Plasmon biscuits are a

biscuit A biscuit is a flour-based baked food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. ...

containing plasmon, a proprietary dried milk. The manufacturers claimed that of plasmon equalled of

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of lactating mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfeeding, breastfed human infants) before they are able to digestion, digest solid food. ...

. Plasmon was manufactured by the International Plasmon Company and was added to a number of different products to make Plasmon Oats, Plasmon Cocoa and Plasmon Biscuits. Plasmon biscuits are still manufactured in Italy by the

H. J. Heinz Company The Kraft Heinz Foods Company, formerly the H. J. Heinz Company and commonly known as Heinz (), is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 186 ...

History

Plasmon itself was a powder, milk albumen, which could be mixed into various other foods to make it palatable. Plasmon biscuits were popular around the turn of the 20th century and were considered a

health food A healthy diet is a diet that maintains or improves overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrition: fluid, macronutrients such as protein, micronutrients such as vitamins, and adequate fibre and food energy. A hea ...

. They were used by

Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarcti ...

in his Antarctic Expedition of 1902. On Christmas Day he wrote "Had a hot lunch. I was cook: –

Bovril Bovril is a thick and salty meat extract paste, similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar and as cubes and granules. Its appearance is similar to the British Marmite and ...

, chocolate and plasmon biscuit, two spoonfuls of jam each. Grand!". A variety of plasmon biscuit, said to be like digestives, was also made by

Jacob's Jacob's is an Irish Brand, brand name for several lines of biscuits and Cracker (food), crackers in Republic of Ireland, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The brand name is owned by the Jacob Fruitfield Food Group, part of Valeo Foods, which prod ...

in 1915.

Victor Whitechurch Victor Lorenzo Whitechurch (12 March 1868 – 26 May 1933) was a Church of England clergyman and author. He wrote many novels on different themes. He is probably best known for his detective stories featuring Thorpe Hazell, which featured in th ...

's fictional vegetarian detective

Thorpe Hazell Thorpe Hazell is a fictional detective created by the British author Victor Lorenzo Whitechurch. Hazell was a railway expert and a vegetarian, whom the author intended to be as far from Sherlock Holmes as possible. Short stories about Thorpe H ...

ate them daily. The journal of actress

Ellen Terry Dame Alice Ellen Terry (27 February 184721 July 1928) was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured ...

records that

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 188 ...

"generally dined off a plasmon biscuit and a bean!". George Strachey Fawle (1856–1936), a director of the International Plasmon Company (Ltd.), said he attributed his recovery from serious illness to plasmon. Samuel L. Clemens (

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...

) was an investor in the company and also promoted the powder's health benefits. He ate it daily himself, induced various members of his family to take it in its more palatable forms and kept the reading table by his bed well stocked with a variety of the products, inviting callers to try a sample. J.Y.M. MacAlister, another investor in the company, and Clemens are credited by Clemens' biographer, Albert Paine, with convincing the Medical Director-General of the British Army to adopt plasmon as a food for convalescent soldiers during the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War (, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, Transvaal War, Anglo–Boer War, or South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer republics (the South African Republic and ...

. Paine himself was urged to try the various products and reports that one of its more palatable forms was the "preparation of chocolate".

Physical culture

Plasmon consumption was advocated by the

physical culture Physical culture, also known as body culture, is a health and strength training movement that originated during the 19th century in Germany, the UK and the US. Origins The physical culture movement in the United States during the 19th century ...

and

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the Eating, consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects as food, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slau ...

communities during the early 20th-century. It was marketed as a food to gain muscle and strength. In 1901,

Eugen Sandow Eugen Sandow (born Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, ; 2 April 1867 – 14 October 1925) was a German bodybuilder and showman from Prussia. He was born in Königsberg, and became interested in bodybuilding at the age of ten during a visit to Italy. Aft ...

stated that "Plasmon is the essential food I have so long wish for and I would never be without it". Adverts for Plasmon often contained pseudoscientific health claims that promoted concepts of masculinity. Eustace Miles, a physical culturist and vegetarian promoted plasmon as a muscle building food suitable for children, adults and athletes.

Plasmon Society

In Italy, the Plasmon Society, founded initially as the Italian Plasmon Syndicate in 1902 until its renaming in 1916, based in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, would grow to prominence during the

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, going from importing and marketing pure plasmon, to producing and selling plasmon biscuits, plasmon pasta, and plasmon

chocolate Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that can be a liquid, solid, or paste, either by itself or to flavoring, flavor other foods. Cocoa beans are the processed seeds of the cacao tree (''Theobroma cacao''); unprocesse ...

. They would later be acquired by the H. J. Heinz Company in 1963, renamed to Plasmon Dietetic Food in 1976, and directly incorporated into the company by 1995, still producing its products such as its Plasmon biscuits to this day. In Serbia, it is often said that following the acquisition of the Plasmon Society by Heinz, mass layoffs occurred at the factories which operated at the time, with one of the workers laid-off, Petar Tutavac (1934-2022), deciding to return to his native hometown of

Požarevac Požarevac ( sr-cyr, Пожаревац, ) is a list of cities in Serbia, city and the administrative centre of the Braničevo District in eastern Serbia. It is located between three rivers: Danube, Great Morava and Mlava and below the hill Čač ...

and setting in motion the foundation of the Serbian food company Bambi a.d. and the creation of its popular Plazma biscuits in 1967 and 1968 respectively, sold as Lane biscuits outside of former Yugoslavia to avoid further litigation from Heinz. This origin story however has been disputed by Bambi's founder, Momčilo Filipović, who explained in an interview how Plazma's creation stemmed from his ambition to expand

Leskovac Leskovac ( sr-Cyrl, Лесковац, ) is a List of cities in Serbia, city and the administrative center of the Jablanica District in Southern Serbia (Geographical Region), southern Serbia. According to the 2022 census, the city itself has a p ...

’s wheat mill into biscuit production, an idea which was not met with much enthusiasm by the city, which wanted to develop its more traditional textiles industry instead. After acquiring the rights and technology from Italian producers after lengthy negotiations, Bambi was set up in Požarevac, and Tutovac, in actuality a master-baker from a small biscuit factory in Croatia, was brought on board, only to rise up to become the technical director.

References

{{reflist, 2 Biscuit brands Biscuits Italian brands Heinz brands