John Kellogg was born on Feb. 26, 1852. He was a Seventh-Day Adventist. They believed the Second Coming was near, so education was a waste of time. He only had a few years of formal schooling, but he read a lot and ended up going to medical school and became a doctor. He had lots of radical beliefs. He opened the Battle Creek Sanitarium to promote wellness. He promoted what he called “biological living” which involved exercise, bathing (hydrotherapy), temperance, and a diet of less meat and more grains. He believed that indigestion (“dyspepsia”) caused most health problems. This was due to the heavy meat diet which started with enormous breakfasts that had courses we would consider dinner today. One needed to eat simpler foods. In 1877, he was looking to invent a “softer” breakfast alternative. His ingredients of wheat, oat, and corn was mixed into a dough with nuts that crumbled into what he called “granula”. Since James Caleb Jackson had already invented the first cereal, which he called Granula, Kellogg changed his name to Granola. He opened his Sanitas Food Company in 1890 to make cereal. In 1894, his wife Ella suggested rolling the dough into sheets. John had a dream about how to make the rollers. One day he left the rolled dough out overnight and when he rolled it, it yielded flakes. He called it “granose”, but by 1898 it was being sold as “Sanitas Toasted Corn Flakes”. John was thrilled with his invention because it would help wean Americans from meats and spicy foods. Those types of foods stimulated the sexual organs and led to unhealthy (and dangerous) activities like masturbation. That’s right, Corn Flakes was originally an anaphrodisiac (which means it was the opposite of eating oysters). Sylvester Graham had already invented his crackers for the same reason. John had competition from his own brother William. It was William who founded Kellogg’s. He wanted to add sugar to the ingredients to make the flakes tastier. John was totally against it because he believed bland was better in all foods and he was not interested in making a lot of money. His brother became the King of Cereals. He introduced Bran Flakes in 1915 and Rice Krispies in 1927. Another competitor was C.W. Post with his grape nuts. By the way, Kellogg is believed by some historians to be the inventor of peanut butter (he believed nuts were the future’s key food).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg#Breakfast_cereals
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/10/23/1331075/-The-Strange-History-of-Corn-Flakes
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