In the 19th century, masturbation was a public health crisis. At least, some Christian fundamentalists view it this way. Anti-masturbation fighters attribute a range of illnesses to self-satisfaction, including blindness, infertility, epilepsy, confusion, and a preference for spicy food. The last one actually came from an anti-masturbation fighter: an American doctor named John Harvey Kellogg.
Kellogg has many ideas about the relationship between diet and masturbation. He believes that the urge to self-stimulate or self-contaminate, as he said, is related to eating meat and flavored foods. In order to solve this problem and many other potential health problems, he recommends adopting a light diet that includes foods such as nuts and grains. He even concocted some recipes in line with his health philosophy. As the head of Battle Creek Sanatorium, a fashionable health sanatorium in Michigan, he provides guests with crushed biscuits made from wheat, corn and oats. He called this mixture "granola." Breakfast break? Debatable. A few years ago, a different food master named James Caleb Jackson was making a similar snack called pellets. Kellogg mainly "innovated" the product by changing the U in the pellet to O, which also helped him avoid litigation.
Anyone who has read the cereal shelves carefully should be familiar with Kellogg's greatest contribution to the food industry. John worked with his brother Will (the bookkeeper at Battle Creek Nursing Home) to create the breakfast cereals that came to be known as corn flakes by rolling corn grits into flakes and baking them in the oven. William was the first to sell the product to consumers outside the nursing home. Compared with his brother, he was much less interested in the so-called single-person cessation ability. Kellogg’s corn flakes have never been advertised as the edible equivalent of a cold shower, and the claim that they were invented to end masturbation is misleading. However, John begged to limit himself to the "simplest, purest, and least stimulating diet" as a way to resist excitement—especially a diet that promotes more grains and milk—that can be said to be an anti-masturbation exercise. It is legal, if the thread is cut, it is part of the beginning of the grain.
From health trends to the evolution of marketing, we can learn a lot about American culture from the history of breakfast cereals. But before we delve into it, let us figure out our terminology. Merriam-Webster defines grains as starchy edible grains and the plants that produce them, such as wheat, oats, and barley. Grain is also a general term for processed foods made from grains.
Cereal foods are being vigorously promoted today, and their advertising-to-sale ratio is four to six times that of most other food categories. This pattern can be traced back to the early history of cereals. In the late 19th century, the Battle Creek Sanitarium received a guest named Charles W. Post, and he quickly noticed the successful operation of Kellogg's. Post is a salesman who sees the potential of the products supplied by the nursing home to occupy the breakfast table. In 1897, he developed Grape-Nuts, a crushed biscuit cereal (to the delight of observer comedians, it contains neither grapes nor nuts).
What Post really brings to the breakfast cereal game is marketing savvy. Before the 20th century, advertising was usually related to snake oil-it had a bad reputation. This did not stop the salesperson. A printed booklet claims that grape nuts can cure appendicitis, and even just eight teaspoons are enough to provide enough power to ride a bicycle for 50 miles. Using flashy advertisements with specious health claims to sell food was a risky move, but it paid off. By 1903, Post's marketing strategy made him a millionaire.
Post did not invent breakfast cereal, but he did make it a competitive industry. With the success of Grape-Nuts, William Kellogg followed the model of Post. Ignoring his brother’s boycott of advertising, he launched a campaign to encourage people to "wink at the grocery store and see what you get." It clearly worked: Kellogg sold 1 million boxes in a year. The success of Grape-Nuts and Kellogg's Corn Flakes attracted more entrepreneurs to Battle Creek. By 1911, there were 108 brands of corn flakes, 60 of which were from Battle Creek.
Faced with so many grains competing for customers, brands need a way to stand out. This is where the mascot comes in. One of the first grains that used cartoon characters to move goods was a wheat grain called Force. Its mascot-Sunny Jim, a burly figure and a top hat-is popular in magazines and newspaper advertisements. His popularity helped make the mascot the standard for cereal boxes.
Not every mascot is as popular as Sunny Jim. After winning the big prize with Grape-Nuts, Charles Post introduced his own corn flakes to the market, called Elijah's Manna. The packaging shows that the prophet Elijah received food from a crow. This design choice is not suitable for some Christians. The UK even banned all imports of this item. Post tried to defend himself, he said: "Maybe no one should eat angel cake, enjoy Adam's beer, live in Sao Paulo, nor should he work for Bethlehem Steel [...] a good man in the Bible." However, his The argument does not seem to win the hearts of many critics.
Some grain companies have found that they don't need to create roles from scratch to sell their products. One of the first programs to feature cereal embedded ads was a radio program called Skippy. During an episode, the protagonist will stop what he is doing and sell Wheaties to the audience. This is also the first case of a cereal brand directly facing young consumers. The commercials became popular, and soon other beloved characters were selling cereals on their radio shows.
