Mr. Graham Cracker
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

So I've been meaning to do a little piece on the 100th anniversary of Kellogg's, but realized you can't discuss the cereal maker without delving into the history of Sylvester Graham, the founder of the Graham cracker and one of America's first nutritionists, even if it was largely by accident.

Graham was also one of this nation's true wackos. Born in West Suffield, Ct., on July 4, 1794, Sylvester's father was 72 when the little guy came into this world. In fact his father sired 16 other children before Sylvester, with two wives, though he lived just another two years.

What Sylvester inherited from his father, so to speak, was his ministerial abilities, the latter having taken to the pulpit for 50 years. Sadly, Sylvester appeared to pick up something from his mother, as a few years after his father's death she was ruled to be "in a deranged state of mind." Graham himself later wrote that "my mother's health sank under her complicated trials, the family was broken up, and?I fell into the hands of strangers."

Young Sylvester was a mess, shunned by the community. He began to suffer nervous breakdowns.

But in 1823, at almost thirty years of age, he enrolled in a secondary school attached to what would become Amherst College. Sylvester, though, wasn't popular among his fellow students and after just one semester he was expelled on what historian John Steele Gordon said was a "trumped-up charge." At least one professor did recognize that Sylvester had a talent for public speaking and in 1826 Graham was ordained.

His big break came in 1830 through an association with the Pennsylvania Society for Discouraging the Use of Ardent Spirits, one of the bigger temperance organizations of its time. But while most of these institutions simply wanted Americans to slow down when it came to the drink (we imbibed prodigious amounts in those days), Graham advocated total abstinence.

Then he began to develop theories that championed a natural diet of grains, veggies, and fruits, as well as abstinence from alcohol, tea and tobacco.

More specifically, Graham's church believed in returning to the state of Adam and Eve and eating foods that would restore balance to the body. [This is obviously long before Kevin Trudeau, sports fans.] Graham wrote, "The simpler, plainer, and more natural the food?the more healthy, vigorous, and long- lived will be the body."

Rev. Graham was also fixated on sexuality and controlling sexual urges through diet. As Amanda Spake wrote in a story for U.S. News & World Report, Sylvester "maintained that some foods could 'overstimulate' the organs, leading to indigestion and sexual arousal." Hillel Schwartz, a cultural historian adds, "Graham believed you had to avoid foods that stayed in the body because he believed they fermented, essentially turned to alcohol," which then led to eroticism. Well I'll be!

Graham took his initial theories and expanded on them. Anything "stimulating" was automatically "debilitating," in the words of John Steele Gordon. In Graham's case, this included everything from meats to warm baths to sweets. Graham became a crusader for a way of life that required proper habits of dress, hygiene (he recommended three baths a week!), and mind.

But Gordon writes in "The Business of America" that "It was the cholera epidemic that put Graham on the map."

"The disease had been spreading from its base in India since 1826 and had hit Europe by the early 1830s. There was no doubt that the New World would be next. Virtually nothing was then known about the disease except its deadly nature. Its causative microorganism would not be determined until the 1880s, and even the fact that it was spread by contaminated water supplies was not understood till the 1850s. People flocked to hear anyone who could tell them about the disease, and Graham, with his histrionic talents, was soon in great demand. The fact that he ascribed cholera to both chicken pie and 'excessive lewdness' did not dissuade them in the least."

Graham took his theories on diet and invented Graham bread, or Graham crackers?the name that then stuck. He actually stumbled on a basic of nutrition, though he didn't understand it fully at the time; his bread, made of coarsely ground whole wheat flour, preserved the vitamins.

This came about while he railed on the topic of white bread, the process for which removed the good stuff (wheat germ, bran and fiber) and instead used "stretchers" such as lime to cut costs. In 1837 he wrote "A Treatise on Bread and Bread-making," outlining the theory that fiber was good for one's health. Yes, his famous cracker was the first health food.

Graham's fame spread far and wide. "No man," he boasted, "can travel by stage or steamboat?or go into any part of our country ?and begin to advocate a vegetable diet?without being immediately asked?What! Are you a Grahamite?" [John Steele Gordon]

Sylvester Graham expanded into hotels and health clubs. He advocated daily exercise, open bedroom windows in winter and a cheerful disposition at mealtime. Muckraker Horace Greeley lived on a Graham-inspired diet of beans, potatoes, boiled rice, milk, and Graham crackers.

Well you can imagine that not everyone was a fan of the reverend. Being an adherent of vegetarianism (the first American Vegetarian Society was founded in 1850), butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers (well, maybe not the last one) were none too pleased their occupations were being called into question.

John Steele Gordon:

"In Boston, they struck back. The butchers and bakers intimidated the owner of the lecture hall where Graham was scheduled to talk, and he canceled the booking. Graham went to the owners of the not-yet-finished Marlborough Hotel, the nation's first temperance hotel. The owners courageously allowed him to use it, even though Boston's mayor said he could not guarantee the peace.

"The Grahamites boarded up the windows on the first floor and stationed men on the roof with bags of slaked lime. When the butchers and bakers attacked the hotel, they were showered with it. In the words of Harper's Weekly, 'The eyes had it, and the rabble incontinently adjourned.'"

Graham died in 1851, wealthy, but only 56, despite his 'clean living.'

Next week, the Kellogg Brothers take Graham's cause to the next level.

Sources:

John Steele Gordon, "The Business of America"
Amanda Spake / U.S. News & World Report
George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, "America: A Narrative History"
"The Oxford Companion to United States History," edited by Paul Boyer
"The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates," edited by Gorton Carruth

Brian Trumbore

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