Wheatena - 1985

Wheatena was created by George H. Hoyt in the late 19th century, when retailers would typically buy cereal (the most popular being cracked wheat, oatmeal, and cerealine) in barrel lots, and scoop it out to sell by the pound to customers. Hoyt, who had found a distinctive process of preparing wheat for cereal, sold his cereal in boxes, offering consumers a sanitary appeal.

.R. Wendell bought Health Foods in 1903, and incorporated it as The Wheatena Company that year. In 1907, the company moved to a new plant, dubbed "Wheatenaville", in Rahway, New Jersey. By the mid-1920s, millions of boxes were sold each year.[1]

In the early 1960s, the Kansas City, Missouri-based Uhlmann Company, owner of the Standard Milling Company, purchased both the Wheatena corporation and Highspire Flour Mills, which for several years had been supplying the 100% cracked wheat used in the cereal. Uhlmann moved Wheatena manufacturing to Highspire, Pennsylvania, in October 1967. The company began leasing its flour-milling facilities to the agribusiness giant ConAgra Foods in early 1987, and sold the cereal manufacturing operation to American Home Food Products in April 1988. Uhlmann retained rights to the Wheatena brand until shortly after International Home Foods acquired American Home Foods in November 1996 and then bought the brand name from Uhlmann. International Home Foods was in turn acquired by ConAgra in August 2000.[1]

Entrepreneur William Stadtlander bought the brand and the Pennsylvania manufacturing plant on October 31, 2001, under the newly formed Homestat Farm, Ltd. of Dublin, Ohio,[1] which as of 2006 manufactures Wheatena and fellow vintage cereals Maypo and Maltex.

In mid-2006, the state of California sued Homestat under California Proposition 65 (1986), which requires labeling for food containing acrylamide, a potential carcinogen created when starch is baked, roasted, fried or toasted, while Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations do not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatena