Peanut Butter’s Popularity Spreading Across the U.S.

Your article credits a St. Louis physician with the invention of peanut butter in 1890. Perhaps others could claim simultaneous and independent discovery of that indispensable item of the American diet. In his never-ending search for acceptable meat substitutes for patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, W.K. Kellogg ground up some roasted peanuts in the experimental kitchen. He took the resultant product to his brother, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, for his approval.

J.H. smelled the ground-up peanut paste, tasted it, and pronounced it “peanut butter.” As W.K. started to go back to the lab to grind out quantities for the menu, J.H. asked, “How did you cook the peanuts?”

“I roasted them, of course.” W.K. replied.

“Steam them!” J.H. ordered.

“But I doubt . . . “ W.K. interjected.

“Steam them!” J.H. thundered.

The resultant product proved a tasteless paste and never caught on with their patients or staff. Thus the Kellogg brothers lost an opportunity to cash in on the universal appeal of peanut butter for the year was probably in the 1880s.

W.K. was not one to let two such opportunities go by. When his flaked cereal products, invented in the same kitchen, became best-sellers as a result of former patient C.W. Post’s promotional genius, W.K. decided it was time to split with his brother and launch off on his own. The rest, as they say, is history. The Kellogg Co. today is far and away the largest manufacturer of ready-to-eat cereals with worldwide dominance in that highly competitive field. Still, had it not been for Dr. J.H.’s stubbornness, we might also be eating Kellogg’s peanut butter.

(W.K. Kellogg was my grandfather and Dr. J.H. Kellogg was my great uncle.)

NORMAN WILLIAMSON JR.

Claremont