Raisin bran is a breakfast cereal manufactured by several companies under a variety of brand

Brand

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...

 names, including Kellogg's

Kellogg Company

Kellogg Company , is a producer of cereal and convenience foods, including cookies, crackers, toaster pastries, cereal bars, fruit-flavored snacks, frozen waffles, and vegetarian foods...

 Raisin Bran; General Mills

General Mills

General Mills, Inc. is an American Fortune 500 corporation, primarily concerned with food products, which is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The company markets many well-known brands, such as Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Totinos, Jeno's, Pillsbury, Green...

' Total Raisin Bran, a variant by General Mills called Raisin Nut Bran; and Ralcorp

Ralcorp

Ralcorp Holdings is a manufacturer of various food products, including breakfast cereal, cookies, crackers, chocolate, snack foods, mayonnaise, pasta and peanut butter. The company is based in St. Louis, Missouri. The majority of the items Ralcorp makes are private label, store brand products. It...

's Post Raisin Bran

Post Cereals

Post Foods, LLC, also known as Post Cereals is a food company that was founded by C.W. Post in 1895 with the first Postum, a "cereal beverage," developed by Post in Battle Creek, Michigan. The first cereal, Grape-Nuts, was developed in 1897. Post has its headquarters in the Bank of America Plaza...

.

History

Skinner's Raisin Bran was the first brand on the market, introduced in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1926 by U.S. Mills

U.S. Mills

U.S. Mills is a packaged food products company specializing in natural, organic, and specialty cereals, cookies, and crackers. Their products are sold through supermarkets, wholesale grocers, and natural food distributors nationwide. Their brands include Uncle Sam Cereal, Erewhon, New Morning,...

, best known for the similar Uncle Sam Cereal

Uncle Sam Cereal

Uncle Sam Cereal is a ready-to eat breakfast cereal, first introduced in 1908 by U.S. Mills of Omaha, Nebraska. The company relocated to Needham, Massachusetts sometime after the 1970s. Attune Foods out of San Francisco acquired Uncle Sam Cereal in 2009....

. The name "Raisin Bran" was at one time trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

ed. In 1944, the District Court for Nebraska found:

The name "Raisin-BRAN" could not be appropriated as a trade-mark, because: "A name which is merely descriptive of the ingredients, qualities or characteristics of an article of trade cannot be appropriated as a trademark and the exclusive use of it afforded legal protection. The use of a similar name by another to truthfully describe his own product does not constitute a legal or moral wrong, even if its effect be to cause the public to mistake the origin or ownership of the product

Raisin bran has high dietary fiber

Dietary fiber

Dietary fiber, dietary fibre, or sometimes roughage is the indigestible portion of plant foods having two main components:* soluble fiber that is readily fermented in the colon into gases and physiologically active byproducts, and* insoluble fiber that is metabolically inert, absorbing water as it...

 content, but criticized for containing too much sugar

Sugar

Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...

. Raisins naturally contain high levels of fructose

Fructose

Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a simple monosaccharide found in many plants. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galactose, that are absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion. Fructose was discovered by French chemist Augustin-Pierre Dubrunfaut in 1847...

. Many manufacturers add sugar to the raisins; as of January 7, 2010, Kellogg's adds high-fructose corn syrup to its Raisin Bran cereal in the United States.

Kellogg's Raisin Bran is now also produced in Mexico for sale in the United States.

External links

• Sultana Bran
• All-Bran Sultana Bran
• A quantitative analysis of Kellogg's Raisin Bran (Science Creative Quarterly)