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A New Kind of Health Food

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     Leading up to the advent of the breakfast cereal revolution, American culture was rapidly shifting.  Americans began to lead increasingly sedentary lives due to the urbanization of the cities in which they lived, leading to an abandonment of the agrarian lives they used to lead prior to such urbanization.  Unfortunately, the diet of Americans failed to change along with their lifestyles, and Americans on the whole continued to consume the calorically dense foods previously used to fuel the farmer's extremely active lifestyle.
     The caloric overload wreaked havoc on the nation's collective digestive system.  "Dyspepsia", The term coined for the ailment faced by many Americans, is exactly what made health advocates like Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg successful.  Americans were overeating themselves until they were sick, and practitioners like Kellogg who advocated lighter diets found their patients miraculously cured.  When vegetarian foods that individuals like Kellogg became not only healthy but also enjoyable to eat, they took the country by storm.  Both Post and Kellogg marketed their foods as health foods- aiding in the vitality of the consumer, curing diseases, and delicious to boot.
     Unfortunately, the marketing efforts of the cereal companies, especially Postum, grew too incredible in their claims.  Grape Nuts, which had been marketed as a way to keep a person's body temperature down when it got too high, was marketed as a cure for Appendicitis:  Ads for the cereal recommended consuming large amounts of the product to flush out the intestines, which would cure the ailment.  Collier's Weekly refused to run any ads for Post's company on the grounds that his claims were simply outrageous.  Post soon spent an enormous sum on an ad campaign attempting to tarnish the publication and was promptly sued for libel.


[lawsuit]