The Beginning of PG Breakfast Cereals

A history essay on Victorian sexuality threw this scrumptious flake of trivia my way:

The Kellog brothers provide an odd example of the indirect consequences of the attention paid to masturbation in the United States. John and Will Kellogg, basically men of piety and morals, set out to design diets that would avoid excitation. The result was cornflakes- and fortune.

(Stenger & Neck, p. 108, Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror)

Doing some googlework however gave me a few other more socially acceptable explanations for their geniuses,

i.e. they were radical vegans

Kellogg’s revolutionized breakfast in the USA. The Kellogg brothers were part of the first health movement in America that warned about the dangers of fatty, protein rich foods. Instead, they advocated a diet based primarily on vegetables, grains and fiber. Their devotion to this dietary regime gave rise to the Kellogg’s company and the large consumption of cereals that exists today.

(Vogel, www.foodreference.com)

i.e. one brother was a ‘bowel obsessed quack’

When Tony the Tiger says, “They’rre Grrreat!” is he talking about his bowels? As strange as it sounds, he could be…Like his cereal-developing forefather, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s vocation was the health spa and hospital business. He was the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek Michigan. While history has relegated John Kellogg’s medical professional status to that of bowel-obsessed quack (see the novel and film based on his rein at the sanitarium, Road To Wellville), in his day he was considered a very skilled surgeon.

(Breakfast Mr., www.mrbreakfast.com)

i.e. John Kellogg was a very religious man

John Harvey Kellogg was a devout Seventh-day Adventist and one of the most prominent figures in the early development of the Seventh-day Adventist Church… He was influential in the development of many of the Church’s distinctive health and dietary teachings and practices… A remarkable Adventist leader, Ellen G. White, saw a chance to expand the order through a better health campaign… Sister White realized she needed to market her program, so she selected a serious-minded youth from her congregation named John Harvey Kellogg…She paid for his education at the University of Michigan and then sent him to study at Bellevue Hospital in New York, paying him a salary while he was there.

(Zacharias, Detroit News)

I reckon breakfast cereal has got a bit of everything inside eh (including 10 000 omega vitamins yada)? Our breakfast cereal is surprisingly very politically correct, its creation the result of careful consideration of ethics, health, religion and even sex! But I kinda like the idea of it being balm for ‘solitary excitation’ best. Eat cereal to control the hormones. (shivers)

Trivia. is trivial. Does it help achieve deadlines? No. Whats cereal got to do with my essay? Nothing. Does it feed the soul? No. I dont even eat cereal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: quirks