# This Journey Through the Pure Food Factories

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Also known as "The Door Unbolted" and "There's a Reason"
This Journey
Through the Pure Food Factories that make
Postum and Grape-Nuts
Takes You Up-Stairs, Down- Stairs and All Over the Place.
There is considerable to see, and
“There’s a Reason”
Copyright, 1906, by Postum Cereal Co., Ltd.
Gage Printing Co., Ltd. Battle Creek, Mich.
HE Postum business had its beginning January 1, 1895, in a little white barn belonging to C. W. Post, in Battle Creek, Mich. His grounds at that time consisted of about 10 acres. Since that time great buildings have sprung up all around the little barn, a dozen or more in all, covering the ten acres. The uniform coloring of white has earned for the plant the sobriquet of “The White City.” On the side of the little barn is painted:—
“Started here Jan. 1st, 1895”
It seems that Mr. Post, during his studies in medicine and general therapeutics, gave
Postum Cereal Co. Ltd., As it looks today.
Offices and Grounds
especial attention to nervous disorders and dietetics. The unusual number of people affected by coffee drinking attracted attention, and in collaboration with an analytical chemist he conducted a series of experiments looking towards a healthful coffee to be made of nourishing grains, that would have a good snappy flavor and, satisfying the user’s palate, would feed and rebuild the nerve centres broken down by coffee or other stimulants and narcotics. Literally, hundreds of experiments resulted in failure, and upwards of a year was consumed. before the method of preparing and blending the different parts of wheat produced the desired result. Now please attend to the exact facts, which a journey through the works will make plain. In
Where Postum and Grape-Nuts Advertising is Prepared
Perhaps the most unique and handsomely furnished General Office Building in the world. All details pertaining to the annual appropriation of One Million Dollars for advertising Postum and Grape-Nuts are handled in this building.
Main Office in Advertising Building.
Said to be one of the handsomest furnished office buildings in the world.
But just to brown wheat and mix in some molasses will not make Postum.
First, part of the wheat is coarsely hulled, and the part sticking to the hulls contains certain things nature uses for rebuilding purposes, Potash, Lime, Iron, etc., etc., also the dormant element known as Diastase, most important in the transformation of the starch part of wheat. Now this coarse part of the wheat is moistened, subjected to slow heat, mixed with the
Private Office of Mr. C. W. Post. Chairman and originator of Postum and Grape-Nuts.
Private Office of Mr. Carroll W. Post. Vice-Chairman and Secretary.
That is Postum, pure and simple.
But remember, Postum does not acquire the coffee snap nor are the food elements released, except under rather long boiling. Long enough on the stove to come to a boil, then full 15 minutes more. Use enough in the pot and you may be sure of a fascinating beverage, a flavor all its own, and a sure relief from the many ails of coffee.
Private Office of Mr. M. K. Howe. Treasurer.
Office of Mr. F. C. Grandin. Advertising Manager.
It is easy for a person to be rid of the coffee habit when well-brewed Postum is served, and the change in health is well worth observation.
About two years after the launching of Postum, Mr. Post put the now famous pre-digested food, Grape-Nuts, on the market, this being the first effort at manufacturing commercially a food in which the starch of the grain is transformed by moisture and heat into a completely assimilable form of sugar.
This article, like Postum, was produced to meet a well-defined need of humanity.
Office of Mr. H. C. Hawk. Secretary to Chairman.
Office of Traffic Manager.
The many cases of mal-nutrition, shown by gradual decline and loss of flesh, no matter what food was used, attracted attention. Also the great number of people suffering from small and great nervous prostration, evidently not obtaining the rebuilding elements from their daily food. And again the somewhat remarkable growth of intestinal disorders, appendicitis, constipation, etc., etc., including liver complaints. It was Mr. Post's purpose to prepare a food that would contain the starch of the grains
Mail Sorting Room.
Daily mail is delivered directly from the wagons to this room, where it is assorted and passed to different departments. To the right is shown the filing cases in which the newspapers and magazines carrying our advertising matter are filed for a period of thirty days, then destroyed to make room for next month's issue.
Checking and Mailing Room.
One of the rooms for the Stenographers.
Vault Entrance.
Now let us see how Grape-Nuts food is pre-digested, absolutely without chemicals or any outside ingredients.
First, the Barley is soaked about 100 hours. Then it goes to a warm floor, and the moisture and warmth develop the Diastase, sprout the berries of barley and turn the starchy inside into sugar. You see how exactly like the processes going on in the human body, to produce the same result. Then this barley (after the sprouts are removed) is ground, and the flour
In the Bookkeeping Department.
