Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Graham's Crackers

John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was an American medical doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan who ran a sanitarium using holistic methods, which focused on nutrition, enemas and exercise.

Dr. Kellogg was a vegetarian advocate, and is best known for the invention of the breakfast cereal, Kellogg's Corn Flakes with his brother Will Keith Kellogg. The brothers started the Sanitas Food Company to produce their whole grain cereals around 1897, a time when the standard breakfast for the wealthy was eggs and meat, while the poor ate porridge, farina, gruel and other boiled grains.

John and Will later argued over the recipe for the cereals. Will had wanted to add sugar to the flakes. So in 1906, Will started his own company, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which eventually became the Kellogg Company, which triggered a decades-long feud between the two. John then formed the Battle Creek Food Company to develop and market soy products.
The Kellogg brothers did not invent the concept of the dry breakfast cereal. That invention belongs to Dr. James Caleb Jackson, who created the first dry breakfast cereal back in 1863, which he called "Granula".

A patient of John Kellogg's, Charles William Post, eventually started his own dry cereal company, selling a rival brand of corn flakes. Dr. Kellogg later claimed that Charles Post stole the formula for corn flakes from his safe in the Sanitarium office.

Kellogg was also an advocate of sexual abstinence, and devoted large amounts of his educational and medical work to discouraging sexual activity. He set out his views in one of his larger books, Plain Facts about Sexual Life and later Plain Facts for Old and Young.

Some of his work on diet was influenced by his belief that a plain and healthy diet, with only two meals a day, among other things, would reduce sexual feelings. Those experiencing temptation were to avoid stimulating food and drinks, and eat very little meat. Kellogg also advocated hydrotherapy and stressed the importance of keeping the colon clean through yogurt enemas.


Sylvester Graham was born in West Suffield, Connecticut. Throughout his 58 years of life, Graham developed a highly ridiculed lifestyle and diet with a huge cult following. Referred to as the Grahamites, they believed that plain and simple foods were the key to a long and developed life.

Graham was a nutrition guru who advocated temperance, vegetarianism and the use and consumption of coarse ground wheat flour and bran. He invented the Graham cracker in 1829 and his 1837 Treatise on Bread & Bread Making condemned those who ate white bread.

Graham was inspired by the temperance movement and preached that a vegetarian diet was a cure for alcoholism, but more importantly, sexual urges. The main thrust of his teachings was to curb lust. According to Graham, an unhealthy diet stimulated excessive sexual desire which irritated the body and caused disease.

According to newspaper records, many women fainted at Graham's lectures when he gave his opinions both on sexual relations and the wearing of corsets. Whether their fainting was due to the subject of sex or the tight corsets is still debated. Ha!

So, if you want your children (or yourself ) to abstain from sex, eliminate spicy foods and start including corn flakes (here's a link to some coupons) and Graham crackers (here are some recipes to try) in their/your diet.


Things that make you go huuummm . . .