Uncle Ben's
Uncle Ben’s is a former food manufacturer and now a brand of Mars Incorporated . Uncle Ben's originally specialized in rice . Today sauces and ready meals are also sold under the brand .
history
In the 1910s, the German-British chemist Erich Huzenlaub (1888–1964) developed a process for parboiling . In 1943, the businessman Gordon Harwell developed parboiling, a method for pretreating rice in which vitamins and minerals accumulate inside the grain of rice. This makes the rice nutritionally more valuable than non-pretreated white rice. At the same time, parboiling reduces the tendency of the cooked rice to stick.
In the same year in Houston at Converted Rice Inc., the predecessor of Uncle Ben's Inc., this process was used for the first time. In the first few years, the company only took care of the army. In the late 1940s, the first director of Converted Rice Inc., Gordon Harwell, and Forrest E. Mars , founder of Mars Incorporated, decided to offer rice to all American consumers. They used the name Uncle Ben’s , which Harwell had been using since the 1930s. In 1952, six years after its introduction, the brand led the world market. The brand soon expanded to Europe, with the market launch in Germany in 1960 and France in 1966 . The head of an elderly African American man was chosen as the marketing symbol. Photography adorns the brand to this day.
As part of the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA, the company announced that it wanted to replace the Uncle Ben's logo.
Products
Uncle Ben's originally specialized in rice. In the 1980s, the rice was filled in boil-in bags. Sauces have also been offered since the 1990s. So-called “express rice” has existed since 2001, and can be heated up in the microwave within two minutes and ready to eat. For several years now, Uncle Ben's has also been offering ready-made meals.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tradition and History ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Mars Germany history
- ↑ "Uncle Ben's" and "Aunt Jemima" have had their day. In: t-online.de . Ströer Digital Publishing GmbH , June 18, 2020, accessed on June 20, 2020 .
- ↑ Jörg Thomann: Racism Debate: The Late Liberation of Uncle Ben FAZ, June 21, 2020, accessed on June 30, 2020
