyses of the gastric fluids and chyme (the pulpy mass created by the stomach’s wavelike motion and digestive juices) he extracted. The result was his 1833 treatise, Experiments and Observations of the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. By 1850, Beaumont enjoyed the status of being the first American-born medical scientist to achieve international renown. No less an authority than the French physiologist Claude Bernard credited the “backwoods” army doctor with initiating “a new era in the study of this important organ and those associated with it.” In Beaumont’s wake, across Europe, North America, and beyond, physiologists searched for individuals with similar fistulas or created them, experimentally, in animals so as to elucidate the digestive process.8

  The other great “gut man” John Harvey Kellogg revered was Ivan Pavlov of St. Petersburg, Russia, whose work on the physiology of digestion won him the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1904. Drs. Kellogg and Pavlov visited the other’s laboratory and maintained a lengthy written correspondence. Advancing the peephole Alexis St. Martin’s gunshot wound afforded Dr. Beaumont more than fifty years earlier, Pavlov developed several new surgical procedures to construct gastric fistulae augmented by a biological pouch of sorts, which allowed him to sample and analyze gastric juices during a battery of experimental digestive conditions endured by his famous dogs. Emerging from what one historian called his “physiology factory,” the Russian genius elaborated how, at different points, the digestive tract secreted hydrochloric acid and specific chemicals in the form of enzymes, which accelerated specific chemical reactions, and how the secretion of specific hormones sent messages to distant parts of the gut to absorb key nutrients and eliminate the waste.9

  One of Pavlov’s many interests was the function of salivary glands and the autonomic nervous system controlling their secretions, especially when anticipating a meal. His most famous salivary studies, of course, were centered on the “conditioned reflexes” of dogs.10 Many other experiments demonstrated that saliva was far more than a means of lubrication for the mouth. The three pairs of salivary glands (parotid, submaxillary, and sublingual), for example, secrete an enzyme called amylase, which sets in motion a chemical reaction called hydrolysis, the breaking down of complex starch molecules into simple sugars.

  Ivan Pavlov (far left) visits John Harvey Kellogg for a stay at the San in 1923. Left to right: Pavlov, John Harvey Kellogg, unidentified San staff member, and V. N. Boldyreff (director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium’s gastrointestinal laboratory and former associate of Pavlov’s). Credit 35

  John applied both Beaumont’s and Pavlov’s work (as well as that of many other scientists exploring the salivary glands and digestive juices) in treating his dyspeptic, constipated, and otherwise gut-challenged patients. For decades, Dr. Kellogg emphasized the importance of chewing one’s food thoroughly and allowing it to be well mixed with saliva and amylase for sound digestion. We now know that while salivary amylase certainly helps begin the digestive process, the pancreas secretes the lion’s share of this digestive enzyme to break down complex carbohydrates once the meal leaves the stomach and enters the small intestine. Nevertheless, it was the hope of harnessing the digestive powers of spit (and the amylase it contained) that initially powered Dr. Kellogg’s quest for a palatable, baked, grain-based “health food” that was “easy on the digestion.”11

  Dr. Kellogg took these ideas a few steps further by hypothesizing that the digestive process could be helped along if grains were precooked and predigested before they even entered the patient’s mouth. In the process of baking grain-based dough, he discovered that intense heat broke down the starch content into the simple sugar dextrose. He called this baking process dextrinization. As the twentieth century progressed, John’s dextrinization theory fell by the wayside even if many of the breakfast cereals he did create, and Will’s cereal company later “sugared up,” are, in fact, easy to digest. Ironically, today most nutritionists, obesity experts, and physicians argue that the easy digestibility Dr. Kellogg emphasized and worked so hard to achieve is not such a good thing. Specifically, in most processed cereals, the bran and germ of the grain has been removed. These concoctions of broken-down grain and sugar do rapidly digest in the mouth, often before it gets to the stomach, and the result is a sudden spike in one’s blood sugar, followed by an increase in insulin (the hormone that enables cells to take up glucose) being secreted by the pancreas into the blood. A few hours after consuming this breakfast, however, one experiences a “crash” in blood sugar (thanks to the over-secretion of insulin), which translates into a loss of energy and a ravenous hunger for an early lunch. High-fiber cereals like oatmeal (and other whole grain preparations with a carbohydrate-to-fiber ratio of less than 10:1), on the other hand, are digested more slowly. Those who eat them report feeling “more full” for longer periods of time and, thus, have far better appetite control when compared to those who consume a bowl of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.12

