Kellanova’s plan of snacking on grains could lead to a touchdown.

Kellanova’s plan of snacking on grains could lead to a touchdown.

There is a knowledge gap between athletes who eat diets high in grains and those who don’t.

The growth in professional basketball over the past 15 years may be the eating habit in sports that grain-based food marketers should be pushing. Years ago, Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com wrote about how Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a pregame ritual on the Boston Celtics championship squad in 2007–08.

Since then, the NBA has witnessed a proliferation of the PB&J revolution.

Basketball is considered one of the most physically demanding sports due to its intensity and speed as well as its lengthy season (the NBA consists of 82 games before a postseason that can include up to 26 games). But as Mr. Holmes pointed out, “the NBA is covered in experts, obsessed with peak performance— and yet this league staple snack is still this pillar of grade-school cafeteria lunches.”

The NBA locker rooms have continued to serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the highest paid professional athletes in the world before to games in recent years. According to a Michelle Muller story from last month, Russell Westbrook, Dwight Howard, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant are among the current PB&J supporters.

While millers and bakers direct much of their combined funds toward supporting scientific research, it is nevertheless important to tell the tale of how the humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich came to be revered as a hallowed NBA ritual.

Kellanova’s stars made of flour

At first glance, it could appear that Kellogg Co.’s division puts its rapidly expanding snack business ahead of the company’s historic grain-based food division. Not so quickly.

Yes, the $2 billion Pringles brand, which Kellogg purchased in 2012, might be the main focus of the potential Kellanova venture. Nonetheless, management’s growth ambitions for its snack sector heavily emphasize wheat-based items, with an emphasis on a single brand that has ties to some of the first commercial baking enterprises.

The current chairman, president, and CEO of Kellogg Co. as well as the future chairman and CEO of Kellanova, Steven A. Cahillane, stated that Cheez-It is the most popular cracker brand in the US and has successfully expanded into Canada, Brazil, and most recently, Mexico on August 9, during Kellogg’s investor day. “There’s definitely room to grow elsewhere.”

Cheez-It is by no means a new product, despite the fact that it has grown to be a $1.3 billion brand over the previous five years thanks to yearly sales growth that has compounded above 10%. The Loose-Wiles Biscuit Co. was founded in 1902 and was once known as the Sunshine Biscuit Co. for a considerable amount of time. Green & Green introduced the Cheez-It brand in 1921, and Loose-Wiles bought it in 1932. The product was created by Green & Green as a baked cracker take on the classic dish rarebit, which is toast topped with melted cheddar beer cheese. American Tobacco Co. purchased Sunshine in 1966, and Keebler purchased it thirty years later.

At Kellogg, crackers are the largest snack product category, along with Club, Cheez-It, and other brands. at the core of world expansion ambitions for Kellanova, Cheez-It will be joined by brands based on wheat, such as Eggo and Pop Tarts, forming a portfolio full of promising international names.

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