The graham cracker was inspired by the preaching of which dietary reformer?

The graham cracker was inspired by the preaching of dietary reformer Sylvester Graham.

Graham was a 19th-century American Presbyterian minister who promoted vegetarianism, temperance, plain living, and bread made from coarsely ground whole-wheat flour. He believed highly refined foods and culinary stimulants encouraged poor health and immoral behavior. His followers, known as Grahamites, helped popularize products made according to his ideas.

The original graham wafer was very different from the sweet honey- or cinnamon-flavored crackers sold today. Graham promoted a plain, sugarless biscuit made with unsifted flour, and he neither invented nor profited from the commercial cracker products later associated with his name. The modern graham cracker developed through commercial baking after his death.

A common mix-up is confusing Graham with John Harvey Kellogg, another later health reformer associated with bland or reform-oriented foods. Kellogg was influenced by some reform traditions, but the graham cracker’s namesake and inspiration were Sylvester Graham. Commercial mass production in the United States began in 1898, when the National Biscuit Company made the product widely available.