John Harvey Kellogg and the Cereal Revolution
How Food Science and National Marketing Changed Breakfast
Jul 1, 2009
In the early years of American history, breakfast really was the most important meal of the day. Most people labored on farms so huge breakfasts were necessary to fuel the day’s exertions. A normal breakfast would include meat, biscuits, gravy, possibly even beer or whiskey. After the Civil War, however, fewer Americans earned their livings with their backs. People went to work in cities, spending much of their workday sitting in small factories or in counting houses. Despite the change in lifestyle, most people continued to eat the same foods that their mothers had cooked.
The Kellogg Brothers
The man most responsible for the change in America’s eating habits was John Harvey Kellogg, a doctor who operated a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. As David and Elizabeth Metzger Armstrong described in The Great American Medicine Show, Kellogg was somewhat eccentric. He dressed completely in medical white, including the frames of his glasses. He even rode a white bicycle and later in his life carried a white cockatoo on his shoulder.
Despite his oddities, he was ahead of his time with his ideas about healthy lifestyles.
Kellogg didn’t approve of smoking or drinking. He correctly attributed the breathing problems experienced by many women to the tight corsets that were popular at the time. Likewise, he understood that large breakfasts with lots of red meat were bad for sedentary workers.
Kellogg later claimed the idea came to him in a dream one night in 1894. When he woke up, he had his wife, Ella, boil some wheat. When it was soft, he and his younger brother, William, rolled it until it was so thin it fell apart into flakes. Then they baked the flakes and had what any modern American would recognize as breakfast cereal. William wanted to mass market the product but John saw himself as a doctor first and a food producer second. He was content to sell the cereal locally.
C.W. Post and National Advertising
The first to market cereal across the county was a fellow resident of Battle Creek, C.W. Post. Post knew of Kellogg’s theories about health from a stay at Kellogg’s sanitarium in 1891. Post introduced Grape Nuts cereal in 1898 and had big plans for the product. He wanted to sell Grape Nuts and other products all over America, so he poured money into advertising. By 1904, Post’s annual advertising budget reached one million dollars and was reaching consumers all over America.
John Kellogg was either unwilling or uncertain how to counter his rival’s aggressive growth. William, Kellogg’s overlooked younger brother, turned out to have the marketing skills that were called for. In a series of legal and financial maneuvers, well documented in Gerald Carson’s Cornflake Crusade, William began to wrestle control of the fledgling company from John. He also changed the product in an important way.
William Kellogg curtailed his older brother’s focus on cereal as health food. In 1906, Will did the unthinkable and added sugar to Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Consumers loved the change and soon Will had to move the manufacturing operation into a larger factory. He gained new customers by publishing advertisements aimed at women in magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal. By plowing profits back into advertising and increasing production, William Kellogg built a cereal giant in Battle Creek and helped change the diets of many Americans.
The Barons of Battle Creek
In 1916, John Kellogg sued his brother in an attempt to regain control of the company. Although William won the suit, John continued to live very well. His sanitarium was profitable and his many books on health sold well. He lived to be 91 years old. William also lived a long life, spending his later years doing charitable work for sick children. Of the three early cereal barons, only C.W. Post came to a sad end. Depressed by his failing health, Post took his own life at the age of 59.
Although not well known, these three men changed America’s eating habits for the better. They redrew the maps of Battle Creek, Michigan. They were among the first to advertise food products nationally. Every child who ever sat down to watch Saturday morning cartoons with a bowl of cereal in front of them is a beneficiary of work done by Post and the Kelloggs. Certainly C.W. Post would have approved of Tony the Tiger.
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