On the Elevated Wheat Conveyor a Sign Appears for Your Perusal.
Then we will start through the works and illustrate how Postum and Grape-Nuts are made.
Steel Wheat Tanks.
Each tank has a capacity of about 25,000 bushels of wheat. The wheat is carried to these tanks on an endless belt in the runway shown at top, is deposited in any specified tank, and when desired for use, is drawn out from the bottom by conveyors and carried to the flour milling room. There are other elevators in a distant part of the plant.
Dust Collector.
This machine is directly connected with the grain cleaning machinery, and collects all the dust and dirt from the wheat before it passes to the Milling Room.
By holding a handful of Grape-Nuts to the light, each little granule will show small crystals of a kind of sugar on them, digestible even by diabetics. Not put there, but the sugar was produced by the change of the starch to sugar, and this exuded in the processes of making. This sugar is far and away the most digestible food element known, and when washed off the particles
Dust Collector.
All wheat passes through this machine, and is thoroughly cleaned.
Postum Roasting Room.
All wheat used in Postum is roasted, ground and blended in this room.
This food furnishes the user, then, with the needed starch part of food, naturally pre-digested; therefore, any one with weak intestinal digestion, liver and bowel troubles can correct them without drugs, by leaving off the bread, cakes, mushy cereals, potatoes, and all forms of starchy food, and using Grape-Nuts. The remedy is sure, because based on well-known physiological laws. Many a case of appendicitis might
Postum Wheat Cooling Pans.
The roasted wheat used in Postum is conveyed from the roasters illustrated at the top of this page to these cooling pans. Exhaust fans draw the heat and smoke up through stack; the cooled wheat is then dumped into a hopper and conveyed to the grinders.
Automatic Carton Machines.
These machines automatically make the Postum paper cartons, or boxes, each machine forming 1,200 cartons per hour. The finished carton leaves the machine and passes down a conveyor to the floor below, where it drops on a traveling belt that carries it to an automatic filling machine, which weighs and fills each package; this same belt then conveys the package to another automatic sealing machine, which seals the top of the paper carton.
Postum Packing Room.
In the farther end of this room are the automatic sealing and filling machines, similar to.those shown in the Grape-Nuts packing room, page 21. The man at the right is working the automatic nailing machine, which at two strokes drives all the nails in the lid of the wooden shipping box.
The interior of each room is painted white and kept immaculately clean.
​While having the above in mind, Mr. Post did not forget to incorporate in his food the parts of the wheat and barley that contain the Phosphate of Potash, and certain other elemental salts demanded by the body for certain purposes.
For instance, it is well known that the soft gray organic substance which fills the brain and the nerve centres throughout the body, is made of Albumen, Water and Phosphate of Potash. Brain work or “nervous work” or worry breaks down and dissipates this gray substance, and it must be daily supplied in equal volume with the amount destroyed, else nervous prostration, with its numerous ramifications and horrors, surely follows. The mission of Grape-Nuts food is clear and plain. It does its work in a sturdy, straightforward, dependable way.
Flour Milling Room.
The wheat and barley used in Grape-Nuts is ground into flour. The entire wheat berry is used, because a large part of the nutriment is under the shell, where the phosphate of potash and other elements absolutely demanded by the body for its proper feeding, particularly for the nerve centres and the brain, are found. Also close under the shell lie the elements of diastase required by the body to change the starchy part of the wheat into sugar or maltose during the process of digestion. White flour millers leave out these important elements in order to make their flour white.
From the start, Grape-Nuts was as pronounced a success commercially as Postum ​had been, and the two together have made “The White City” today the largest pure food factory plant in the world.
Although the cereals which compose Postum and Grape-Nuts are handled by heavy, modern, labor-saving machinery, nearly 600 people, all told, are employed. The factories run day and night. The capacity of the plant as it now stands is between six and seven million packages every month. That means food and drink for a great many people.
Mixing Room.
Showing the dough mixers. The steel tubs contain the dough all ready to go into the machine for molding the loaves.
To prepare this enormous quantity of food, the most advanced types of machinery are required. A car-load of grain placed on the Company's siding is in a few minutes elevated into steel storage tanks and elevators having a capacity of 135,000 bushels. As it is needed, the grain is carried by an endless belt conveyor through a runway nearly 450 feet long and about 50 feet in the air, to the milling rooms, at the rate of 2,000 bushels an hour. From this point the wheat and barley pass through successive stages, and 48 hours later, as Grape-Nuts and Postum, they leave the factory, boxed and crated and ready for the table.
Loaf Molding Machine.
