Breakfast cereal as a thing can be attributed to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg who ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, an acclaimed Seventh-Day Adventist health and wellness resort in Michigan. “If you were upper-middle class and above, it was a fashionable place to go get treated for a variety of maladies, or just to go for your general health,” says Lohman. Kellogg, a staunch vegetarian who was especially interested in bowel movements, advocated eating everything from seaweed to yogurt to nuts and grains—a radical turn from America’s meat-centric diet. Of course, most of us know the Kellogg name from Corn Flakes, which, the story goes, were first invented at “The San” after some dough turned stale and they tried to bake it anyway.
That same year, Dr. Kellogg and his brother Will began experimenting with various ready-to-eat grain flakes, and packaging them for sale. A box of Granose Flakes from 1898 simply stated “ENRICH THE BLOOD,” a reference to the nutritional benefits the Kelloggs attributed to a vegetarian, grain-filled diet. This message was central to early cereal packaging, when brands were fighting not just for shelf space, but to convince the average American to do away with that traditional, meat-laden six-course breakfast.
