In the 19th century, masturbation was a public health crisis. At least that's how some Christian
fundamentalists viewed it. Anti-masturbation crusaders blamed self-gratification for a
list of ailments, including blindness, infertility, epilepsy, insanity, and a fondness for spicy
foods. That last one actually came from one anti-masturbation crusader in particular:
an American doctor named John Harvey Kellogg.
Kellogg had a lot of ideas about the relationship between diet and masturbation. He thought
the urge to self-stimulate, or self-pollute, as he called it, was related to eating meat
and seasoned foods. To treat the problem, along with a host of other potential health
issues, he recommended a bland diet consisting of fare like nuts and cereal grains. He even
concocted some recipes that fit his health philosophy. As the superintendent of the Battle
Creek Sanitarium, a trendy wellness retreat in Michigan, he served guests crushed-up biscuits
made from wheat, corn, and oats. He dubbed the concoction “granola.” A breakfast
breakthrough? Debatable. A few years earlier, a different diet guru named James Caleb Jackson
was making a similar snack food called granula. Kellogg had mostly “innovated” the product
by changing the U in granula to an O, which also helped him avoid lawsuits. I, for one,
did not realize this was a viable path to business success. Look for Justin Dodd’s
Yogort, which goes perfect with your granula. Brought to you by the lovely people behind
soop.
Kellogg’s biggest contribution to the food industry should be familiar to anyone who’s
perused a cereal aisle... ever. In collaboration with his brother Will, a bookkeeper at Battle Creek
Sanitarium, John created the breakfast cereal that came to be known as corn flakes by rolling
corn grits into flakes and toasting them in the oven. William took the lead on selling
the product to consumers outside the sanitarium, and he was much less interested in its supposed
solo-sex-stopping powers than his brother. Kellogg’s corn flakes were never advertised
as the edible equivalent of a cold shower, and it’s misleading to state that they were
invented to put an end to onanism. But with John’s entreaties to limit oneself to “the
most simple, pure, and unstimulating diet” as a way of warding off arousal—especially
advocating for a diet with lots of grains and milk—I think it’s fair say the anti-masturbation
movement is a legitimate, if tangential, part of the cereal’s beginnings.
This kind of feels weird now.
Hi, I’m Justin Dodd. Welcome to Food History. From health trends to the evolution of marketing,
we can learn a lot about American culture from the history of breakfast cereal. But
before we dig our spoons in, let's get our terminology straight. Merriam-Webster defines
cereal as starchy, edible grains and the plants that produce them, such as wheat, oat, and
barley. For more on cereal grains and what we make with them, check out our episode on
beer, or our deep dive into the most influential foods in human history.
Cereal is also a general term for processed food made from cereal grains. Hot cereals
like grits and oatmeal have been around for centuries, but for this episode, we’re talking
about ready-to-eat cold cereal—the kind you eat with milk while avoiding eye contact
with the mascot on the box.
Cereal is heavily promoted today, with an advertising-to-sales ratio four to six times
higher than most other food categories. That pattern can be traced back to cereal’s early
history. In the late 19th century, the Battle Creek Sanitarium served a guest named Charles
W. Post who quickly took note of the Kelloggs’ successful operation. Post was a salesman,
and he saw potential for the products being served at the Sanitarium to take over the
breakfast table. In 1897, he developed Grape-Nuts, a crumbled biscuit cereal that, much to the
delight of observational comedians, contains neither grapes nor nuts. *killer Jerry seinfeld
impression* “What’s the deal with self-pollution?” Can you believe my one-man show starring me
playing Jerry Seinfeld playing John Harvey Kellogg didn't get funded? Wha-?
What Post really brought to the breakfast cereal game was marketing savvy. Prior to
the 20th century, advertising was often associated with snake-oil—it had a seedy reputation.
