The Secrets of Cereal: Strange and Sweet

Anthony Wirts
Nov 6 · 6 min read

When I was a kid, my favorite cereal was Captain Crunch, but I only liked the berries. This was before the advent of the revolutionary Captain Crunch: Oops! All Berries line in 2008, so I spent many a painstaking morning separating out the berries from the dumb, not-cool-at-all, yellow bricks. Luckily, my elder sister liked only the dumb, not-cool-at-all, yellow bricks, so we would share the burden of de-bricking the cereal. Once the decontamination was done, I would cheerfully eat the berries one-by-one. As I ate, I would go about solving the puzzles printed on the back of the box. My favorite puzzles were the mazes, but I would do the word searches and hidden object hunts too.

Most people have similar memories as children. If not with Captain Crunch, then with some other equally sugary and colorful cereal. They remember the advertisements, the silly mascots, and the occasional toy prize. But why do we all remember that? What made cereals so prevalent in our lives and why do they share such strange quirks that other foods don’t? These questions and more may be answered if we take a look into cereal’s long and sometimes strange past.

It all started with a man by the name of James Caleb Jackson, who was a farmer, active abolitionist, doctor, the founder of the Jackson Sanitarium in New York, and most importantly for us, the inventor of the first dry breakfast cereal.

He advocated for the healing properties of water and the eating of unprocessed food. So, when he began developing his cereal in 1863, it was completely unlike our modern understanding of the common breakfast item. Made with baked graham flour and bran, Jackson’s cereal, which he dubbed granula, was bland to the point of tastelessness and required a minimum of 20 minutes soaking in milk to even be edible.

Despite how it sounds, Jackson’s granula was far more convenient than other cereals of the time, which often required cooking. It eventually caught on and became the target for multiple copycats.

Queue Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a man who ran a sanatorium in Michigan. In 1878, John visited Jackson’s Sanitarium, which was then known as Our Home on The Hillside, intending to study the practices used there. Years later, he ended up developing his own version of Jackson’s cereal, made with ground oats, wheat, and corn, and believed that the blandness would reduce people’s urge to masturbate.

John Kellogg called his cereal granula too, which prompted Jackson to sue him. The case was settled when it was agreed that Kellogg’s creation would be renamed granola.

In 1896, John teamed up with his brother Will Kellogg and created Granose Flakes, the first commercial cereal. Twenty-two years later, after a rift developed between the brothers, Will left John and the sanatorium and founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which would later be called the Kellogg Company in 1925, and produce cereal such as Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops, and Mini Wheats.

In 1895, Charles William Post, a patient of John Kellogg, founded the Postum Company, which would go on to create the original Grape-Nuts and eventually the favorites of today like Honey Bunches of Oats and Fruity Pebbles.

In 1905, Dr. Alexander P. Anderson developed a way of puffing rice by shooting the grains from a cannon and sold his idea to Quaker Oats. Once his product became well known, it took on the nickname “Food Shot from Guns”.

In 1928, General Mills became incorporated. It would go on to become one of the largest cereal producers in the world, creating household names like Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Lucky Charms.

By the early 1900’s, several dozen cereal brands had grown out of Battle Creek, Michigan, including Kellogg’s and Post’s, cementing the area as the U.S.’s cereal capital.

But, up to this point, all the cereals being developed were made as health foods. They were bland and hearty, with little more than dried fruit to sweeten up the mix. Until, in 1939, when Ranger Joe Popped Wheat Honnies, first arrived on grocery store shelves.

The rise of Ranger Joe Popped Wheat Honnies marked where the whole game changed. The cereal was flash-baked with corn syrup and honey, which gave each piece a clear, glazed coating. It was the first wide-spread pre-sweetened cereal, and producers of it encouraged consumers to eat it right out of the box like candy.

At this point, cereal producers realized that they were missing out on an opportunity. There was an entirely empty market for cereal marketed towards children, who are the most easily swayed by an entertaining mascot and bright colors.

The cereals got sweeter, and the ad campaigns got more blatant. Cereals pervaded radio broadcasts and Television ad time. In the form of product placement, they infiltrated children’s TV shows, turning each broadcast into an unapologetic infomercial.

The cereals utilized important figures to further their goals. Famous musical artists, TV show characters, and pulp culture figures made their way onto the front of every box.

Cartoon mascots were fabricated to give a smiling face to the product, a face which a child could come to recognize and associate with the new sugar filled breakfast item. And prizes were hidden inside to incentivize the purchase of every box.

Luckily, people soon began to catch on. Beginning around the 1960’s and 70’s, extra sugar became less of an advantage. As the science of a healthy breakfast started to catch up the word ‘sugar’ itself began to disappear from product names, if not the product itself. Many of the sweet cereals that survived took on more subtle expressions, like ‘honey’, ‘golden’ or ‘frosted’ while retaining every bit of the old ingredients.

Advertisement too took a bit of a hit when, in 1969, the FCC ruled that TV show characters mustn’t make an appearance in any commercial messages during the show. But there was only so much they could do. Other methods of advertisement like co-branding continued through the 80’s, birthing such strange products like cereals sponsored by Mr. T, Donkey Kong, the Smurfs, or the Cabbage Patch Kids.

Through the 90’s and the early 2000’s, through greater communication networks across the country, consumers discovered a new point of interest in food production. Phrases like ‘organically made’, ‘GMO free’, ‘gluten free’, ‘low carb’, and ‘no artificial ingredients’ began entering the vocabulary of the masses.

And so, we approach the modern day, having journeyed through over a century’s worth of history, filled with health obsessed inventors, accidental discoveries, cut-throat capitalism, hundreds of cereals, and the breakfast nostalgia of millions. Every generation of cereal slightly different from the last, and every decade bringing new favorites to the forefront.

Where has all of that brought us in our day and age? What does cereal look like now? Well I’ll tell you. Breakfast is still big money here in the US, though sales have been falling little by little for a while now. Many cereals often still harbor lots of sugar behind kind phrasing and misleading labeling, but with may be found out with a quick look at the nutrition label. Toy prizes are going out of style, and they have been for a while. Many were seen as choking hazards, or not worth continuing, and have since changed into redeemable codes or access to online games. Cereal is also eaten outside of breakfast time, having become capable of appearing at any meal or snack. And through all of that, much of our nostalgia for our favorite cereal remains, giving us memories that we may never forget.

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