Where is shredded wheat made

Factory boss Matt Robinson took TV cameras from Channel 4's Food Unwrapped into the headquarters of the iconic breakfast cereal to show how they manage to shred wheat from the grain. In what is described as a 'feat of engineering,' the process is revealed to be very complicated, taking more than 24 hours to create a single Shredded Wheat pillow.

Shredded Wheat cereal has been around since The pillow-like biscuits are made from whole wheat before being knitted together. First the wheat - which is all British-grown - is cooked to soften it, before the grains are dried off in a special machine. Matt reveals that each grain of wheat is fed through two rollers: one smooth, and one grooved.

The rollers force the grain into the grooves, which shreds them so that they form one long spaghetti-like strand of wheat. As each grain is fed into the rollers, it fuses with the next one which is how it forms a long, continuous strand. Matt reveals: 'If you shred [the wheat] when too wet, it just smears, and if too dry it shatters.

It has to be the right moisture and the right texture. Each Shredded Wheat 'biscuit' surprisingly contains a shredded wheat strand that is about metres long. He returned to Denver and began distributing the biscuits from a horse-drawn wagon in an attempt to popularize the idea.

The company he formed was known at the time as The Cereal Machine Company. By , drawn by the idea of an inexpensive form of power for baking, and the natural draw of a popular tourist attraction, he moved his company to Niagara Falls, New York. This changed to Nabisco Shredded Wheat around Production of Shredded Wheat was begun in Naperville, Illinois in In , Nabisco decided to sell the Shredded Wheat brand — attempting first a sale to General Mills, and when that was disallowed, selling it instead to Kraft-General Foods , retaining the Triscuit name and product and thus splitting for the first time the two products originally produced by Henry Perky.

It was expanded in More plants were opened in the U. In , the Rainbow Boulevard site began production of shredded wheat as Nabisco offered the old factory and administration building for sale. In , the administration building closed and was leased to Union Carbide as a research facility. By , when NCCC moved to its permanent campus in Sanborn, the old administration building was in danger of being demolished, possibly for a hotel. Local preservation-minded citizens succeeded in having it added to the National Register of Historic Places the next year.

It was demolished in ; the site remains vacant in In , production of shredded wheat in Niagara Falls U. The next year, Kraft-General Foods bought all shredded wheat production, leaving Nabisco with Triscuits.

And then in , Kraft purchased all of Nabisco and shut down the Rainbow Boulevard factory on December 13, , one hundred years and seven months almost to the day from the beginning of the Natural Food Company in Niagara Falls.

Two hundred workers lost their jobs. Many remembered the scent of hay in the factory and how cool and clean the working environment was. Special thanks to Cecilia Driscoll, local history librarian at the Niagara Falls Library, for her extra efforts to locate the company seal designed by Raphael Beck. She discovered it on a piece of company stationery in the library archives. View from the roof garden atop the Natural Food Company building, showing the residential neighborhood in which it was built.

Image source:private collection. Slideshow of the process of making shredded wheat products at the Niagara Falls factory. The captions are orginal. Use the controls beneath each image to move back and forward. Back Next. Advertisement from magazine. Company seal, designed by Raphael Beck, Company promotional card linking Niagara Falls with shredded wheat.

Lobby of the Administration Building. Lunchroom for female employees. Nabisco gave away T-shirts to the first 2, people who showed up with empty Shredded Wheat boxes.

The T-shirts were gone in an hour, with hundreds of people still holding empty cereal packages. Sections U.