You’ve heard of Granola, but did you know that that name is just a riff on the name of the earlier Granula, which was “the world’s first dry, manufactured breakfast cereal”? A fellow named Dr. James Caleb Jackson invented it in 1863. According to the brief Wikipedia article:

Granula could be described as being a larger and tougher version of the somewhat similar later cereal Grape-Nuts.[2] However, it consisted primarily of bran-rich graham flour made into nugget shapes. The cereal had to be soaked overnight before it could be eaten.[4]

So, y’know how boxes of Grape-Nuts (and many similar products) have a block of fine print text clarifying that the image of the cereal has been enlarged to show texture?

It seems that instead of imagining the Grape-Nuts’ actual, smaller size, one has the alternative option of imagining that the photo instead depicts the realistic size of sweet, legendary Granula.

Anyway, some time later in breakfast history, the Kellogg guy developed what was or has become modern “Granola”, changing the one letter in the name in order to avoid legal conflict with Dr. Jackson. Thus the original term was doomed to relative obscurity, in spite of more closely resembling the word granule. I don’t actually know if that was intentional, but it seems plausible.

Have a whole-grain Sunday! 🥣🍞🍓