Then there were the healthier cereals that continued marketing to adults, like Corn Flakes, whose ads featured the cereal laden with fresh strawberries, or Grape Nuts, which began focusing on its protein content. They stayed attuned to the diet fads of the day, like “diet” cereals for calorie counters, and stuck with the messaging that one bowl could be all you needed. When introduced in 1967, Product 19 advertised it was for “working mothers, otherwise busy mothers and everyone in a hurry,” and provided 100% of your daily vitamin needs. Cereal could also be a snack, like Sugar Crisp claimed, or more than just a meal by itself. Many brands attracted buyers with recipes, hoping their product could move beyond the breakfast bowl, like a Cheerios recipe booklet that said you could crush them up and use them to bread pork chops. Through the 1960s, cereal boxes increasingly focused more on taste, fun, and flavor innovations, not on convincing consumers they need cereal in the first place—that work had already been done. Customers already knew that cereal was what they should be eating for breakfast, so the advertising shifted, focusing on which cereal to buy and what perks it offered. Cereal companies could play up technological advances that allowed for sugar coatings, bright colors, and freeze-dried fruit to be added. All that sugar? It was a selling point: It added energy! Flavor! It was baked right in so you didn’t have to sprinkle it on yourself!

Of course, companies kept churning out every iteration of sugar-bomb cereal, but those were now winked at as “part of this complete breakfast.” You wouldn’t just serve your children Pop Tarts Crunch by itself, but throw in some fruit, orange juice, milk and maybe eggs, and it’s a perfectly fine component to include. The Fannie Farmer breakfast resurfaced.

Cereal’s advertising campaigns still attempt to address these individual issues. If you’re concerned about dirtying a bowl, you can buy disposable, single-serving cereal packs. If you’re worried about sugar content, Lucky Charms advertises its whole grains and vitamins, and Corn Pops says it only has “a touch of sweetness.” Concerned that your healthy cereal will be bland and flavorless? Try Honey Bunches of Oats filled with vanilla yogurt clusters and chocolate bits. Wheaties says you should pair it with chocolate milk, perhaps in hopes that the combination will liven up a bowl of plain grain flakes. It’s supposed to be filling, nutritious, tasty and, most of all, convenient. It’s in crisis mode, back to fighting for space on the shelf, trying to convince you it’s Fannie Farmer’s five courses rolled into one.

Then, The Nutrition and Labeling and Education Act of 1990 passed, ensuring that all products acquired the now-familiar list of “Nutrition Facts”; it became a lot easier to see just what your cereal had to offer. According to NPR, cereal consumption peaked in 1996 and has been on a steady decline ever since. Nicholas Fereday, a food investment analyst, told The New York Times that it’s been “a death by a thousand cuts,” affected by everything from declining birth rates (fewer children, cereal’s biggest consumers) to changing tastes to increased gluten intolerance. About 18% of American’s don’t even eat breakfast, up from 6% in 1977, and for those that do, they’re increasingly turning to the wider variety of options available, from oatmeal to eggs to granola bars to fast food. Harry Balzer, a food researcher, told NPR, “We keep looking for what’s the most convenient way to take care of that 12 minutes that we have to eat in the morning time…What’s the easiest way to do that? And a bowl of cereal—you got to dirty a bowl. You got to dirty a spoon. You got to clean that stuff.”