BY PAM FREIR, TIMES COLONISTJANUARY 21, 2009

In Michigan, at Battle Creek, in 1863, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was founded. Like many nonconformist congregations of the time simple, healthy living was central to their faith.

One of the founders, Ellen White, had prophetic powers. When visiting a hydrotherapy spa in New York state she received a message from above. It was, in essence, “Take this idea and run with it”.

Accordingly, in 1866 the Western Health Reform Institute at Battle Creek opened for business. Guests received two simple, healthy meals a day, plus the water cure. The church flourished, but the Institute did not. Eventually the elders decided that two vital ingredients were lacking: medical knowledge and leadership. They selected a promising teenager from an Adventist family and put him through medical school. In 1875, he was made Superintendent of the Institute, at the age of 23. His name was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

Dr. John was a human tornado. He never took a holiday, he worked 15 hour days, and had two shorthand typists on hand at all times to record his thoughts. He made so much money from his writings that he never drew a salary from what was called the Sanitarium. He invented the word.

Under Dr. John’s leadership the Sanitarium became a mecca for the rich and famous, who visited for weeks at a time to have their bodies exercised and their bowels regulated.

The Battle Creek diet was strictly vegetarian and strictly limited. No spices, no meat, no fish, no seafood, no butter, no coffee, no alcohol, no tea, no sugar. Grains and nuts, that’s about it. But Dr. John and his staff worked hard to make these few ingredients interesting to the rich folk.

The “staff” at the Sanitarium was largely Dr. John’s kid brother, Will. Will was virtually a slave. He worked the same hours as his brother, and had to wait seven years before his first vacation. He wrote in his diary “I will always be a poor man the way things are”. They paid him $6 a week.

One of Will’s duties was development of food products. A project for easy-to-digest bread went awry, but produced some nice-looking wheat flakes. The guests liked them, and the flakes went on the menu as Granose.

Will saw this as a way to escape personal poverty, and proposed marketing Granose on behalf of the Sanitarium, but big brother would not agree. He wasn’t interested in making money, he had a higher purpose in life. This higher purpose included frequent travels to Europe to spread the Battle Creek doctrine, and Will based his exit plan on these extended absences.

During the next trip to Europe, Will built a small factory, and began marketing both Granose and Sanitas Toasted Corn Flakes. On his return, Dr. John was livid, but went along with it on condition the business stayed small. Quietly, without asking permission, Will broke a cardinal rule – he added sugar to the Corn Flakes recipe. Sugar! At Battle Creek?

The result was increased sales and increased profits, but Dr. John still owned the business. Will now suggested spinning off the cereal company, with his brother as the majority shareholder. Dr. John, doubtless glad by now to get his kid brother off the premises, agreed. Then he made his big mistake. Frugal by nature, Dr, John began paying some of the Sanitarium staff with shares in the cereal company, from his own holdings. Will watched and waited, then at the right moment – with his brother in Europe once again — he pounced. He bought up the scattered shares, until he had enough to take control of what was now his own company. He was out of the Sanitarium and onto the breakfast tables of the world.

Both brothers lived to the age of 91, and both were high achievers. But when we hear the name Kellogg these days, it’s not the high-flying medical man we think of, it’s Will, the put-upon kid brother who understood that people liked a bit of sugar with their medicine.

pam@gulfislandswireless.com