Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, let's face it, one
Speaker 1: of the best things about making a camp fire is
Speaker 1: making s'mores, the quintessentially American treat consisting of a toasted,
Speaker 1: gooey marshmallow and a square of melted chocolate pressed between
Speaker 1: two crisp Graham crackers. But have you ever wondered where
Speaker 1: graham crackers came from or where they got their name?
Speaker 1: The original Graham cracker was a health food developed in
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties from the teachings of an American food
Speaker 1: reformer and religious teacher named Sylvester Graham, who, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: would be appalled by what's called a Graham cracker today,
Speaker 1: which is typically made with refined flour, high fructose corn syrup,
Speaker 1: and a dab of honey for marketing purposes. Instead, Graham's
Speaker 1: original cracker called for just wheat and Graham flower, a
Speaker 1: form of whole wheat flour made by grinding the endosperm
Speaker 1: of winter wheat into a fine powder and mixing it
Speaker 1: with the bran and wheat germ. It has of coarse
Speaker 1: texture and nutty flavor. The resulting cracker contained no sugar
Speaker 1: or fat and often had to be softened by soaking
Speaker 1: or boiling before eating. But we spoke with New York
Speaker 1: based food historian Sarah Wassburg Johnson. She said, it's funny
Speaker 1: that of all the things that he talks about with
Speaker 1: his health reform, that's the one thing that gets widely
Speaker 1: adopted and has his name. Graham Flower gets adopted by
Speaker 1: people who may not even be aware of him, even
Speaker 1: towards the end of the nineteenth century, and persists into
Speaker 1: some of the twentieth century. You hear about Graham gems
Speaker 1: and Graham bread and cookbooks up to the nineties and fifties. Graham,
Speaker 1: who was not a doctor, although he sometimes went by
Speaker 1: Doctor Graham, was horrified by the overprocessing and enriching of
Speaker 1: wheat flour and believed that the loss of fiber and
Speaker 1: other nutrients in white flower ruined consumers health. In seven,
Speaker 1: Graham public a pamphlet entitled A Treatise on Bread and
Speaker 1: Bread Making. In the intro, he wrote, thousands in civic
Speaker 1: life will for years, and perhaps as long as they live,
Speaker 1: eat the most miserable trash that can be imagined in
Speaker 1: the form of bread. He was basically advocating for a
Speaker 1: whole wheat homemade bread, and was thus hailed by the
Speaker 1: philosopher poet Ralph Waldo Emerson as the prophet of bran bread.
Speaker 1: Graham was a proponent and follower of vegetarianism, founding the
Speaker 1: American Vegetarian Society in eighteen fifty. He also believed in
Speaker 1: limiting exposure to most spices, refined sugar, and all processed foods.
Speaker 1: A Presbyterian nster, Graham was a member of the Temperance Movement,
Speaker 1: abstaining not only from alcohol, but even from using yeast
Speaker 1: in baking. Johnson explained, I think that's why Graham crackers
Speaker 1: became a thing, because they were unleavened. They didn't have
Speaker 1: brewers yeast in them. The Temperance movement was a big
Speaker 1: part of a certain kind of Protestantism, but the really
Speaker 1: hard core tempt prince people like Graham believed you couldn't
Speaker 1: use yeast because yeast produces alcohol. In addition to writing
Speaker 1: about food, Graham also gave lectures on diet reform that
Speaker 1: are difficult to separate from his religious philosophy because he
Speaker 1: himself did not Graham's views on diet were linked not
Speaker 1: only to physical but also to moral and spiritual health.
Speaker 1: He promoted daily bathing, toothbrushing, eating three regular meals a day,
Speaker 1: getting outside, drinking only the cleanest water, and exercising all
Speaker 1: great stuff by today's standards. He also believed that illness
Speaker 1: came from immorality, including indulging in any form of lust
Speaker 1: or sexual contact for any reason other than procreation, and
Speaker 1: even that any more often than necessary. Many of Graham's
Speaker 1: recommendations for healthy living, cold baths, sleeping on hard mattresses,
Speaker 1: standing from alcohol, meat, sugar, spicy foods, refined foods, and
Speaker 1: even warm foods were meant to help you avoid over
Speaker 1: stimulation and thus protect you from sinful temptation, and Johnson
Speaker 1: points out that these practices were also similar to those
Speaker 1: of the self disciplinary esthetic monks of the medieval period,
Speaker 1: which were partially in response to the plague. She explained,
Speaker 1: many of Graham's health reforms that happened in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century come out of a series of cholera and typhoid epidemics.
Speaker 1: That's where the water cure comes in, and the emphasis
Speaker 1: on the health and sanitation of avoiding the excesses of
Speaker 1: life that people thought might be a factor in disease.
Speaker 1: At the time, technological change and new urbanism brought about
Speaker 1: changes in society that not everyone viewed positively. Graham was
Speaker 1: rightly concerned about food purity and the dangers in commercial
Speaker 1: food production as populations shifted from farms to cities, but
Speaker 1: his religious convictions tempered the lasting influence of this man,
Speaker 1: who was a forerunner of the American health food movement.
Speaker 1: Johnson said he believed there's less peer pressure to behave
Speaker 1: correct lee if you moved to the city where you're
Speaker 1: not known to everyone. A lot of his ideas are
Speaker 1: about control and how you create order in a time
Speaker 1: of changing chaos. He stripped a lot of the joy
Speaker 1: out of life, eating, sex, sleeping in baths, which is
Speaker 1: why his actual teachings are not adopted. Part of it
Speaker 1: is the temperance. Part of it is the self denial.
Speaker 1: Who wants to sleep on a board if you don't
Speaker 1: have to? Who wants to take a cold bath if
Speaker 1: you don't have to? But Graham flower, especially if you're
Speaker 1: using freshly ground whole wheat, is delicious. It's really good
Speaker 1: and does have a lot more flavor than white flower.
Speaker 1: I can see why that would be the thing that persists,
Speaker 1: but at the time he had thousands of followers referred
Speaker 1: to as Grandma's. American author Louisa May Alcott's family kept
Speaker 1: a Graham table where meat, tobacco, and coffee were banned.
Speaker 1: Graham greatly influenced other health reformers who are also religious
Speaker 1: leaders of the day, including Ellen White, an adherent of
Speaker 1: Seventh Day Adventism, and Dr John Kellogg, another Seventh Day Adventist, who,
Speaker 1: along with his brother Will, invented granola corn flakes, the
Speaker 1: foundation of the Kellogg's brand, and who also would have
Speaker 1: been horrified by what we modernly do with his creations.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patty Resmussen and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more in this lots of other granular topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
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