Like several of our modern foods, the Corn Flakes were originally passed off as a health food. When you hear the rest of the story, you'll understand the reason I call this story crazy!
John Harvey Kellogg
The rise of the Kellogg empire could easily comprise a list of its own. The short version begins with John Harvey Kellogg, who was trained as a doctor and promoted a vegetarian lifestyle in accordance with his Seventh Day Adventist beliefs. But Kellogg took the restrictive Victorian conventions of the day and threw them out the window.
Among other weird practices, Kellogg espoused the constant administration of enemas. After your enema, you’d be treated to a pint of yogurt. The patient was allowed to eat half of the yogurt, but the other half would go straight up the patient’s rectum, ostensibly to replenish the bacterial levels of the digestive tract.
Of course, J.H. Kellogg’s greatest contribution to society is the corn flakes he distributed with his brother William. Some years after founding the Sanitas Food Company, the two brothers would butt heads on the issue of whether to add sugar to the cereal. Will would go on to found the company that would later become Kellogg. Sugar has since been an integral ingredient of the company’s success in the peddling of such products as Frosted Flakes and Pop Tarts. A highly fictionalized account of John Harvey Kellogg’s life can be found in T.C. Boyle’s novel The Road to Wellville.
Considering it's shaky start, the Kellogg's company enjoys it's status of one of the leading producers of breakfast foods to this day.
Speaking of breakfast stuff, I'm ready for some coffee in the kitchen. How about you?