The dough from the dough tubs, illustrated on page 16, is emptied into the hopper here shown, and passing down to the lower floor is dropped into molds, and is deposited in pans and conveyed to the ovens shown on the following page. This machine has a capacity of molding 28,000 loaves per day.
All the factory buildings are sheathed with steel, both inside and out, with a coat of asbestos underneath the metal, making the whole plant practically fire-proof.
To supply the water used in the factory, the Company has driven two artesian wells, each of which has a capacity of 500 barrels an hour, giving an unlimited supply of the purest water.
Grape-Nuts Bakery
The dough from the dough tubs, illustrated on page 16, is emptied into the hopper here shown, and passing down to the lower floor is dropped into molds, and is deposited in pans and conveyed to the ovens shown on the following page. This machine has a capacity of molding 28,000 loaves per day.
There are 14 of these large brick ovens, with a baking capacity of twenty-eight thousand (28,000) loaves of Grape-Nuts per day. The first baking is done in these ovens; the loaves then pass from this room to the slicing machine, where they are cut into slices and then placed on wire trays. These trays are then placed on portable iron racks and wheeled into the secondary kilns, where they remain many hours in slow heat, during which time the final conversion of cereal starch into sugar or maltose takes place. This presents the food actually pre-digested.
The “Reason” for Postum Food Coffee.
The real trouble with tea and coffee drinking is not generally understood. Physicians advise, for a well-defined reason, the discontinuance of both tea and coffee when a person is sick. Educated physicians know of the following test:—
When tea is added during the process of digestion, 34 per cent of albumen will be left undigested, and 66 per cent will be digested; while if coffee is added during the process of digestion the result will be but 61 per cent digested and 39 per cent undigested. When tea and coffee are taken into the human stomach, serious interference is set up with the natural and healthful operations. If one has an exceedingly powerful digestive apparatus, he can stand this abuse for a time, but it is sure to tell sooner or later.
Slicing Room.
This machine cuts the Grape-Nuts loaves into slices and deposits them in wire trays, ready to go to the dry kilns.
These facts should never be forgotten. ​Coffee and tea are not foods, but strong, powerful drugs. Sooner or later the steady drugging will tear down the strong man or woman, and the stomach, bowels, heart, kidneys, nerves, brain, or some other organ connected with the nervous system, will be attacked.
Dry Kiln Room.
Where we parallel in a mechanical way the operations of intestinal digestion. There are 24 iron kiln rooms of great length, with a capacity of 142 portable steel racks, having a carrying capacity of 7,716 trays, containing the Grape-Nuts slices. These racks remain in the hot kilns many hours, during which time the food is naturally pre-digested by heat and time. The diastase is thus produced, and the transformation of starch into sugar (or maltose) accomplished, without employing any elements other than those found in the wheat and barley, making a perfect food for those with weak digestion, and who cannot digest the carbohydrates as presented in soft, mushy foods.
Thousands of invalids remain so, not knowing the cause of their disease. It is safe to say that one person in every three, among coffee users, has some form of incipient or advanced disease.
Any analytical chemist can analyize coffee and tea, and show that they contain a poisonous drug—caffeine—which belongs to the same class as cocaine, morphine, nicotine and strychnine—alkaloids.
In highly organized people, these poisons have a direct effect upon the heart, liver, stomach and nerves, and set up various indications of approaching sickness. These facts have been known by physicians for ​many years, but it is difficult to induce people to leave off habits, even when those habits are known to be injurious and shorten the existence of the human body.
There are people, however, who hold their health in high enough esteem to be willing to give a little attention to food and drink. Such people realize that good health can be turned into success, into money making, prosperity, and the ability to do things in this world. There is no habit the creature acquires which produces as much real enjoyment as the old-fashioned habit of being thoroughly well.
Grape-Nuts Grinding Room.
Triplicate grinders where the hard Grape-Nuts slices are ground into small granules.
Such a feeling all day long cannot be compared in value to the temporary, short-lived pleasure of drugging the body with any of the known drugs, tea, coffee, tobacco, whisky or morphine. When a man can inhale a deep breath of pure air and feel that every part of the machinery of the body is working perfectly, there comes a sense of comfort, easy content and thankfulness to the Creator for the mere privilege of living.
Grape-Nuts Packing Room.
