John Harvey Kellogg is one name you might know; he ran the Battle Creek sanitarium in Michigan.
And those bland foods were the original source of breakfast cereals as we know them today.
Granola, originally marketed asgranula, from James Caleb Jackson.
Corn flakes, from the Kelloggs, which werereportedlyinvented when a batch of the above went bad.
John Harveys brother, Will Kellogg, founded a company to mass produce the flakes.
(Fun fact: it was Kellogg whochanged the spellingof granula to granola, after Jackson sued.)
Im afraid to google any more cereal brands now, to be honest.
Sugar was added to cereals almost immediately
Who wants a bland breakfast cereal?
Almost nobody, it turns out.
Graham flour products wereoriginally unsweetenednothing like the cookie-like graham crackers we have today.
According tothis timeline from the New York Times, it was around the 1950’s that sugary cerealsreallytook off.
Corn Flakes werent sweet enough; we also needed Frosted Flakes.
In the 1970’s, the escalation continued.
Popular childrens cereals were packed with sugar, cocoa, and multiple hues of food coloring.
(You could still, of course, buy Grape Nuts from the shelf right above them.)
Granolacame back onto this scene in the 1970sas part of a backlash against the sugared-up commercial cereals.
Cereals with added vitamins trumpeted these on the label.
(The history of fortifying cereals with vitaminsis a long one.
What makes a healthy cereal today?
This brings us approximately back to the present.
So are Corn Flakes and their ilk healthy?
Theyre notbad,though: Some have fiber, and most have added vitamins and minerals.
I think the more important question is if we have any reason toexpectcereals to be healthy.
