Food For Thought: The Curse of Cold Cereal

Hi Ho Silver

A KD reader brought up an interesting topic about everyday breakfast in the US, which is not usually  waffles and pancakes; those are rather treats to be had on the weekend. Far more common is the overwhelming selection of dried cereals that have to be added to cold milk – a uniquely American way to start one’s day. For my brothers, it was definitely Rice Crispies with the well marketed Snap Crackle Pop. For my father, it was Shredded Wheat, which he broke into bits before pouring on the milk. (This was long before Nabisco did it for him with SpoonSize mini-wheats.).

I actually hated the combination of dried cereal and cold milk but made myself eat Cheerios because I was in love with the Lone Ranger. I longed to become a member of his exclusive fan club, which entitled one to a black mask and a silver bullet, along with an enticingly designed membership card. I remember making myself choke down the stuff just to get the number of box tops  necessary to be sent off to the clever marketing department of General Mills. I think I swore off cold cereal when I received the really shabby membership tokens in the mail, but that may be politically wishful thinking.

Religion & Medicine

 So, cereal instead of seasonal fruit, cold cuts with cheese, and whole meal breads as is the custom in northern European countries, or the cornetto with cappuccino in Italy (actually Italians eat an astonishing variety of breakfast cookies in the AM). Or the croissant with café  au lait in France. Or steamed rice with miso soup and grilled fish in Japan. 

Matthew Kantor in the Guardian, who himself had unquestioningly eaten cold cereal with milk during his childhood, wrote a short but well  researched article on this American phenomenon, which often covers at least one full aisle in an any grocery store in the US:

Dr. James Caleb Jackson, who ran a sanatorium in upstate New York, had invented what he called Granula: a recipe made from water and dried graham flour broken into pieces. The stuff was so hard that it had to be mixed with milk to be edible – and thus breakfast cereal was born.

Dr. Jackson theorized that the digestive system was key to most major health problems – and sanitariums were clinics that treated patients with long-term illnesses and afflictions They were usually built in the countryside, where the air was healthier and certainly the scenery was nicer if you were headed for a long convalescence. They were most often privately owned. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, for example, was the Medical Director for the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a well established one in Michigan owned and operated by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. 

Long before Battle Creek became known as the home of Corn Flakes, it was known as “the Vatican of the Seventh Day Adventists.” Kellogg was for a long time a practicing member of this Protestant offshoot, which forbade alcohol and smoking and advocated a mostly vegetarian diet. And in this context, he theorized about disease and promulgated foods that would heal the body and the mind, guiding both to a higher level of purity and health. 

 Whether or not Kellogg “stole” the idea behind Jackson’s mixture of  dried graham flour shards and milk remains something of a mystery. But the idea behind creating such a combination lay in the belief shared by both that a bland diet helped calm the nerves and relieve the indigestion caused by fried foods and a preponderance of meat in the American diet. These were central tenets of the religious philosophy behind the sanitarium. Oddly enough, this prescription was also thought to curb sexual arousal and masturbation. 

Together with his wife, Ellen Eaton Kellogg, and his brother Will, John Kellogg refined the idea of breaking down the grain and rolling it out into thin sheets, which would then be broken into easily digestible bits. After accidentally allowing a batch of dough to ferment overnight, they found that when it was rolled out, the sheeted dough broke off into delicate flakes. These were first marketed as “Granola” and then ““Granose” due to a lawsuit imposed by Jackson. Nevertheless, it became wildly popular, and the Kelloggs’ experiments with rice and corn flours gave birth to corn flakes, as well as to a feud between the two brothers.  Will wanted to add sugar to the toasted flaked cereals, and John did not. Will successfully denied his brother John the use of the Kellogg name to market his cereals. It was Will’s company that became the household name in cold cereals, in all their unwholesome sugary goodness.

An indigent patient at the Seventh Day Adventist Sanitarium, C.W. Post, became a cold cereal believer after a successful treatment there, and later in another sanitarium run by Christian Scientists. He worked in the kitchens to help pay for his stay and learned the flaking process for fermented doughs. Post not only went into direct competition with the Kellogg cereal company but eventually engineered the exclusive rights to reproduce the dough rollers necessary for creating the cereal flakes. 

He developed and marketed Postum, a  grain-based coffee substitute (a part of these quasi-religious dietary beliefs) and Grape-Nuts, which had neither grapes nor nuts but rather a combination of yeast, wheat and barley. I thought it was particularly heinous when I was forced to eat it at a well intentioned relative’s home. But C.W. Post was the first to broadly market cold cereal in ways that would become the standard after WWII. For starters, he offered a coupon to purchasers of Grape Nuts.  When Will added sugar to his cornflakes in order to make it more appealing to consumers, this sweet addition appealed big time. Post followed suit with his own versions of the Kellogg Cereals and, like Will Kellogg, made a massive fortune from the ever-increasing market for sugar-enhanced cold cereals with milk. 

Cereal Meal Plan

While these boxed cereals started to have mascots before World War II, it was the post-war introduction of television that brought the cereal boom to the youngster market. With the novelty of cartoons at their disposal, the marketing departments of both Kellogg and Post empires created cartoon characters as mascots for their cereals and sponsored morning cartoon programs. Children were mesmerized, and parents took advantage of a new way to harmlessly occupy their children at home. By then, sugar was added to almost all cereals along with bright colors, and prizes for eating more cereal became the norm. 

But as with so many food fads in the US, the role of cold cereal in American lives is now declining. There is an increase in streaming programs for children that do not have ads, and a growing awareness of the pretty scary dyes contained in many cereals. Parents are once again turning to  more healthy options -granola, yogurt with fruit fillings, and even oatmeal porridge have made a comeback. Cereal manufacturers are feeling the heat. With profits dwindling, the current CEO of  Kellogg was recently caught on CNN encouraging cash-strapped watchers to “eat cereal for dinner.” That’s a dinner invitation I’ll decline.