The paper packages are set up and the bottom sealed by the automatic machines on the floor above, as shown on page 14. They are carried down a shute to an endless belt that conveys the packages to an automatic filler that fills the package with Grape-Nuts; the same belt carries the filled packages to the round sealing machines shown in the foreground of the above illustration. These machines tuck the flaps and seal the tops air tight. The machine then revolves around to an opening, where the packages are dropped on another endless belt, which carries them to a long row of girls, who lift them off and place the packages in wooden cases. These cases are then placed on an endless carrier and conveyed to automatic nailing machines, where in two operations the lid is firmly nailed on and the case ready for shipment to any part of the world.
One end of Grape-Nuts Packing Room.
The row of girls to the right are placing the Grape-Nuts Recipe Book and “The Road to Wellville” booklet in the small envelope that is sealed on top of the package. The girls in the centre of room take the packages from the moving belt and put them in the wooden shipping boxes. The centre carrier shows the packed boxes traveling to the automatic nailing machine, where the top of the cases is nailed on.
Grape-Nuts Wafer Packing Room.
The Grape-Nuts Wafer is one of our latest productions. The basis of this Wafer is the whole wheat and barley formula from which the great food, Grape-Nuts, is made. It contains such elements as albumen, phosphate of potash and gluten, is crisp and delicious, and an ideal nibble for five o'clock teas and social functions.
It is true that some coffee drinkers that have been accustomed to excessively strong coffee, miss the rank, strong taste of Rio and the heavier grades of coffee; for Postum has almost an identical flavor with the milder and more expensive grades of Java. While the manufacturers earnestly recommend every user to discontinue coffee altogether, it is nevertheless well known that thousands of families mix a little coffee in with the Postum, when the effort is made to induce certain members of the family to
Carton Sealing Machine.
This machine tucks the flaps and seals the top of the Grape-Nuts package, and has a capacity of 3.600 packages per hour. There are four of these machines, making a total daily output of 144,000 packages.
If the reader has any sort of illness, try leaving off tea and coffee, and note the result.
All cereals, oatmeal, rolled wheat, etc., are likely to become webby, and under certain conditions, wormy, In warm weather,
Making Wooden Shipping Boxes.
In this room all the wooden cases are nailed together (the sides and bottom). The conveyor in the centre shows the Postum cases traveling to the packing room on floor above. The conveyor to the left carries the Grape-Nuts cases in the opposite direction, to the Grape-Nuts packing room in the adjoining building. About Six Million feet of lumber are used per annum in Grape-Nuts and Postum shipping cases.
Storage Warehouse.
For Grape-Nuts and Postum. Length, 230 feet; width, 90 feet; two stories high; 41,400 square feet.
Remember, you can recover from any ordinary disease by discontinuing coffee and poor food, and using Postum Food Coffee and Grape-Nuts, for these forms of nourishment are scientifically made, and produce the results they were made to produce in the human body. Both Postum and Grape-Nuts contain minute and delicate
Coal Storage. Power House and Warehouse.
Boiler Room.
Upright boilers, 30 feet high. Capacity, 1,000 Horse-power.
This is the element which combines with albumen to form the gray matter in the brain, solar plexus, and in the delicate nerve centres throughout the body. It is for this reason that both Postum and Grape-Nuts quickly rebuild a broken-down nervous system. The beverage and food are of inestimable value to those depending upon mental exertion for livelihood. Personal
Engine Room.
Three tandem compound engines, of 300 horse-power each, are used, together with three electric generators. These supply the electric power to the Postum and Grape-Nuts works and power for the Battle Creek Paper Co. Also supplies electric light for all our offices and factories, and the Post Tavern and Post six story office building.
The “Reason” for Grape-Nuts.
Grape-Nuts is a condensed food, about four teaspoonfuls being sufficient for the cereal part of a meal. It requires no cooking; is ready for instant service; keeps
Printing Press Room.
One of the most complete printing establishments in Michigan. Here are printed the cartons and circulars for Postum Cereal and Grape-Nuts. One printing press in this room has a capacity to print 40,000 paper cartons per hour. Another prints two colors at one operation, one of only two presses of its kind in Michigan.
There's a reason for Grape-Nuts. In late years a notable increase in intestinal disorders, culminating all too frequently in appendicitis or other serious forms, has pressed home the knowledge that people are eating more starchy food than they can digest.
Folding and Stitching Room.
The machines to the left of illustration are folding machines for folding the sheets for the Recipe and “Road to Wellville” booklets. Each folder has a capacity of folding 2,500 sheets of paper per hour, containing 15,000 booklets of 32 pages each. These booklets then pass to the wire stitching machines shown on the right. These machines stitch the leaves together. There are five stitchers, each one will stitch 6,000 per hour.
In the rear of this room is a complete typesetting plant, where all printing forms are set up. Adjoining is a complete stereotyping room, where all stereotypes are made.
