GREENWICH — In his lighter moments, Al Clausi likes to think of himself as the Leonardo da Vinci of breakfast food.
Millions of kids around the world can sample his artistry at the breakfast table, the place where Clausi, a pioneering food scientist from Greenwich, made childhood more palatable and fun for generations. His masterpieces in the food industry include his invention of Jell-O Instant Pudding, Alpha-Bits and Honeycomb cereal. The honey-flavored cereal is one Clausi enjoys eating to this day, decades after he invented it, with some creative input from his pasta-making Italian mother.
This past weekend, as dozens of family members, friends and well-wishers came to honor him on his 100th birthday, Clausi looked back on his nearly 50-year career in food science and development with satisfaction and pride.
“Every day was enjoyable, I can honestly say that,” he said, as family members loaded up ice bags and food bowls for a big party Saturday at the family home along the banks of the Mianus River.
His story began in Brooklyn, N.Y., 100 years ago, as the son of immigrants from the province of Calabria in southern Italy. “My mother was a good cook, and my father was a good eater,” Clausi recalled, and like many Italian households, there were always good aromas coming from the kitchen.
The Greenwich centenarian developed a love of good pasta from his mother, who went by the Americanized name of Jenny, especially since his father, also named Al, insisted that it was to be served at the start of every dinner — “you had to have a plate of pasta before you had the main meal.” Clausi can recall his mother drying homemade pasta, in many shapes and sizes, on the bed sheets of their home in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.
At Brooklyn College, Clausi studied premedicine and chemistry, intending to become a doctor. After graduating, he served as a petty officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was aboard a destroyer in the Pacific headed for the planned invasion of Japan before the conflict ended in August 1945.
While waiting to get into med school, his father showed him a classified advertisement in a magazine from General Foods seeking junior chemists. Clausi wondered at the time, “Why does a food company want a chemist?” He soon found out.
He went to work at General Foods when a revolution in food science was taking place, as new applications of chemistry, science and refrigeration in the world of nutrition were remaking the American kitchen. Clausi was eventually accepted into medical school — Johns Hopkins and New York Medical College. But he found the science of food was where he wanted to earn his living and make his mark — taking on “the challenge and fun of developing new products for the marketplace.”
The first big problem Clausi was assigned was the pudding problem — making a dessert that kids and families loved, but one that took hours of cooking and stirring, followed by a long cool-down. Looking to craft an “instant” pudding product, Clausi eventually realized that a starch-based product was not the way to go, that a milk-based gel was the solution. And, voila, Jell-O Instant Pudding became a huge hit.
Clausi was then called to work in Post Cereals, the cereal division of General Foods, which lagged far behind Kellogg’s. Cereals back in the 1950s mainly came in flakes or small grains, with Cheerios and their classic circular form the only brand to come in a unique shape. Clausi remembered the eye-catching little shapes his mother used when she made their family meals in Bensonhurst and wondered if an alphabet-based cereal could be developed.
“It all starts with an idea,” he said, “It then gets translated, technically, into a product. My idea was, having eaten all kinds of pasta, why aren’t cereals like pasta? All different shapes, different flavors. People would love that for breakfast. And then it was a matter of putting the pieces together.”
Clausi worked closely with an engineer to create the machines for extruding little letters, or funny shapes, and Alpha-Bits, and Honeycomb cereal were born, perfect for swirling in a bowl of cold milk.
Later, Clausi went into the executive ranks at General Foods, as chief research officer, and his teams of food technicians later developed Tang, Cool Whip, Stove Top Stuffing, Shake ‘n Bake, and for dogs, Gaines-Burgers. The food-industry executive received 13 patents in the U.S. for his inventions.
He was also instrumental, with General Foods, in founding the World Food Prize in 1986, an award presented to those who advance of quality and availability of food around the world, a kind of Nobel prize in the food, supply and economic development field. Its goal is to eliminate food scarcity and insecurity — a condition that Clausi can recall from his own lean years as a child in Brooklyn during the Depression era.
After retiring in 1987, Clausi has stayed active with a large family and plenty of grandkids to look after, and he enjoys painting.
His wife of 62 years, Janet Clausi, who also worked at General Foods, said her husband had a knack for making life interesting for himself and others around him. “He made friends all over the world, I’ll tell you that, and he’s a quite a storyteller. We’ve had a lot of fun together, and we have a great family,” she said.
“He always keeps us laughing,” said a daughter, Alison Garbie, one of four siblings, who traveled from Australia to take part in the birthday celebration in Greenwich.
Looking back on his long life and career, Clausi, who still loves pasta and plenty of fruit and vegetables, said he saw himself as a creator as much as a chemist or executive.
“I’ve always had a creative bent. It’s rewarding to see an idea become a reality, like you created something,” he said. Asked to describe himself at the age of 100, Clausi pondered a few seconds before answering. “An interesting person, creative,” he said, “Maybe made the world a better place.”
https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/Greenwich-food-scientist-behind-Alpha-Bits-turns-17221244.php