  —

  IN THE LATE 1870S, Sanitarium guests aroused their salivary glands by starting their meals with a double-baked hunk of zwieback bread (from the German for zwei, two, and backen, to bake). Zwieback was served dry, without butter, water, or milk to stimulate the salivary glands to secrete more amylase. Unfortunately, most patients hated the dry, tasteless zwieback biscuits. According to San lore, a broken tooth forced Dr. Kellogg back to the laboratory. One morning, a woman marched into his office and complained that she had broken her dentures while following the doctor’s orders to munch on the rock-hard zwieback. As Dr. Kellogg recalled in 1917, “My prescription broke one woman’s false teeth she claimed, and she said she thought I ought to pay her $10.00 for them. I did not really know whether she was quite serious about it or not but she looked rather serious. At any rate, it occurred to me it would be good to have a food that would not break teeth.”13

  Sometime in 1877, the doctor began preparing dough consisting of wheat (a low-fat grain) and oats and corn (high-fat grains). He baked the dough at high temperatures for long periods to thoroughly “dextrinize” the grains’ starch molecules. After taking the loaves out of the oven, he cooled them, sliced them up, forced the slices through a sieve, and, finally, served the oven-baked crumbs in the dining room, much to the delight of the jaw-weary zwieback eaters. John initially called the new product Granula and it was the first drum major in a parade of foods John created in the years that followed. />
  Granula soon became a San favorite and Will Kellogg set up a tiny store near the dining room where patients could buy boxes of it so they might take a bit of the Sanitarium home with them. Sensing there was more money to be made, Will used his book business know-how to institute a small mail order company allowing San alumni to continue their Kellogg diets long after they left Battle Creek. Myopically, the San’s board of directors saw no future in these crumbly pieces of toast, or any other of the doctor’s “health foods,” and refused to finance Dr. Kellogg’s request for the equipment he needed to manufacture his culinary creations. As a result, John incorporated his own Battle Creek Sanitarium Health Food Company and gave Will a 25 percent interest in the new firm, provided he ran it in his typically efficient manner, which, of course, he did. By 1883, John used his own money to build an experimental food kitchen in the basement of the San, where he would be able to study the effects of cooking on certain foods and develop new products.

  Unfortunately, the Danville, New York, physician James Jackson had already developed his own ready-to-eat cereal, also called Granula, and he did not appreciate what he saw as the culinary equivalent of plagiarism. Dr. Jackson was well regarded by many Adventists who had visited his spa (including Ellen White). He was also a prolific author who wrote many essays for the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald on proper dress, fresh air, diet, water cures, and other health topics. Most of these articles were read, and some set into type, by a much younger John Harvey Kellogg.14 Thus, it was highly likely that John read or heard about and even tasted Dr. Jackson’s cereal. The Kellogg brothers argued that their product was different in that Jackson’s “Granula” consisted only of wheat, while the San’s mixture contained wheat, corn, and oats and was baked for a much longer period of time. Notwithstanding, in 1881 Dr. Jackson instructed his lawyers to sue Dr. Kellogg, forcing John to quickly rename his product “Granola,” which he sold to his Sanitarium guests at 12 and then 15 cents a pound. By 1889, Will was manufacturing, shipping, and selling two tons of “Sanitarium Foods Granola” every week.15

  Granola spurred John and Will on to want to create an even better “dextrinized” cereal.16 Great ideas, however, are often conceived by more than one person, typically around the same time, and that was certainly the case when it came to developing ready-to-eat cereals. The Kellogg brothers’ most formidable competitor was an odd attorney named Henry D. Perky. His tinkering with raw wheat and a complex series of rolling machines exploded into the boxed sensation that came to be known as Shredded Wheat.

  —

  BORN ON A hardscrabble farm in Holmes County, Ohio, in 1843, Henry Perky was the embodiment of the Horatio Alger “rags to riches” stories. He spent one year at the Bryant, Stratton, and Felton’s Business and Telegraphic College in Cleveland, learning bookkeeping and accounting before taking jobs as a clerk in a dry goods store and then as a schoolteacher in nearby Akron. Perky soon grew weary of trying to control unruly students and left to run a general store, where he learned the grocery trade. On slow days, he read law books. In his twenties, he moved west to Nebraska, where he passed the bar examination on his first try and, at age twenty-five, was elected to the Nebraska State Senate.

  Henry Perky, inventor of Shredded Wheat, circa 1890s Credit 36

  Henry Perky pursued many business opportunities, including a failed effort to manufacture cylindrical steel railway cars, but his most important venture began while defending a client bilked out of a considerable amount of money. Perky discovered that the debtor had fled by night to Colorado and he followed that man to Denver where he successfully collected his client’s cash. Long a sufferer of dyspepsia, Henry found Denver’s oxygen-thin but fresh mountain air soothing to his stomach and moved there in 1880, where he worked as the general counsel for Union Pacific Railroad.17 Perky’s chronic indigestion inspired him to read widely on the emerging sciences of nutrition and gastroenterology. When prominent lecturers on the workings of the gut passed through town, Perky was always in attendance armed with a pad and scribbled notes and questions. By the early 1890s, he was experimenting with Graham’s wheat flour to concoct an easily digestible, wheat-based health food.