This didn’t deter the salesman. Post printed pamphlets claiming that Grape-Nuts could cure
appendicitis and even that just eight teaspoons of the stuff gave enough strength to cycle
fifty miles. Using flashy ads with specious health claims to sell food was a risky move,
but it paid off. By 1903, Post’s marketing strategy had made him a millionaire.
Post didn’t invent breakfast cereal, but he did make it a competitive industry. Following
the success of Grape-Nuts, William Kellogg emulated Post’s model. He ignored his brother’s
resistance to advertising and launched a campaign encouraging people: "Wink at the grocer, and
see what you get." This sounds less like a marketing campaign and more like creepy advice on
flirting with grocers, but it apparently worked. To sell corn flakes, I mean. I don’t have
any data on hookups in the cereal aisle. Kellogg’s sold 1 million boxes within a year. The success
of Grape-Nuts and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes drew more entrepreneurs to Battle Creek. By
1911 there were 108 brands of corn flakes, with 60 of them coming right from Battle Creek.
With so many cereals competing for customers, brands needed a way to stand out. That’s
where mascots came in. One of the first cereals to use a cartoon character to move merchandise
was a wheat-based cereal called Force. Its mascot—the dapper, top hat-wearing Sunny
Jim—was a hit in magazine and newspaper advertisements. His popularity helped make
mascots standard on cereal boxes.
Not every mascot was as well-received as Sunny Jim. After hitting the jackpot with Grape-Nuts,
Charles Post introduced his own corn flakes to the market called Elijah's Manna. The packaging
showed the prophet Elijah receiving food from a raven, a design choice that didn’t sit
well with some Christians. Britain went so far as to ban all imports of the item. Post
tried defending himself, saying, “Perhaps no one should eat angel food cake, enjoy Adam's
ale, live in St. Paul, nor work for Bethlehem Steel […] one should have his Adam's apple
removed and never again name a child for the good people of the bible.” His argument
didn’t seem to win over many critics, though.
Some cereal companies figured out they didn’t need to create characters from scratch to
sell their products. One of the first programs to feature embedded advertising for cereal
was a radio show called Skippy. In the middle of an episode, the title character would stop
what he was doing to pitch Wheaties to listeners. This was also the first instance of a cereal
brand directly targeting young consumers. The ad was a hit, and soon other beloved characters
were shilling cereal on their radio shows.
Post, for his part, found a less controversial mascot. He had given in and changed the name
of Elijah’s Manna to the inoffensive-sounding Post Toasties and removed the biblical figure
from the box. He eventually collaborated with Walt Disney to feature Mickey Mouse as a Post
mascot. It’s said that Post paid a million dollars for the opportunity. In the 1930s.
During the height of the Great Depression. That’s one valuable rodent. A bevy of similar
licensing deals actually financed Disney’s first feature film, Snow White and the Seven
Dwarves.
That’s just one example of cereal companies workshopping their mascots before getting
them right. Five years after debuting Rice Krispies in 1928, Kellogg’s added a cartoon
gnome to the box named Snap. Crackle and Pop (who, our wonderful fact-checker Austin pointed
out, have no “canonical familial relationship” with Snap) only appeared in print ads, not
joining Snap on the package until 1941. Early promos introduced three more characters to
the extended Rice Krispie-verse: Soggy, Mushy, and Toughy. Unlike the original trio, their
evil alter-egos didn’t stick around.
The battle between crunchiness and sogginess is a running theme in the bible. Sorry, I
read that wrong—in cereal ads. In the 1960s, Quaker Oats developed the character Cap’n
Crunch in response to a report that kids hated soggy cereal. Marketing was such a crucial
part of selling cereal by this point that Quaker had come up with the mascot before
figuring out what Cap’n Crunch would taste like. Cap’n Crunch’s full name, by the
way, is Horatio Magellan Crunch, which will be the name of my next dog.
