Processing Breakfast Cereals to Deliver Nutrition

Ready-to-eat breakfast cereals were among the first deliberately conceived “health foods,” developed at sanitariums in Battle Creek, Mich., to make more palatable the diets based on whole grains that were advocated then. Some of the processes and products developed in the early days of the industry are still in use.

Early products included flakes made from corn grits and wheat berries, shredded-wheat biscuits, and nuggets of barley and other ingredients baked in loaves and then milled and dried. …