I have vague childhood memories of people telling me that Puffed Rice was good for me because it was made by shooting the rice grains from a cannon – though I was clueless as to why shooting the grain made it more nutritious. Well, now I know; it’s easier to digest. The cannon (or gun) promotion for Puffed Rice has been around for a long time. I found this ad in a hundred-year-old magazine.
A Hundred Years Ago 
Learned something new this morning! I always loved puffed cereal,never knew how it was done .
Somehow I’m guessing that the process used to make puffed cereal has changed across the years. 🙂
When my son was small, he wanted to have a go at making Rice Krispies, as we call puffed rice. We decided that it would work on the same principle as pop corn. But it doesn’t, as far as we could tell from our experiments. So he wrote to Kellog’s in his 6 year old handwriting and got a very po-faced letter back basically saying it was a state secret, and they couldn’t possibly say. Did they think he was going to set up a rival company?
Good grief – you’d think they’d enjoy sharing the basics of how they puffed the rice. Like you, I would have guessed that it would work similarly to how pop corm is popped. I wonder if the rice has to have just the right amount of moisture to make it pop.
I loved Puffed Rice, but haven’t seen it for awhile. It does not hold up well in our humidity.
I’m not sure whether they sell it around here anymore. I’ll have to look the next time that I go to the store.
I gave up on it, but I’ll look too.
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever read about cereal. It brought a smile to my day! Thanks so much. 😀
It’s nice to hear that you enjoyed this ad.
This brought back memories of having puffed rice as a child. My mother used to tell the story of it being shot from cannons.
Interesting that both of our mother’s told the same story. They must have remembered ads from when they were young.
We had the puffed cereals when I was a child. I wouldn’t eat them now, preferring to have whole grains that you really chew and that might race through your digestive tract without raising blood sugar by much. I wonder if the process is more like popping corn than anything else. I enjoyed reading the ad. Thanks for posting it.
I had similar thoughts. A hundred years ago they worried a lot about how easy a food was to digest – and a food was considered better if it was easily digestible which often meant that it had little fiber. Today we have a better understanding of the characteristics of nutritious food.
Wonder what they’ll say about our nutritional ideas in a hundred years???
Wonder if the puffed cereals today are cannon-shot in the interest of better nutrition.
Somehow I’m guessing that the manufacturing methods (as well as the beliefs about the nutritional benefits) have changed across the years. 🙂
I had never heard that story, interesting for sure!
I find it fascinating that this apparently was a very successful ad campaign back in the day.
I don’t remember ever hearing about the cannons, but I certainly do remember the cereals. Puffed wheat was my favorite, except for Rice Krispies, which made their way into cookies. I did like the coated puffed wheat, which was called Sugar Puffs. Back in 2014, they cut the amount of sugar in the cereal and changed it’s name: sort of like Chem-Lawn turning into Tru-Green. 🙂
I love the analogy. I also liked Sugar Puffs when I was a kid, and hadn’t realized that the name was changed. Even though there’s no way I’d eat Sugar Puffs today, it feels a little sad that a childhood staple has changed.
Isn’t it better for you if it breaks down in your system more slowly?
Yes, I think that it’s best if food breaks down more slowly in your system – but that’s not where they were at a hundred years ago. Back then a lot of research was being done on which foods were digested the most rapidly – and foods were considered better if they were easily digestible.
I saw a funny article about old advertisements that promoted various products as “healthy” that are definitely not healthy and it made me think of you. The funniest one was for butter, suggesting that you should eat as much butter as you can because butter is slippery therefore it will help keep your veins and arteries clear. 😂
LOL . . . It’s amazing how much some ideas about healthy eating have changed across the years.
I noticed this ad was by a company that has done quite well in the past hundred years 🙂
When I browse through hundred-year-old magazines, I’m often surprised by how many companies that advertised back then still exist.
I’d never heard about the shooting before! But I do agree that most cereal is like eating air. Great for an evening snack but not enough sustenance for breakfast.
A lot of cereals seem more like snacks than like real food.