Thought for Food

February 25, 2010

No Grapes, No Nuts, No Market Share

Great story about Grape Nuts (via marco).

Mixed with yeast (one cup per 2,000 pounds) and water, the flour turns to dough, gets chopped into 10-pound loaves and sent into a huge oven — 1,610 loaves at a time. “Now it gets interesting,” Mr. Vargas said at his workstation, watching the loaves emerge from the oven and catapult into the darkness. An instant later, they hit the fan — a whirling high-speed shredder that rips them to smithereens.

marco adds:

So that’s what they are: effectively, compacted croutons.

I find this passage about the production of the cereal interesting:

The grain was tipping into mills that ground it into flour. Until five years ago, the mills spat out the husks for cattle feed. Now they stay in, so Grape Nuts can sell as “whole grain.” That is one change in Mr. Post’s formula. Another is a spray of vitamins and minerals. It qualifies Grape Nuts for food-stamp programs

… because another change to C. W. Post’s original recipe is that Grape Nuts now contains genetically-modified ingredients. But the FDA doesn’t require they mention that, and the Kraft (aka Philip Morris) PR team sure won’t point it out to a WSJ reporter.

PS: This quote from a Grape Nuts aficianado is, well, nuts: “The rhythmic crunching that reverberates around your skull could be ambient sound meditation. To have the patience to get through a bowl, you have to practice mindfulness.” I think the genetically-modified ingredients have gone to her head.

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