Today on our show we’ll learn how that humble bowl of morning goodness, breakfast cereal, came to be a staple even though it began with a lawsuit. How did a food that originated as part of a spa cure knock beefsteak and boiled chicken from the morning menu for Americans in cities, on farms, and in small towns? Cereal as we know it now didn’t originate as something delicious and quick to prepare. Instead, it was part of a routine thought to keep people from masturbating. The industrial revolution created the need for people to consume something before leaving for work in the morning. Now there were strict schedules and workers needed something to give them energy for the day. Once breakfast became an American institution it became much like the other meals people were consuming, a heavy affair laden with eggs and flapjacks, and meat. American digestive systems suffered and everyone needed something lighter. What they got was cereal. Why is cereal so tied in to dietary reform and the social gospel? Breakfast cereal, an American invention, began life as an aid to digestion with religious overtones (kind of), became a sugary morning standby and today can be found in rows of boxes ranging from health food and sugar bombs. Historians mostly agree breakfast became a daily, first-thing-in-the-morning way to start the day once workers moved to cities and had set schedules. By the Industrial Revolution, there was already a tradition of foods—like bread, cheese, ale, porridges, or leftovers—being cooked or eaten in the morning. Before cereal, in the mid-1800s America, people ate eggs, pancakes, and pastries for breakfast. Americans loved their meat, though, adding beefsteak, oysters, and boiled chicken to the menu. This was not a recipe for good digestive health and Americans chronically complained of indigestion; named dyspepsia by nutritionists and reformers of the time. This dyspeptic condition filled pages of magazines and columns of newspapers; much like today’s worries about obesity. America needed a simpler, lighter breakfast. Cereal to the rescue! In 1863, Dr. James Caleb Jackson, a religiously conservative vegetarian who ran a medical sanitarium in western New York, created a breakfast cereal from graham flour. Jackson believed, as many at the time did, sickness was based in the digestive system. Once a professional abolitionist who made his living speaking and writing against slavery, Jackson turned to health reform after his own health broke down and he had a vision: He could cure people without using medicine. This career change, from abolitionism to holistic medicine, was not as far as it might seem today. Water curists thought bad health was tied up in immorality and poor diet and abolitionists argued for vegetarianism, which they believed represented a good diet. An adamant believer in hydropathy, he took over a sanitorium in Dansville, NY, completed the building and renamed it “Our Home on the Hillside.” Our Home became a place where patients came to rehabilitate and relax after nervous breakdowns—and became one of the largest spas in the world hosting notables of the time including: the feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer, Frederick Douglass, who delivered lectures; and Clara Barton—who was so taken with Our Home she stayed and founded the Red Cross in Dansville. He encouraged a diet heavy in fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed grains to supplement the hydrotherapy offered. Jackson also began experimenting with cold cereal as a cure for illness. This early cereal was created from a dough of Graham (like graham cracker) flour rolled into sheets and baked. These brittle, dried sheets were broken into pieces, baked again, and broken into smaller pieces. The resulting dense, chewy grains were not an immediate success. They actually had to be soaked overnight in milk before serving or else they were tooth-breakingly inedible. Jackson named his creation “granula.” Ellen G. White, the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists, was a patient at Our Home On The Hill, and breakfasted on Granula while there. She also happened to be the one who sponsored another “pure food” advocate, John Harvey Kellogg’s medical school education. It’s not a coincidence that Kellogg developed a breakfast cereal that he named Granula. He modified the ingredients, substituting oats for graham flour clusters and used a rolling process to flake the grain so it was more chewable. Kellogg became superintendent at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and on his menus, he listed “granula.” However, by 1877, he had created a cereal of his own, which improved upon Jackson’s by adding a note of sweetness and more grains. Dr. Kellogg took Jackson’s cereal invention and name, although when Jackson sued him, Kellogg renamed his product Granola. A one letter change. Both Jackson and Kellogg were part of a 19th century health revolution that changed how Americans ate, but Jackson was the forerunner. Kellogg’s main distinction was that he changed the “u” to an “o”. After Kellogg stole the idea of cereal, all Jackson could do was sue to keep him from using the actual name Granula. However, scholars haven’t found enough evidence to back this story, and say Kellogg began selling his cereal as “granola” simply to avoid any legal conflict. The most successful food trends combine science and morality, and the invention of cereal was no exception. Kellogg termed his lifestyle of exercise, baths, and bland foods—”biologic living.” He considered the modern diet unnatural and too diverse. “To eat biologically,” he wrote, “is simply to eat scientifically, to eat normally.” But Dr. Kellogg believed eating biologically solved more than dyspepsia and indigestion. He believed the meat-centric diets of Americans led them to sin. "Highly seasoned [meats], stimulating sauces...and dainty tidbits in endless variety,” wrote Kellogg, a vegetarian, “irritate [the] nerves and…react upon the sexual organs.” Kellogg was referring to masturbation, a shameful act—in his mind—linked to bad health, and over-stimulating diets. Eating cereal, he insisted, would keep Americans from masturbating and desiring sex. "How many mothers, while teaching their children the principles of virtue in the nursery,” he wrote, “unwittingly stimulate their passions at the dinner table..." During lectures, Kellogg shared how people could make their own cereal at home. "You may say I am destroying the health food business here by giving these recipes,” he said, “But I am not after the business; I am after the reform." Why, then, did Kellogg become a household name, if Jackson created cereal first? The answer is straightforward: Jackson and his family recognized, celebrated, and monetized other innovations from Our Home, but it took them more than a decade after Granula’s invention to start advertising it for sale. In the meantime Kellong and his young brother (a marketing whiz) Will Keith Kellogg, figured out how to make a flaked cereal they called Corn Flakes. The younger Kellogg added sugar and mass-marketed them, including the first in-box prize. "The first year the product was available more than 50 tons were manufactured and sold. By 1903, there were 100 cereal companies in Kellogg’s town of Battle Creek. Cereal was a full-on craze—the solution to the nation’s dyspepsia. And since it didn’t need to be cooked, it was also a convenience food. When John Harvey, fearing a marketing campaign would damage his reputation as a doctor, wouldn’t “go big” with advertisements and more—Will bought him out and, in 1906, packaged the corn and wheat flakes for sale. Kellogg's became the first cereal company to offer cereal premiums. Grocers were provided with copies of "The Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Book" to be given to consumers who purchased 2 boxes of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The company spent, for example, a third of its initial working capital on an ad in Ladies Home Journal. From its start as a cure for dyspepsia, cereal quickly transformed into a popular, convenient morning staple and Kellogg’s grew into a global brand with over 13.5 billion in sales.