Granula was the cereal brand that James Caleb Jackson created in 1863 at his New York health institution.
Jackson developed granula at the Jackson Sanitarium in Dansville, New York. The product was made from graham flour dough that was baked, broken into pieces, and baked again. It was an early example of a ready-to-eat grain food marketed as part of a health-oriented diet.
The name later became important because John Harvey Kellogg produced a similar product called granola. Kellogg changed the name after Jackson objected to the use of Granula. The modern generic word granola eventually became widely used for baked mixtures of grains, nuts, seeds, and sweeteners.
Granula is therefore not the same as modern crunchy granola sold in supermarkets. It was a specific nineteenth-century cereal brand, and its history helps explain why the modern term resembles the original name while differing by one letter.