Friday 15 June 2012

Which organisation invented Quaker Oats?

Sorry guys, it's not the Quakers.
   Established in Pennsylvania in 1981,  the Quaker Oats Company was named after the Quakers due to their trustworthy reputation and large numbers in the region.
   Be that as it may, the brand, now apart of PepsiCo corporation has no affiliation whatsoever with the original Quakers (or any religious society for that matter!) and unlike brands like Fry's and Cadbury's, Quaker Oats was neither founded by Quakers, nor established on their principles of levity.

   In the 1950's scientists from Quaker Oats, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University administrated experiments, trying to fathom movement of the nutrients from the cereals through the body.
   They had asked parents of educationally delayed children of the Walter E. Fernald State School (previously called the Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children) to allow their children to append to their 'special science club'. As members of the club, the children were set on a diet high in nutrients and taken to baseball games.
   However, what was left cryptic was that what these children were being fed was intertwined with radioactive calcium and iron so as to trace the path of he nutrients within the body. The parents sued the Quaker Oats company who agreed to pay out $1.85 million to more than 100 victims in 1997.
   The character on the front of the box is sometimes said to be the founder of Pennsylvania and influential Quaker, William Penn, Yet the Quaker Oats company has unequivocally denied this to be true
   It is said that The Quakers got their nickname following the trial for blasphemy in 1650 of George Fox, the founder of the movement, when he suggested that the judge 'tremble at the word of the Lord'. However a more probable source may be from their reputation for 'trembling' during religious exaltation.

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