  Perky quickly learned that boiling wheat dough into a pliable form and baking it into bits of crunchy cereal was no simple matter. He began by pushing the dough through a sieve to make doughy-wheat threads that he could later toast; but he only succeeded in clogging the sieve and making a mess. On the advice of a machinist with the improbable name of William Henry Ford, Perky put together a set of heavy, “mating,” or “male and female,” rollers. One of the rollers had V-shaped grooves and the other one was smooth.18 In its finished version, the machine featured a steel comb that removed the rolled-out dough, which the rollers had fashioned into “threads,” much like a pasta machine only the diameter of these wheat “noodles” was far smaller. The threads were shaped into a golden “spool” of wheat, folded into the iconic shredded wheat biscuit, and subsequently baked. Perky put the biscuits in an oven at a low heat for several hours but not long enough for the dough to be fully dextrinized, à la Kellogg. On August 1, 1893, he was awarded a U.S. patent (No. 502,378) for his wheat-shredding machine, the first of more than forty patents he would receive for his cereal-making creations.

  The original Shredded Wheat biscuits Perky produced were moist and almost grasslike in texture. Perky peddled early versions of his Shredded Wheat to local health food dealers and grocers, and eventually featured it in meals he served up in a “vegetarian health food” restaurant he opened in Denver. He also enlisted some local bakers to make his product, but sales remained negligible. More problematic, his under-baked wheat pillows tended to become moldy in a matter of days. This easy spoilage led to his shift in manufacturing and selling wheat-shredding machines for homemakers to use in their own kitchens, through his side firm, the Cereal Machine Company. The idea was to enable housewives to make just enough shredded wheat for what they needed that day, as both a breakfast cereal and a binding agent for many other recipes, thus avoiding any waste.

  —

  DURING THE WINTER OF 1893–1894, one of Dr. Kellogg’s dyspepsia patients told him about the new wheat cereal being made in Denver and how it helped allay her many digestive troubles. Describing the product as “little whole wheat mattresses,” she gave John a few boxes for his own experimentation. Dr. Kellogg organized an early version of a focus group of San patients to determine if the “wheaty filaments” helped their digestion. While the wheat pillows appeared to be easily tolerated, the participants complained they were “tasteless, difficult to chew,” and “like eating a whisk broom.”19

  While traveling in the West for a lecture tour in the spring of 1894, John made a point of stopping over for a few days in Denver. Once there, he visited Perky’s vegetarian health food restaurant. The two men quickly developed a rapport over their mutual interests and, as the doctor later told Will, “he showed me his device and explained his process.” Perky promised to send one of his machines to Battle Creek but, apparently, he had second thoughts about such generosity and the machine never arrived, a perceived slight that initiated John’s lifelong grudge against Perky.20

  The breakdown in their collaboration became complete after John offered to buy the entire enterprise for approximately $100,000 (or $2.48 million in 2016). The details are murky at this point but in many accounts the doctor seems to have hesitated about the purchase and either rescinded the offer or tried to low-ball Perky with a smaller amount of money. Either way, Perky had great confidence in the value of what he created and John’s indecisiveness led to his exit from the deal. Rightly criticized as a terrible businessman, one of John’s greatest flaws in his commercial dealings was a Hamlet-like tendency of vacillation and altering his course “with the caprice of a March wind.”21 Whatever actually transpired, Dr. Kellogg long regretted not snapping up Perky’s fledgling firm. Years later, he told a friend: “The greatest business mistake I ever made was in not buying Shredded Wheat whe
n it was offered at a reasonable price.”22

  In one sense, the victor in these failed negotiations was Henry Perky. As the two men traded ideas about baking grain cereals, Dr. Kellogg instructed Mr. Perky about the critical importance of dextrinization and how to achieve it using his long and hot baking methods. Perky adopted Dr. Kellogg’s advice and, at the very least, the dextrinization process helped make Shredded Wheat far more tasty and crunchy than the earlier moist, strawlike version; it also, likely, improved the product’s digestibility. Shredded Wheat soon became one of the most popular ready-to-eat cereals on the market. By 1901, Perky’s company was so profitable that he moved to Niagara Falls (after establishing factories in Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts), where he built an ultramodern factory glowingly described in colorful advertisements as a “Palace of Light” and a “Conservatory of Food.”23 Perky’s business model was buttressed by the more than fifty grain elevators in Buffalo and the Niagara Falls Power Company, which provided cheap electricity from its “Cathedral of Power,” designed by famed American architect Stanford White and built by industrialist George H. Westinghouse. The power plant harnessed the energy of the Niagara River and converted it into the alternating current developed by Nikola Tesla, much to the consternation of the Wizard of Menlo Park, and staunch supporter of direct current, Thomas Edison.24