Greenwich food scientist behind Alpha-Bits turns 100

His story started in Brooklyn, N.Y., 100 years back, as the son of immigrants from the province of Calabria in southern Italy. “My mother was a great cook, and my father was a good eater,” Clausi recalled, and like lots of Italian households, there were being generally superior aromas coming from the kitchen.

The Greenwich centenarian formulated a really like of very good pasta from his mom, who went by the Americanized name of Jenny, especially due to the fact his father, also named Al, insisted that it was to be served at the begin of each and every evening meal — “you had to have a plate of pasta just before you had the major food.” Clausi can recall his mom drying homemade pasta, in a lot of styles and measurements, on the mattress sheets of their household in the Bensonhurst segment of Brooklyn.

At Brooklyn Faculty, Clausi examined premedicine and chemistry, intending to turn out to be a doctor. Right after graduating, he served as a petty officer in the U.S. Navy for the duration of Globe War II and was aboard a destroyer in the Pacific headed for the prepared invasion of Japan right before the conflict ended in August 1945.

While ready to get into med university, his father confirmed him a categorised advertisement in a magazine from Common Foods looking for junior chemists. Clausi questioned at the time, “Why does a food items enterprise want a chemist?” He soon identified out.

He went to work at Basic Food items when a revolution in food items science was having area, as new programs of chemistry, science and refrigeration in the globe of nourishment had been remaking the American kitchen area. Clausi was at some point approved into healthcare college — Johns Hopkins and New York Clinical College. But he identified the science of food stuff was in which he wished to generate his residing and make his mark — having on “the problem and pleasurable of creating new solutions for the marketplace.”

The initially significant issue Clausi was assigned was the pudding challenge — producing a dessert that young ones and people liked, but a person that took hrs of cooking and stirring, followed by a extended amazing-down. Wanting to craft an “instant” pudding product, Clausi ultimately understood that a starch-based item was not the way to go, that a milk-based gel was the remedy. And, voila, Jell-O Instant Pudding became a enormous strike.

Clausi was then identified as to do the job in Put up Cereals, the cereal division of Typical Food items, which lagged much guiding Kellogg’s. Cereals back again in the 1950s generally arrived in flakes or modest grains, with Cheerios and their traditional circular type the only brand name to occur in a exceptional form. Clausi remembered the eye-catching very little styles his mom made use of when she manufactured their spouse and children meals in Bensonhurst and questioned if an alphabet-primarily based cereal could be created.

“It all starts off with an concept,” he stated, “It then will get translated, technically, into a solution. My concept was, getting eaten all types of pasta, why are not cereals like pasta? All different designs, distinct flavors. Folks would appreciate that for breakfast. And then it was a make a difference of placing the items alongside one another.”

Clausi worked intently with an engineer to produce the equipment for extruding small letters, or funny shapes, and Alpha-Bits, and Honeycomb cereal had been born, excellent for swirling in a bowl of chilly milk.

Later, Clausi went into the govt ranks at Normal Food items, as main research officer, and his teams of meals experts later on designed Tang, Great Whip, Stove Top Stuffing, Shake ‘n Bake, and for canine, Gaines-Burgers. The foods-market executive acquired 13 patents in the U.S. for his inventions.

He was also instrumental, with Normal Food items, in founding the World Food stuff Prize in 1986, an award introduced to those who progress of excellent and availability of foodstuff all over the planet, a variety of Nobel prize in the food stuff, supply and financial improvement industry. Its goal is to do away with meals scarcity and insecurity — a condition that Clausi can remember from his possess lean several years as a little one in Brooklyn in the course of the Depression period.

Just after retiring in 1987, Clausi has stayed energetic with a large spouse and children and plenty of grandkids to glimpse immediately after, and he enjoys painting.

His wife of 62 a long time, Janet Clausi, who also labored at Common Foods, reported her husband experienced a knack for making existence interesting for himself and many others all over him. “He created friends all over the planet, I’ll explain to you that, and he’s a fairly a storyteller. We have experienced a whole lot of exciting with each other, and we have a excellent household,” she claimed.

“He constantly retains us laughing,” explained a daughter, Alison Garbie, one particular of four siblings, who traveled from Australia to consider portion in the birthday celebration in Greenwich.

Wanting back on his very long lifestyle and career, Clausi, who nevertheless enjoys pasta and plenty of fruit and greens, mentioned he noticed himself as a creator as considerably as a chemist or government.

“I’ve generally had a creative bent. It’s worthwhile to see an plan come to be a reality, like you produced anything,” he said. Requested to explain himself at the age of 100, Clausi pondered a few seconds ahead of answering. “An interesting individual, creative,” he stated, “Maybe built the world a far better position.”