John Kellogg was adamant about keeping sugar out of corn flakes, so it’s probably for
the best that he wasn’t around to see Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes in 1952. Tony the Tiger has
been the face of the product since its launch, but even more iconic than the character’s
face is his voice. Fun fact: Thurl Ravenscroft, who voiced Tony for more than 50 years, also
sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! That is what we
call range. The guy could’ve just coasted through life on the strength of his incredible
name—Thurl Ravenscroft—but he put in the work.
Some cereal mascots faced a bumpier road. About a decade after rolling out Lucky Charms
in 1964, General Mills quietly replaced Lucky the Leprechaun with Waldo the Wizard in select
markets. They feared that the thieving leprechaun could come off as too abrasive and hoped the
friendly wizard would better appeal to kids. In the end, Waldo was given his walking papers
and Lucky returned to his rightful place as the purveyor of hearts, stars, horseshoes,
clovers and/or blue moons.
By the way, I originally had a line in here about how Lucky Charms is just straight-up
sugar marketed as breakfast, but—while I wouldn’t go thinking of the marshmallow-y
offering as part of a healthy breakfast—it turns out Lucky Charms doesn’t even crack
the top ten of most sugary breakfast cereals, by weight. The “winner,” if you want to
call it that, is contested between Honey Smacks and Golden Crisps, both weighing in at over
50 percent sugar.
When television replaced radio as the primary mode of home entertainment, cereal brands
wasted no time exploiting it. They used the same strategy of in-program marketing, only
now it was Howdy Doody and Roy Rogers doing the selling instead of Skippy. This was also
when cereal mascots were being brought to life in commercials. Unlike radio spots, TV
ads put the actual product in front of consumers’ eyes. That meant cereal companies had a vested
interest in making the medium look as good as possible. Many of them poured money into
early television technology, which helped fund such developments as color pictures.
From then on, brands with colorful mascots—and colorful cereal—had an advantage on the
silver—er, multicolored—screen.
In the 1980s, companies found a new way to use pre-existing properties to sell products.
Suddenly, it seemed that every character from pop culture was plastered on their own box
of cereal. Where debuting an original cereal could cost companies $40 million in marketing
in the first year, launching a cereal based on an existing property with built-in recognition
cost more like $10 to $12 million. Even a Cabbage Patch Kids cereal sold well, initially.
The downside was that buyers were only interested in these products for a year or two before
sales dipped. The one exception was Ralston Purina’s Ghostbusters cereal, which sold
well for an impressive five years straight.
You may have noticed that most cereals I’ve mentioned don’t quite fit John Kellogg’s
vision of a bland, ostensibly healthy breakfast. Added sugar started showing up in ingredients
lists shortly after cereal was first marketed to children, but instead of shifting away
from the health-food label, companies found a way to have their Cookie Crisp and eat it
too. They produced ads claiming that the sugar in cereal gave kids the energy they needed
to kick start their day.
The campaign was effective, and health trends in 20th century America reinforced cereal’s
wholesome reputation. In 1967, Harvard nutritionists Dr. Fredrick Stare and Mark Hegsted published
two studies linking dietary fat and cholesterol to heart disease and downplaying the role
of sugar. This approach to health was echoed by experts in the decades that followed. When
the USDA introduced its food pyramid in 1992, it had protein sources like meat, fish, and
nuts one level from the top with carbs like bread, pasta, and cereal making up the much
larger base.
But the Harvard studies supporting a low-fat diet may have had a hidden agenda. A 2016
study revealed that the research had been initiated and funded by the Sugar Research
Foundation, a trade group trying to boost sugar’s image with health-conscious consumers.
Numerous studies have since emphasized the nutritional value of certain fats and the
risks of excess sugar, and the food pyramid that technically endorsed six to 11 servings
of cereal a day has been abandoned by the government.
A story that began, in some ways, with unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of a bland diet
mutated, somewhere along the way, to unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of sugar-loaded
refined carbohydrates. You might still want to eat cereal for its taste, or nostalgia,
or because a cartoon character told you to. But you should probably take the health claims
for breakfast cereal with a healthy dose of sugar. Salt. Ehh, either way. Thanks for watching.