Buzz
Following the FDA's revision of the 'healthy' food label, it became clear that many beloved cereals don't make the cut. As CNBC highlights, cereals like Raisin Bran, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Corn Flakes are deemed too sugary to qualify. If this revelation caught you off guard, get ready, because the push for healthier breakfast cereals has a strange and lengthy history.
Breakfast cereals were initially marketed as dubious health foods
The origins of commercially produced breakfast cereals trace back to 19th-century health resorts, or sanitaria, and the rather questionable health theories promoted by their creators.
John Harvey Kellogg, the man behind the Battle Creek sanitarium in Michigan, is a name you might be familiar with. He believed that bland foods were essential for good health, asserting that anything sweet, spicy, or meaty could stir passions and harm the nervous system. Kellogg also advocated for frequent enemas as part of a healthy routine and argued that masturbation was so damaging that children should be stopped from doing it by any means—sometimes including mechanical devices or even surgery (a practice that contributed to the rise of non-religious circumcision). He was a fervent supporter of eugenics, even founding a 'Race Betterment Foundation' and writing extensively on 'race degeneracy.'
Though I don’t find these ideas particularly 'healthy,' Kellogg’s fixation on bland foods, enemas, and practices like NoFap was central to his vision of wellness. Interestingly, these bland foods became the foundation of the breakfast cereals we know today. (The popularity of flatbreads and crackers may have stemmed from the belief that 'yeast leavening was too close to the process of making alcoholic beverages'; these groups also shunned alcohol.)
From the sanitaria and sanitarium-adjacent movements of that era, we get the following:
Graham flour (which we know as Graham crackers), from Sylvester Graham, who also advocated for bland diets, vegetarianism, and minimal sexual activity.
Granola, originally branded as granula, created by James Caleb Jackson. It was made of bricks of baked grain mush that had to be soaked in milk or water to make it chewable.
Corn flakes, invented by the Kelloggs, allegedly by accident when a batch of granula went wrong. John Harvey’s brother, Will Kellogg, later founded a company to mass-produce the flakes. Fun fact: it was Will who changed the spelling of 'granula' to 'granola' after Jackson sued.
Grape Nuts, marketed by Charles Post, who spent time at Kellogg’s sanitarium and was inspired by the idea of breakfast cereal enough to launch his own brand.
Shredded Ralston, the predecessor to Wheat Chex, from a man who was also obsessed with eugenics and had a strange belief in preventing 'vital forces' from leaving the body. And yes, it gets even stranger.
Honestly, after all this, I’m hesitant to search for more cereal brands at this point.
Sugar started being added to cereals almost immediately after they hit the market.
Who would want a flavorless breakfast cereal? Almost no one, it seems. One of the earliest things Will Kellogg did when he began selling Corn Flakes was to add malt, sugar, and salt. Graham flour products were originally unsweetened—quite different from the sweet graham crackers we know today.
It didn’t take long for cereal innovators to realize that making their product taste better would help them sell more. According to this timeline from the New York Times, sugary cereals truly exploded in popularity around the 1950s. Corn Flakes weren't sweet enough, and that’s when the need for Frosted Flakes emerged.
In the 1970s, the trend escalated even further. Popular cereals for children were loaded with sugar, cocoa, and vibrant food colorings. (Meanwhile, you could still buy Grape Nuts, sitting right above them on the shelf.) In the 1980s, I recall being told I couldn’t have the brightly colored Rainbow Brite cereal because my mom found its “excessive dye” concerning. I read Calvin & Hobbes comics, where Calvin devours the fictional Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
Granola reappeared in the 1970s as part of a counter-movement against the heavily sugared commercial cereals. The sugary cereals tried to market themselves as healthier: Sugar Pops became Sugar Corn Pops in 1978 and eventually just Corn Pops in 1984. Cereals with added vitamins proudly displayed these additions on their packaging. (The history of adding vitamins to cereals is quite extensive. Sometimes the vitamins were added to make the cereals seem healthier, and other times it was a legal requirement.)
What defines a “healthy” cereal in today's world?
This brings us close to the present day. Cereals like Corn Flakes and Raisin Bran may seem like a healthier option compared to sugary cereals like Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops, but they’re still part of the sweet and enjoyable morning meals. It’s been said that American breakfasts are basically desserts, and that feels mostly true (except, of course, the bacon-and-eggs group).
So, are Corn Flakes and similar cereals really “healthy”? Personally, I find the whole idea a bit frustrating, but I wouldn't recommend looking to the cereal aisle if you're hunting for health food. They aren’t bad, though: Some of them have fiber, and most contain added vitamins and minerals. Plus, we usually eat them with milk, which provides a bit of protein, vitamins, and other nutritious elements.
The more crucial question is whether we have any reason to expect cereals to be healthy. The idea that a particular breakfast food is a good way to start our day has been around for over a century, but it never really had a solid scientific foundation to begin with. Having cereal for breakfast is much like enjoying a muffin: it’s tasty and widely accepted, but the nutrition label doesn’t support many of the health claims made about it.
