Did You Know?

Puffed grain and snacks have a U tie

Alexander Anderson invented this cannon to make puffed grain for cereals.

If you've ever eaten sweetened puffed wheat breakfast cereal (like Kellogg's Honey Smacks or Post's Golden Crisp), rice cakes or cheese puffs, then you have University of Minnesota alum and one-time faculty member Alexander Anderson to thank.

Anderson is the researcher who discovered how to "pop" starch foods more than a century ago--an innovation that led to the creation of puffed rice and other puffed cereal grains that are standard fare on breakfast tables around the world.

Unlike popcorn, a type of corn that naturally pops or puffs up with heat, puffed cereal or snacks are formed by exploding whole grain kernels under high pressure and steam. The U.S. Patent Office gave Anderson, a University assistant botany professor from 1891-1894 and 1898-1899, a patent for the "art of treating starch material." On April 28, 1902, he struck gold.

Anderson "made an invention which bids fair to bring him fame and money," reported the April 28, 1902, Minnesota Alumni Weekly. Anderson had developed the first steam-injected drum, which came to be known as the "puffing cannon."

"The objects of my invention are to provide a dry method of swelling starch materials of all kinds to render them porous, thereby enhancing their nutritive value and rendering them more readily and completely digested," Anderson wrote in his patent application.

Puffed rice was introduced at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. The Anderson Puffed Rice Company, a subsidiary of the Quaker Oats Company, first marketed puffed rice as a snack food, and then as a breakfast cereal to compete with corn flakes, which had just entered the market. Today, almost all breakfast cereal manufacturers have a "puffed" breakfast cereal.

"In many ways, the puffed rice and the puffed wheat that came out of all his inventions was the very first fast food, and it revolutionized the way Americans ate breakfast," said Robert Hedin, Anderson's grandson, in a 2005 interview with Minnesota Public Radio.

Breakfast cereals are a $2 billion global trade, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The United States is the world's largest exporter of cereal grains and third largest importer of breakfast cereals. Americans consume an average of 10 pounds, or 160 bowls of cereal, annually--the fourth highest per capita consumption rate of cereal in the world (behind Ireland, England and Australia).

Anderson continued to study grain structures and research ways to improve cereal products until his death in 1943.

In Minnesota, Anderson's name is most associated to the Anderson Center, the state's largest artist residence just north of Red Wing. Anderson built the center (as the Tower View estate during World War I) as a place to raise his family and conduct experiments.