C.W. Post (1854-1914) remains a slippery figure in U.S. culinary history. At age 37, he presented at the Battle Creek Sanitarium as a manic-depressive, chronically ill business failure so feeble and emaciated he had to be carried in on a stretcher.

He recovered, in a manner of speaking, and through ethically questionable means, brought to market some new breakfast foods. He, together with his arch-rival, Will Keith Kellogg, changed the way Americans ate breakfast, and the ways they responded to marketing. Post was a genius marketer. He figured out crowd-sourcing before it was a thing.

Fueled by "the power of positive thinking" he concocted a potion in a barn that -- through innovative marketing -- became a magic elixir. His Postum grain-based coffee replacement could undo the damage wrought from the evil "Mr. Coffee Nerves." 

And like one of the great Tweeters of today, he did not hesitate to lie in order to get what he wanted -- in his case, sales. Post, who initially wrote his company's advertising copy,  made wildly optimistic, unsubstantiated claims for his products. Postum made blood red. Grape Nuts cured appendicitis. And so forth.

The Trump connection comes around again in the twenty-first century: his daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post, built a resort in Florida which she named, "Mar-A-Lago."

 

Mr. Coffee Nerves

Postum claims

cultivator versus harrow

College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, University of Missouri