Post found a less controversial mascot. He gave in, changed Elijah's manna's name to the innocuous-sounding Post Toasties, and took out the biblical character from the box. He eventually collaborated with Walt Disney to use Mickey Mouse as the postal mascot. It is said that Post paid $1 million for this opportunity...In the 1930s, it was during the Great Depression. A series of similar licensing deals actually funded Disney's first feature film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
This is just one example of a grain company conducting seminars on mascots before using them properly. Five years after the introduction of Rice Krispies in 1928, Kellogg's added a cartoon dwarf in a box called Snap. Crackle and Pop (our fact checkers pointed out that they have no "typical family relationship" with Snap) only appeared in print ads, and Snap was not added to the packaging until 1941. The early promo introduced three other characters in the expanded Rice Krispie-verse: <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/18236/stories-behind-your-favorite-cereal-mascots" > Moist, mushy and tough. Unlike the original trio, their evil selves did not stay.
The struggle between crunchy and moist is a theme in cereal ads. In the 1960s, Quaker Oats developed the character Cap'n Crunch in response to reports that children hated moist cereal. At this point, marketing is a key part of selling cereal, so much so that Quaker would come up with the mascot before figuring out the taste of Cap'n Crunch. By the way, the full name of Cap'n Crunch is Horatio Magellan Crunch.
John Kellogg insisted on keeping sugar away from corn flakes, so it's best if he didn't see Kellogg's frosted flakes in 1952. Tony Tiger has been the spokesperson of the product since its launch, but more iconic than the character's face is his voice. (Thir Ravenscroft has dubbed Tony for more than 50 years and also sang "You are a despicable man, Mr. Grinch" in "The Christmas Geek Stole Christmas.")
Some grain mascots face bumpy roads. About ten years after Lucky Charms was launched in 1964, General Mills quietly replaced Lucky the Leprechaun with Waldo the Wizard in certain markets. They were worried that the stolen goblin would appear too rude, and hoped that this friendly wizard could attract the children better. Finally, Waldo got his walking files, and Lucky returned to where he should be, becoming a communicator of the heart, stars, horseshoes, clover, and/or blue moon.
When television replaced radio as the main method of home entertainment, cereal brands immediately began to take advantage of it. They used the same in-app marketing strategy, but now Howdy Doody and Roy Rogers replace Skippy for sales. This is also the time when the cereal mascot came to life in advertisements. Unlike radio programs, TV commercials show the actual product in front of consumers. This means that grain companies have a vested interest in making the medium look as good as possible. Many of them invested heavily in early television technology, which helped fund developments such as color pictures. Since then, brands with colorful mascots and colorful cereals have taken advantage.
In the 1980s, the company found a new way to sell products using existing assets. Suddenly, it seems that every character in popular culture is posted on its own cereal box. Highlights of the era of matching novel cereals include Gremlins cereals, Mr. T cereals and C-3PO. Launching an original cereal in the first year may cost the company US$40 million in marketing expenses, while launching a cereal based on existing assets with built-in identification features requires US$10-12 million. Even Cabbage Patch Kids cereals sold well initially. On the downside, buyers were only interested in these products for a year or two before sales declined. One exception is Ralston Purina's Ghostbusters cereal, which has been selling well for five consecutive years.
Many of today’s cereals don’t quite fit John Kellogg’s view of a light, seemingly healthy breakfast. Soon after the cereal was first sold to children, added sugar began to appear in the ingredient list, but the company did not get rid of the healthy food label, but found a way to make their Cookie Crisp eaten. They made an advertisement claiming that the sugar in oatmeal provides children with the energy they need to start a new day.
The campaign was effective, and health trends in the United States in the 20th century strengthened the reputation of grains for health. In 1967, Harvard nutritionists Dr. Fredrick Stare and Mark Hegsted published two studies linking dietary fat and cholesterol with heart disease and diminishing the effect of sugar. In the decades that followed, this health approach was endorsed by experts. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched its food pyramid in 1992, its protein sources were meat, fish, and nuts. Starting from the top, carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, and grains formed the larger foundation.
But the Harvard study that supports low-fat diets may have a hidden agenda. A 2016 study showed that the study was initiated and funded by the Sugar Research Foundation, a trade organization that aims to promote the image of sugar among health-conscious consumers. Since then, many studies have emphasized the nutritional value of certain fats and the risk of excess sugar, and the government has abandoned the food pyramid that technically supports 6 to 11 servings of grains per day.
A story begins where, in some respects, the unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of a light diet mutated somewhere along the way into unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of sugary refined carbohydrates. You may still want to eat cereal because of its taste, nostalgia, or because a cartoon character tells you to do so. But you should probably use a healthy dose of salt to accept the health claims of breakfast cereals.
This story is adapted from an episode of Food History on YouTube.