A TRIP THROUGH GRAPE NUTS

Genre: home movie

Year Published: 1940s

Format: 16mm

Description: Made sometime in the 1940s, this silent movie shows a trip through the Post Grape Nuts manufacturing center at Battle Creek, Michigan. Grape-Nuts is a breakfast cereal developed in 1897 by C. W. Post, a former patient and later competitor of the 19th-century breakfast food innovator, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. The cereal originally prepared by C. W. Post when developing the product was a batter that came from the oven as a rigid sheet. He then broke the sheet into pieces and ran them through a coffee grinder to produce the "nut"-sized kernels.Despite the name, the cereal contains neither grapes nor nuts; it is made with wheat and barley. Post believed that glucose (which he called "grape sugar") formed in the baking process. This, combined with the nutty flavor of the cereal, is said to have inspired its name. Another explanation originates from employees at Post, who claim that the cereal got its name due to a resemblance to grape seeds, or grape "nuts". At :27 the employee clubhouse is shown, the original home of Grape Nuts. At :46 the large factory where the product is now made is shown. Storage tanks hold a half million bushels of wheat and barley (1:10). At 1:24 conveyer belts move wheat within the facility. At 3:31 flour is ground at the rate of 1&1/3rd barrels per minute. At 5:32 dough is made for the cereal. Loaves are moulded at 7:58 at the start of the baking process. At 9:58 they are ready to be shredded. At 11:12 secondary ovens are shown where the grape nuts are baked further before being shredded a bit more. At 12:08 it is ground to its normal size before being packaged in tin cans. These are sealed at 13:45. At 14:41 cereal boxes are shown being sealed on an assembly line before being bulk packaged for shipment around the USA (17;23).

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