Breakfast and Eugenics
I love a good breakfast and seriously who doesn't? On a daily basis I try to make myself a breakfast that is both filling, nutritious and well tasteful. I like to eat a big breakfast so I have enough energy for the day. I prefer to make homemade granola with dried fruit, nuts, cinnamon and extra virgin olive oil. When i was young I mostly ate bread as breakfast with a Dutch speciality, hagelslag
I had a friend who would always eat the American cereals like Coco-pops or Frosties. I couldn't really get into it and second of all my mom forbade me to eat that type of cereals mostly due to the high sugar amount.
Maybe my mom did the right thing and believed what the founding father(s) of cereals believed, the Kellogg Brothers.
The Start of Kellogg's
Who doesn't know Kellogg's? And who hasn't eaten Kellogg's before? With it's classic logo, it is one of the classic brands you can find in the supermarkets.
The Kellogg's brothers were born into a devout Christian family. One of the brothers, John Harvey Kellogg became a doctor after two sisters of the Seventh-Day Adventists Church recognised his potential and helped to fund his medical studies at the Bellevue Medical College in New York City. Kellogg himself hailed from Battle Creek in Michigan where he returned after his studies to become the medical superintendent at the institute that was started by one of the sisters that pushed him to become a doctor.
His main focus was surgical treatments and he went to Europe to improve his knowledge and surgical skills. Quickly, he rose up the ranks and become a lead member for several important medical societies.
Throughout his professional career he performed over 22,000 operations. He was known for his mentality and success, working over 15 hour shifts and succeeding with a incredibly low death rate.
He also took no compensations for the surgeries and his main income came from books and medical writing.. He was also an early advocate for public health care
But stop right there...
It seems that Mr Breakfast Cereal is the second coming of Christ. Unfortunately not
John Harvey Kellogg was openly racist. He believed that we had to find a cure to cure inferior races through genetically improving the quality of genes. Also called Eugenics. He organised a conference called "Race Betterment Conference" in 1914 to look for this cure with a thousand other physicians, politicians, academics and everyone of utmost importance.
"The intellectual inferiority of the negro male to the European male is universally acknowledged.” John Harvey Kellogg in 1903
Kellogg was also in favour of sterilization of people that seem to be of a defective race. At least 3,800 people in the state were involuntarily sterilized, according to research conducted by Kate O’Connor, a Ph.D. candidate in American Culture at the University of Michigan.
Kate Connor stated:
"It’s an undercount, but it’s around 3,800... They were all done under this 1929 law that legalized sterilization for purposes of eugenics, done on 'moral degenerates, sexual deviants, epileptics, the feebleminded or insane.' There’s whole monographs on what feebleminded meant. It was less about intelligence and more about how you fit in socially."
The crazy part is.. this law has not been replaced since 1974
Breakfast cereal
Let's switch over to the the other brother. Will Keith Kellogg, the younger brother and the founder of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The brothers regularly bounce ideas off each other.
In 1894, he was boiling wheat to make dough and accidentally let it stand for several hours. The wheat became softened, trying to roll the dough but it didn’t really work. The dough started to flake into individual wide flakes. He decided "Oh well, might as well bake this". Kellogg's cereals were born.
The brothers decided to give it to the patients to reduce stomach aches. The patients loved them and asked the brothers to sent the cereals in packages.
Kellogg vs. Kellogg
Will Kellogg saw a business opportunity and started selling the cereal through the Sanitas Food Company and wanted to take the company international. The brothers were trying to take the cereals to the next level. But they had different vision on the breakfast cereals. John forbade Will to put any sugar into the cereal, Will saw sugar as a way to make the cereals more tastier. John believed that sugar would increase bad behaviour
Will saw John as a tyrant and broke away from him and started the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. He created the cereal, that he thought would fly off the shelves.. and it did!
Will, however, would ship 175.000 cases of corn flakes in his first year of the company. The company would grow literally into a household name
A Retrospective
With the knowledge of today, we know that breakfast cereals are not the healthiest and best breakfast foods you can eat. But for that time they are revolutionary. Howard Merkel, professor on history of medicine at the University of Michigan explains;
“Even if we don’t see corn flakes as healthy today, it actually was healthy for its time — people ate leftovers like filly starchy potatoes fried in congealed oil. People ate meatless breakfasts of mush made from barley, cracked wheat, and oats. After all, it was the late 1800s, and nutrition expertise was not as advanced as it is today. It was no wonder Dr. Kellogg saw a need for a palatable, grain-based “health food” that was “easy on the digestion” and also easy to prepare.”
He also advocated other views on diet such as; not overeating, no stimulating foods, no caffeine and alcohol, only eating plain and bland foods and eating only twice a day.
Dr John Kellogg, was certainly someone with wonky world views but he also saw a need. In that sense he was an excellent marketeer. He was resourceful and saw an opportunity which was of course further exploited by his brother WIll Keith. Together they have created one of the most famous brands and foods in the world. From rural France to the bustling Tokyo, you will probably find a box of Kellogg's in the kitchen cabinet