Product 19 was a

breakfast cereal Cereal, formally termed breakfast cereal (and further categorized as cold cereal or warm cereal), is a traditional breakfast food made from processed cereal grains. It is traditionally eaten as part of breakfast, or a snack food, primarily in We ...

made by

Kellogg's The Kellogg Company, doing business as Kellogg's, is an American multinational food manufacturing company headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. Kellogg's produces cereal and convenience foods, including crackers and toa ...

. Introduced in 1967, it consisted of lightly sweetened flakes made of

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

oat The oat (''Avena sativa''), sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name (usually in the plural, unlike other cereals and pseudocereals). While oats are suitable for human con ...

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

, and

rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and '' Porteresia'', both wild and domesticat ...

, marketed as containing all required daily

vitamin A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules closely related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an essential micronutrient that an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its metabolism. Essential nutrie ...

s and

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

. The product was discontinued in 2016.

Origin of name

The name has been explained in two ways: as the 19th version of the cereal or Kellogg's 19th product in development that year.

Product history and marketing

Kellogg's introduced Product 19 in 1967 in response to

General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company or ...

' Total, which claimed to contain the entire daily nutritional requirement of vitamins and

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...

s. Like Total, Product 19 was fortified with the US recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals. Unlike Total, Product 19 was a multi-grain cereal. It was packaged in a relatively plain red and white box, originally with charts and text, and was marketed to older consumers and the health-conscious. The original slogan was "Instant Nutrition - New cereal food created especially for working mothers, otherwise busy mothers and everybody in a hurry." In the early 1970s, advertising for Product 19 featured the former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

player,

Tom Harmon Thomas Dudley Harmon (September 28, 1919 – March 15, 1990), known as Tom Harmon, as well as by the nickname "Old 98", was an American football player, military pilot, actor, and sports broadcaster. Harmon grew up in Gary, Indiana, and playe ...

. Towards the end, boxes depicted a person doing

yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciou ...

. Within Kellogg's range of cereals, it was targeted to customers seeking to lose weight. In response to lackluster sales, Kellogg's limited distribution of Product 19 in the 2010s, and announced in 2016 that it had been discontinued.

References

External links

* Products introduced in 1967 Products and services discontinued in 2016 Kellogg's cereals {{food-product-stub