Postum hokum...

Postum hokum...  I wonder how many of my readers remember Postum, the breakfast drink?  We had it in our home when I was growing up, and my parents would allow the kids to drink it.  We were not allowed to drink coffee – they told us that coffee would “stunt our growth”, so we got Postum instead.  I don't recall either loving it or detesting it, but I did drink it occasionally.

What reminded me of such an obscure childhood thing was this article debunking the notion that coffee would stunt kids' growth.  That article mentions the role that Postum's advertising played in promoting the notion that coffee affected kids, and on further reading I discovered that Postum was a staple of Mormon culture (Mormon's don't drink coffee or tea).  Kraft foods (who had acquired the Postum brand through a chain of acquisitions) discontinued Postum in 2007, leaving a wake of disconsolate Mormons behind them (there are hundreds of articles and posts still on the web from 2007/2008 on this subject).  But in 2012, Kraft resurrected a modified version of Postum, and there are quite a few articles and posts from the Mormon community on this.

I think my dad would have been amused by the connection between Mormon culture and a practice in our own (very much not Mormon) home :)