What is Postum?
A better question would probably be "What was Postum?", since Postum is no longer being manufactured. The name of the product should give you an idea of the name of the person who was behind the development of the product.
Postum started as a caramel cereal coffee that was being brewed at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan while Charles William Post was a charity patient there. Post found the recipe when he was snooping in the kitchen and obtained it from Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes breakfast cereal. Kellogg gave the recipe to Post willingly, having no way of knowing it would be the start of a major corporation.
C. W. Post founded the Postum Cereal Company in 1895, which was headquartered right there in Battle Creek, Michigan, with Postum as his first product. It was a powdered, roasted grain beverage made from wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and maltodextrin from corn. Post and Dr. Kellogg both believed that caffeine was unhealthy and Postum was marketed as a healthy alternative to coffee.
Postum became very popular with the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Mormons, or the Church of Latter Day Saints. The people of both religious groups didn't drink hot, caffeinated beverages and didn't suffer from the jittery side effects that coffee gave some people. According to the director of the estate of an Adventist co-founder, Post himself was not an Adventist.
Postum Cereal Company changed its name to General Foods Corporation in 1929 after acquiring other food brands and merged with Kraft Foods in 1989. Kraft Foods spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati told Taashi Rowe of the Adventist News Network that the company stopped making Postum in the fall of 2007 because the demand for it was so low that manufacturing it no longer made sense.
2 Responses to “What is Postum?”
WOW
! Postum … i used to love that stuff in the 80's .. it's a shame it's no longer in production
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By Cash4Gold on Oct 8, 2008
Thanks for the Post. I didn't know what Postum was. Is there any places you can still find Postum?
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