When you sit down to big bowl of Cheerios, be sure to send up a silent ‘thank you’ to Lester Borchardt. Borchardt died yesteday at age 99, after a long career with General Mills.
Borchardt revolutionized the breakfast cereal industry. He had a big hand in developing the technologies that allow cereal companies — in his case, General Mills — to turn grain into cereals such as Cheerios and Kix, and he also played a key role in coming up with the process used to fortify milk with vitamin D.
He made his first mark in the corporate world in 1933. General Mills was looking for a way to fortify milk with vitamin D. General Mills executives had heard about research being conducted in Chicago on a different fortification process. This process used an electrical charge to convert ergosterol — part of the membrane of fungal cells found in milk — into vitamin D.
Borchardt turned the new fortification method from a “laboratory curiosity” to a commercially viable process. Borchardt also invented a device that could measure the moisture content of kernels of wheat, a new way of closing cereal bags and a process for treating materials under a high vacuum.