Friday, September 10, 2010

The Pious Graham Cracker

Olivia is obsessed with graham crackers. She wants them all the time. It got me thinking about graham crackers themselves. What's a "graham"? Is it a person or a plant or what?

It turns out that it's a person. Reverend Sylvester Graham was the inventor of the graham cracker back in 1829. It was part of his healthy food diet. His big thing was that the food you ate dictated the "carnal urges" you experienced. The graham cracker, with it's coarse flour and wheat bran and germ, was bland enough to curb anyone's sexual appetite. I thought it would be a great idea for singles ward bishops to have a box of these sitting on their desks.

Unfortunately, graham crackers today are made of refined, bleached white flour, a fact that Barbara Mikkelson said in this article that "would have sent Sylvester Graham spinning in his grave--he regarded refined flour as one of the world's great dietary evils."

1 comment:

Kathy Haynie said...

The image of the graham cracker box on the desk of the singles' ward bishop - made me smile. :)