Saturday is a good day to learn about the history of Cornflakes and their very Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) origins. Let me state it more plainly: SDAs invented Cornflakes. Shocking, right? Unlike many things whose origins are contested, there is no contest as to where Cornflakes came from. So, let us start from what we already know and build it up from there.
You may, or may not already know that SDAs have dietary restrictions as a core part of the Church’s doctrine. These include restrictions as stated in several parts of the Old Testament of the Bible and in many places in the Old Testament, too. By extension, a plant-based diet is recommended (not commanded) and believers who choose to incorporate meat in their diets may do so, but according to Biblical directives on clean and unclean food.
So, by the late evening of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th century in America (think 1850s to 1920s), the typical American breakfast had evolved to be particularly heavy: Meat, potatoes, everything else, and more meat. The richer the people, the heavier the meals were, but even for the not-so-rich, breakfast was not complete without a thick piece of meat. Every. Single. Day. Not surprisingly, indigestion became a big problem within the American populace. Doctors all around the country easily pointed to the heavy breakfast as a problem, but with no substitutes to the existing menu items, not much could be done to turn the unfavourable public health tide of indigestion.
One of those doctors was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the director of a health resort called the Battle Creek Sanitarium, established by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, in a place called Battle Creek, in the U.S state of Michigan. The resort comprised several facilities all geared towards a “holistic” approach to curing illness, as per health principles advocated for by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, including amongst other things, a plant-based diet. A Seventh Day Adventist himself, Dr. Kellogg was totally in line with the programme and under his Direction, the Battle Creek Sanitarium thrived as a top health resort destination where the rich and poor alike, got treatment and many recovered from their illnesses.
Because there was a national outbreak of indigestion, naturally, many of Dr. Kellogg’s patients sought treatment for indigestion. Part, therefore, of his “holistic” approach to treatment included prescription of vegetarian, high-fibre diets. In particular, he strove to develop vegetarian diets and experimented with doughs from different types of grain such as wheat, oats and barley, which he flattened and baked from the Sanitarium Kitchen, to come up with healthier, palatable and equally satisfying breakfast alternatives. In this, he worked with his wife Ella Eaton Kellogg and brother, Will Keith Kellogg who supported him with the meal preparations in the kitchen.
Dr. Kellogg developed several variations of these cereal foods over the course of his medical work at the Sanitarium, but these were largely consumed as conduits to good health. Nonetheless, a few occasionally went on to become popular amongst current and former patients of the Sanitarium. It was, however, a new product that he developed there, that proved to be the ultimate game changer.
One day, as he prepared a wheat dough to make his cereal snacks as usual, he was called mid-procedure to attend to something, causing him to leave the dough on the work surface, and did not return to the kitchen until the next morning. Instead of throwing out this old dough, he continued to roll it out and proceeded to bake it as usual. The resulting product was a thin, flaky, easily-crumbling sheet of flour, which also was surprisingly good to taste and extremely easy to chew.
He put his brother Will Keith Kellogg, with whom he worked in the Sanitarium, to the task of tracing and recording the entire sequence of events that had resulted in the accidental production of the delicious wheat flakes. One the procedure had been recorded, it was repeated to the exact same results. The patients loved the wheat flakes and they became popular with patients in the Sanitarium. The brothers went on to experiment with different other types of grain and Will Keith’s version of the flakes, made from corn (maize), became an instant hit both within and outside of the Sanitarium, and the most popular.
Seeing commercial potential of the product, Will Keith Kellogg proposed that a company be created to produce and market the now popular product but his brother John Harvey, was not entirely sold to the idea, preferring rather to share the formula for making the flakes, at no cost. In addition, John Harvey was opposed to the idea of adding sugar to the flakes to sweeten them, in line with the teachings of reputable Seventh Day Adventists at the time, who taught the consumption of bland foods as a means to control excitment and arousal in the body.
Failing to see eye to eye on the matter, William Keith Kellogg, broke away from his brother, leaving the Battle Creek Sanitarium to create his own company which evolved to become what we know today as the Kellogg Company.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg holds the patent for “flaked cereals and the process for making the same.”
You’re never going to think about corn flakes the same way again, are you?
