1941 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

U.S. newspaper reporters in the next few years will talk about G.I.s fighting for Mom and "good old American apple pie," even though apple pie did not originate in America.

The United States imports 53 million bunches of bananas, mostly from the Caribbean and Central America.

Cheerios breakfast food is introduced by General Mills; the oat-based cereal is 2.2 percent sugar.

Daniel Gerber's Fremont Canning Co. sells 1 million cans of baby food per week (see 1929; 1948).

Basic U.S. food prices by December are 61 percent above prewar prices.

M&Ms Plain Chocolate Candies are introduced by M&M Ltd., a company founded by Forrest E. Mars, who returned to the United States last year and opened a Newark, N.J., confectionery plant in partnership with R. Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey's chief executive officer William F. R. "Bill" Murrie (Mars will buy out Bruce Murrie's 20 percent interest in 1949) (see 1937). Their hard shells enable M&Ms to withstand heat, a feature that will soon win them popularity among U.S. servicemen and lead to the slogan, "The Milk Chocolate That Melts in Your Mouth—Not in Your Hands."