A nostalgic walk through the supermarket shelves: today we’re going to talk about the American food brands with the longest histories
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff. JR is the producer and this is Plain English lesson number 391. The full lesson resources, including the complete transcript, are available at PlainEnglish.com/391.
We usually focus on current events and trending topics, but every once in a while, I like to write a lesson just for fun, and today is one of those days. We’re going to talk about the brands on supermarket shelves that have been around the longest and I’ll share a little about the history of these brands. As I said, it’s just for fun, but you might enjoy learning a little more about the American diet—for better or for worse—over the years. So, here we go!
Oldest American food brands
If you wander the aisles of an American supermarket, you’ll see an ever-changing array of branded products ranging from cereal to ice cream, soups to salad dressings, cookies and crackers, ketchup and other condiments, everything you can imagine. And every week, some type of packaged food is new and improved, a recipe is reformulated, special editions are released.
But if you look closely, you’ll find that some brands have remarkable staying power . Some packaged foods are the same recipe and same product, week in and week out for decades, some for more than a century. I realized this last week as I reached for a familiar yellow cereal box, expecting to put my favorite cereal, Cheerios, into my cart. They changed the packaging to bring back the original name, Cheeri-oats, for a limited time, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of one of the world’s most popular cereals.
That means a ninety-year-old person today could have had the same cereal for breakfast every day since she was just ten years old, with no real changes in the recipe, and only a slight difference in the name and packaging. And so, I got to thinking, what are some of the other famous brands in our grocery store that have been around for a really long time?
It turns out that Cheerios isn’t even among the very oldest, at eighty years old. The original Cheeri-oats boasted they were the world’s first ready-to-eat oats; before they came out , you had to boil your oats with hot water or milk. And Americans did that with Quaker oats, a brand that is still around today—in fact, in many stores, Quaker oats are the only kind of traditional oatmeal that you can buy.
Quaker Oats was founded on September 4, 1877, in the town of Ravenna, Ohio. This was the first American trademark for a breakfast cereal. It featured then, and still features today, the image of a Quaker person in traditional dress. Quakers are a movement within the Protestant denomination of Christianity, and they’re known for being honest and hardworking. So, the first American breakfast cereal was Quaker oats, and it was trademarked 144 years ago, without any changes to the product or the packaging. Can you believe it?
If you’d like to wake up with oatmeal or cereal in the morning, you might also want a cup of hot coffee to go along with that. Way back in time, if you wanted coffee at home, you had to buy green coffee beans, roast them yourself, grind them, and then add hot water. But in 1850, the Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills Company started roasting and grinding coffee that could be prepared at home. One of the early employees, J.A. Folger, bought the company, which was thereafter known as Folgers, a brand that is still sold in red containers today. It is the best-selling ground coffee in the United States and is on most supermarket shelves even today despite the influx of single-cup brewers and more artisanal coffees. Folgers, though, is 171 years old.
All right, enough breakfast, let’s talk lunch. If it’s a chilly day, you might reach for a red can of Campbell’s soup. Anderson & Campbell, later just Campbell’s Soup, was founded in 1869. That’s 152 years ago. Their big innovation, which put them on the map, didn’t come until 28 years later when the company’s president invented the idea of condensed soup. That was in 1897, and it’s probably not too different today. You open the can, pour it into a saucepan, add two cans full of water, and heat it up. Just a few minutes of effort and you have two servings of hot Chicken Noodle Soup, the company’s most famous product.
A bowl of soup is better with crackers on top. How about those Premium Soda Crackers, also known as Saltine crackers? They were first made in 1876 in the town of St. Joseph, Missouri. They’re 145 years old and still very popular.
If you’re not up for a cup of soup, maybe you’d like a ham sandwich. Oscar Mayer started in 1883. A German immigrant, Oscar F. Mayer himself, started the company right here in Chicago, Illinois. They started selling bratwurst, liverwurst, and other traditional German sausages, before transitioning to ham, bacon, bologna, and hot dogs. Oscar Mayer ham, bacon, hot dogs, and cold cuts are still on supermarket shelves in yellow packaging with red lettering. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, an enormous vehicle shaped like a hot dog, patrols America’s highways, promoting the company’s products. The first Wienermobile—I kid you not—was on the road in 1936. If you haven’t seen it, it’s quite the sight.
You can’t make a ham sandwich without bread. Wonder Bread started in 1921. That’s relatively young in comparison, but it’s still a hundred years old! Wonder Bread is a loaf of white bread, simple, spongy, nutrition-free, bleached, white bread and a staple of my childhood diet.
For something to drink, Pepsi was founded in 1898 and Coca-Cola in 1886. The original Coca-Cola did contain both wine and cocaine; the original recipe was created by an officer that served during America’s Civil War. He had been wounded in the war and was addicted to morphine, so he decided to look for a less addictive way to alleviate the pain. After America outlawed alcohol, Coca-Cola was reformulated as a soft drink.
Jell-O has been on American tables for dessert since 1897 if you can believe that. You can buy Pillsbury cake mixes too; Pillsbury has been around since 1872.
Americans are not much for spicy food, but when we want to spice things up a little bit, we reach for Tabasco sauce, the very first bottled hot sauce. It’s made from Tabasco chiles and was initially produced on an island in the state of Louisiana. They still fill all the bottles there today, 153 years after it was first produced.
It has been a long lesson, and you guys deserve a treat for staying with us so long. In fact, I’ll even give you permission to pour yourselves a shot of Jim Beam Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, which was first produced and sold in America in 1795.
A few more old brands
Here are a few more. The first Oreo cookies came out in 1912, but they didn’t become sandwich-like until 1921. So, we are also celebrating the one-hundredth year of the Oreo. If I had known that before I started writing this lesson, I might have made the whole thing about Oreos! Ritz crackers came out in 1934. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes came out in 1906. Frosted Flakes is a relative newcomer; they were created in 1952. Pop-Tarts didn’t exist until 1964 when people started having electric toasters at home. Now mixing and matching flavors is all the rage .
Skippy peanut butter started in 1933. Heinz ketchup—get this—Heinz ketchup came out in 1876. You could put Heinz ketchup on—well, I don’t know what people put it on back then, but you could have Heinz ketchup even before you could turn on a light bulb. The light bulb was invented the next year.
Unfortunately, not all old brands have aged well. The Quaker Oats Company began marketing a pancake mix under the name Aunt Jemima in 1926 and Uncle Ben’s white rice came out in 1943. The owners of these brands both decided to retire them this year, saying they perpetuated racial stereotypes.
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