WEBVTT - Why Would the Creator of Graham Crackers Be Horrified by Them Today? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:11.240 Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, let's face it, one 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.840 of the best things about making a camp fire is 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:18.720 making s'mores, the quintessentially American treat consisting of a toasted, 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.160 gooey marshmallow and a square of melted chocolate pressed between 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:26.080 two crisp Graham crackers. But have you ever wondered where 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:28.760 graham crackers came from or where they got their name? 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.080 The original Graham cracker was a health food developed in 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:35.960 the eighteen thirties from the teachings of an American food 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:40.840 reformer and religious teacher named Sylvester Graham, who, by all accounts, 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:44.040 would be appalled by what's called a Graham cracker today, 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.400 which is typically made with refined flour, high fructose corn syrup, 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:51.879 and a dab of honey for marketing purposes. Instead, Graham's 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:55.760 original cracker called for just wheat and Graham flower, a 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.720 form of whole wheat flour made by grinding the endosperm 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.560 of winter wheat into a fine powder and mixing it 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:04.880 with the bran and wheat germ. It has of coarse 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:09.000 texture and nutty flavor. The resulting cracker contained no sugar 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.960 or fat and often had to be softened by soaking 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:16.240 or boiling before eating. But we spoke with New York 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:21.040 based food historian Sarah Wassburg Johnson. She said, it's funny 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:23.080 that of all the things that he talks about with 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.120 his health reform, that's the one thing that gets widely 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.720 adopted and has his name. Graham Flower gets adopted by 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.000 people who may not even be aware of him, even 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.680 towards the end of the nineteenth century, and persists into 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:37.880 some of the twentieth century. You hear about Graham gems 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:43.600 and Graham bread and cookbooks up to the nineties and fifties. Graham, 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.399 who was not a doctor, although he sometimes went by 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:50.680 Doctor Graham, was horrified by the overprocessing and enriching of 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.960 wheat flour and believed that the loss of fiber and 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:59.240 other nutrients in white flower ruined consumers health. In seven, 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.480 Graham public a pamphlet entitled A Treatise on Bread and 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:06.720 Bread Making. In the intro, he wrote, thousands in civic 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.679 life will for years, and perhaps as long as they live, 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.400 eat the most miserable trash that can be imagined in 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:17.720 the form of bread. He was basically advocating for a 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:21.160 whole wheat homemade bread, and was thus hailed by the 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:25.239 philosopher poet Ralph Waldo Emerson as the prophet of bran bread. 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.760 Graham was a proponent and follower of vegetarianism, founding the 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.960 American Vegetarian Society in eighteen fifty. He also believed in 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:38.480 limiting exposure to most spices, refined sugar, and all processed foods. 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.480 A Presbyterian nster, Graham was a member of the Temperance Movement, 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.840 abstaining not only from alcohol, but even from using yeast 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:50.000 in baking. Johnson explained, I think that's why Graham crackers 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.040 became a thing, because they were unleavened. They didn't have 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.200 brewers yeast in them. The Temperance movement was a big 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.240 part of a certain kind of Protestantism, but the really 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.560 hard core tempt prince people like Graham believed you couldn't 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:07.560 use yeast because yeast produces alcohol. In addition to writing 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:10.720 about food, Graham also gave lectures on diet reform that 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.480 are difficult to separate from his religious philosophy because he 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:18.160 himself did not Graham's views on diet were linked not 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.600 only to physical but also to moral and spiritual health. 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:26.280 He promoted daily bathing, toothbrushing, eating three regular meals a day, 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:31.119 getting outside, drinking only the cleanest water, and exercising all 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:35.880 great stuff by today's standards. He also believed that illness 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:39.920 came from immorality, including indulging in any form of lust 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.640 or sexual contact for any reason other than procreation, and 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.400 even that any more often than necessary. Many of Graham's 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:51.720 recommendations for healthy living, cold baths, sleeping on hard mattresses, 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.800 standing from alcohol, meat, sugar, spicy foods, refined foods, and 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.080 even warm foods were meant to help you avoid over 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:04.720 stimulation and thus protect you from sinful temptation, and Johnson 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.680 points out that these practices were also similar to those 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.880 of the self disciplinary esthetic monks of the medieval period, 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:15.080 which were partially in response to the plague. She explained, 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:18.040 many of Graham's health reforms that happened in the nineteenth 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.599 century come out of a series of cholera and typhoid epidemics. 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.720 That's where the water cure comes in, and the emphasis 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.680 on the health and sanitation of avoiding the excesses of 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.680 life that people thought might be a factor in disease. 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.920 At the time, technological change and new urbanism brought about 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:40.479 changes in society that not everyone viewed positively. Graham was 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:43.880 rightly concerned about food purity and the dangers in commercial 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.800 food production as populations shifted from farms to cities, but 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.839 his religious convictions tempered the lasting influence of this man, 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.960 who was a forerunner of the American health food movement. 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.640 Johnson said he believed there's less peer pressure to behave 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:01.960 correct lee if you moved to the city where you're 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.880 not known to everyone. A lot of his ideas are 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.800 about control and how you create order in a time 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:11.159 of changing chaos. He stripped a lot of the joy 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.800 out of life, eating, sex, sleeping in baths, which is 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.360 why his actual teachings are not adopted. Part of it 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.040 is the temperance. Part of it is the self denial. 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:23.560 Who wants to sleep on a board if you don't 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:25.680 have to? Who wants to take a cold bath if 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:29.560 you don't have to? But Graham flower, especially if you're 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:33.520 using freshly ground whole wheat, is delicious. It's really good 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:35.880 and does have a lot more flavor than white flower. 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:39.280 I can see why that would be the thing that persists, 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:43.920 but at the time he had thousands of followers referred 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.920 to as Grandma's. American author Louisa May Alcott's family kept 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.360 a Graham table where meat, tobacco, and coffee were banned. 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.719 Graham greatly influenced other health reformers who are also religious 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.640 leaders of the day, including Ellen White, an adherent of 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:04.120 Seventh Day Adventism, and Dr John Kellogg, another Seventh Day Adventist, who, 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:07.599 along with his brother Will, invented granola corn flakes, the 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.960 foundation of the Kellogg's brand, and who also would have 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.600 been horrified by what we modernly do with his creations. 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.599 Today's episode was written by Patty Resmussen and produced by 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.560 Tyler Clang. For more in this lots of other granular topics, 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.320 visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.160 I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.920 the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:34.920 to your favorite shows.