lease ’s face it : One of the adept things about making a campfire is makings’mores — the quintessentially American treat consisting of toasted marshmallows and a square of evaporate chocolate press between two crisp graham crackers . But have you ever wonderedwhy graham crackers were inventedor where the name graham crackers came from ?
It turn out graham crackers were a health intellectual nourishment develop in the 1830s from the teachings of anAmerican food reformer and religious teacherReverend Sylvester Graham who , by all story , would be appalled by what passes for a graham firecracker today .
" The closest leftover [ to the original graham banger ] that subsist today is in all probability thepilot crackerorhardtack , " says New York - base solid food historianSarah Wassberg Johnson . " That was the type of cracker that was commercially produced and usable at the grocer or worldwide computer memory . "
In other Word , the original graham crackers bore small resemblance to the graham banger we enjoy today that ’s typically made with tasteful flour , mellow fructose maize syrupand a dab of honey for marketing purposes . Instead , the original graham cracker bonbon called for ingredients including " graham flour , " a form of coarsely ground wheat berry made by comminute the endosperm of wintertime wheat into a hunky-dory pulverisation and mixing it with the bran and texture . It has a coarse texture , nutty smack and is not gluten - barren .
" It ’s funny that of all the things that he talks about with his health reform , that ’s the one affair that gets widely adopted and has his name , " Johnson say . " [ Graham flour ] gets embrace by people who may not even be aware of him even toward the end of the 19th 100 and persists into some of the twentieth century . You hear aboutgraham gemsand graham staff of life in cookbooks up to the 1940s and 1950s . "
Why Graham Crackers Were Invented
Graham was horrified by overprocessing and enriching wheat flour , and trust the loss of fiber and other nutrients in white flour ruined consumer ’s wellness . In 1837 , Graham issue a pamphlet entitled , " A Treatise on Bread and Breadmaking , " and was hail by the philosopher - poetRalph Waldo Emersonas " the prophet of bran bread . "
Graham believed in and was an early advocate and follower of a vegetarian diet , ground theAmerican Vegetarian Societyin 1850 . Graham also believed in eating a savourless diet and ostracize sugar and all swear out foods . A Presbyterian diplomatic minister , Graham was a phallus of thetemperance movement , abstaining not only from alcohol but even from using yeast in broil .
" I cogitate that ’s why graham crackers became a ' thing , ' because they were unraised , they did n’t have brewer ’s yeast in them , " Johnson state . " The temperance movement was a swelled part of a sure kind of Protestantism , but the really hardcore moderation masses , like Graham , believed you could n’t employ barm because yeast produces alcohol . "
In addition to writing about food , Graham also gave lectures on dieting reform that are difficult to separate from his spiritual school of thought . He had M of following , look up to asGrahamites . He greatly mold other wellness reformers who were also religious instructor of the day includingEllen White , an disciple of Seventh Day Adventism and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg , another Seventh Day Adventist who , along with his brother , Will , inventedcorn flakesandfounded Kellogg ’s .
What Sylvester Graham Believed
Graham ’s diet was linked , not only to physical , but also to moral and ghostly health . He elevate day by day washup , toothbrushingand eating three regular meal per day . But Graham also believe sexual desires were ruining society . He believed sex should was useful for reproduction and that enjoying nutrient was a sin . Johnson say many of Graham ’s passport for healthy living — no affectionate baths , no drinking alcoholic beverage , and no eating inwardness , sugar or refined foods — were similar to the those practiced by ego - flagellating monks of the medieval period , which came out ofthe Plague .
" Many of Graham ’s health reforms that happened in the nineteenth 100 add up out of a serial of cholera and typhoid epidemic , " Johnson enounce . " That ’s where the water therapeutic come in , and the emphasis on the health and sanitization of avert the excesses of life that masses thought might be a factor in disease . "
Johnson says successfulness , technological change and new urbanism work about changes in society not everyone viewed positively . Graham was rightly concerned about food pureness and the danger in commercial food yield as populations shifted from farms to cities , but Graham ’s austere ism and eating wont harden the lasting influence of the man who was a forerunner of the American wellness intellectual nourishment movement .
" He trust there ’s less peer pressure to carry correctly if you move to the metropolis where you ’re not get laid to everyone , " Johnson say . " A hatful of his idea are about ascendence and how you create orderliness in a time of change and pandemonium . He stripped a portion of the joy out of life , eating , sexual practice , quiescence and Bath . Which is why his factual teaching are not adopted .
" Part of it is the temperance , part of it is the self - disaffirmation . Who wants to sleep on a control panel if you do n’t have to ? Who want to take a frigid bathtub if you do n’t have to ? But graham flour , especially if you ’re using freshly ground whole wheat , is delicious . It ’s really good and does have a lot more flavor than blank flour . I can see why that would be the matter that hang on . "
Graham died in 1851 at age 57 ofcomplications of receiving opium enemason MD ’s parliamentary law . There are report that he attempted to reverse anemia by eat liquor and meat near the end of his animation , on his doctor ’s advice , thus breaking his own dietary ethics .