The starchy portion of the food is not digested by the juices of the stomach proper,
Cutting and Creasing Room.
The presses in this room cut to shape from the large cardboard sheets the Grape-Nuts and Postum paper packages, ready to go to the automatic machine that sets them up, ready to be filled.
An excess of starchy food has brought a revolt, and the overburdened organs have filed their protests, until the need of a predigested food in which the starches are transformed into sugar, has been widely recognized.
The perfected food, Grape-Nuts. is the result of a long line of experiment and investigation by a well-known food expert.
Entire wheat and barley are blended in proper proportions, and pass through some ten or twelve mechanical processes, paralleling as nearly as possible the functions of nature; employing moisture, heat and time to slowly and perfectly develop the diastase from the grains and transform the starch into sugar in the most perfect manner. In this condition it is ready to be absorbed into the blood and tissue without taxing the intestinal digestive machinery. The small particles of phosphate of potash found in certain parts of these cereals are retained, as it is known that this elemental
Storage Room for Cardboard.
We carry on hand constantly about 1,500,000 sheets of cardboard (enough for a moderate-sized freight train), for making the paper packages containing Grape-Nuts and Postum. Each sheet is sufficiently large to make six packages. We also carry a stock of book paper for printing three to four million of the Recipe Books and “Road to Wellville” booklets.
A Wage Earner’s Home. In the Post Addition
The Canadian Government in 1902 made a test of various foods, in which Grape-Nuts was shown to have over sixteen times the amount of digestible food as the least one tested, and about two-thirds more than the next best food made, and nearly double the energy-producing power of any other food known.
Extract from report of government officials at Ottawa, Can., shows the following analysis of Grape-Nuts:—
| Moisture, | 9.43% |
| Fat, | 0.58% |
| Ash, | 1.64% |
| Proteids (nitrogen x 6.25) | 12.00% |
| Crude fibre, | 2.03% |
| Dextrin, | 24.87% |
| Starch by difference, | 49.45% |
| Total | 100.00% |
| blank line‍ ||
| Calories per gramme, 3968.9% | |
| Material soluble in cold water 49.5% | |
Grape-Nuts excels other food in the following respects: It has less moisture, less fat and less starch; it has more dextrin and is more soluble than any other food.
In Post Addition.
Dextrin is the form of sugar that the starchy part of the grain is turned into before it can be digested. Dextrin is the part that makes human energy. Grape-Nuts has about double the energy~producing power of any other food on earth.
In the last line of the analysis is shown the percentage of the food that is ready for immediate digestion.
Those who feed mainly on half-cooked or soft cereals, such as porridge, rice or other starchy foods, form the habit of swallowing them quickly without proper mastication. When the food is presented to the stomach in such condition, the interior of many granules remains untouched with the digesting juices, and becomes fermented in the intestines as a consequence.
This fermentation in the intestines often produces Bright’s disease, diabetes, rheuma--
Post Tavern, Battle Creek, Mich.
Built and owned by the Postum Cereal Co., Ltd.
Corridor Post Tavern.
For many people it would be the wise procedure to discontinue the use of soft, mushy foods entirely; but if they are eaten, a liberal quantity of Grape-Nuts should be sprinkled over them. This will necessitate mastication, exciting the saliva and making the food more easily digested; but to enjoy perfect health, it is better to confine the cereal part of the meal to Grape-Nuts alone, as it is fully cooked and ready for immediate digestion.
Several years ago Grape-Nuts was started to supply the American public with a scientific food, fully and correctly cooked
Dining Room Post Tavern.
Post Tavern Gardens. Gardener’s residence on Post Tavern Gardens, part of the Post farm used for raising fruit and vegetables for the Post Tavern tables.
The public made Grape-Nuts a tremendous success, and this started the long procession of followers, with facetious names. But the making of a scientific food, with the powerful rebuilding elements, is a difficult task, and Grape-Nuts food has never thus far been successfully imitated.
The analysis of government and other prominent chemists turns light on the subject.
The public can be safely guided thereby. When all of the facts are considered, it makes the following statement reasonable: There is absolutely no food made with any near approach to the genuine food value of
Grape-Nuts.
“There’s a Reason.”
The “White City,” the Pure Food Factories where Grape-Nuts and Postum are made at Postumville, a part of Battle Creek, Mich. U. S. A.
“There’s a Reason.”
This work was published in 1904 and is anonymous or pseudonymous due to unknown authorship. It is in the public domain in the United States as well as countries and areas where the copyright terms of anonymous or pseudonymous works are 119 years or less since publication.
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