Chances are, it’s never struck you as particularly odd that there’s an entire supermarket aisle devoted to nothing but cereal. For most of us, cereal is the ultimate convenient breakfast, and even the most sugary of varieties claim to offer nutritional benefits and a balanced start to your day. Every brand is trying to convince you it’s something different, something better, and there’s probably at least one you’re buying into. The “kids only” sugar bombs boast whole grains, and Special K comes studded with chocolate bits and sweet yogurt clusters.
But it wasn’t always that way. Cereal’s position as America’s default breakfast food is a remarkable feat, not of flavor or culture, but of marketing and packaging design. It’s a century-long history of advertising, a brilliant campaign that capitalized on the intersection of industrialization, health-consciousness, and changing class attitudes that completely upended the way Americans ate. And it all began at a moment when products were primed to transcend regional tastes through the rise of mass-marketing.
