American Breakfast

A hundred and fifty years ago, the typical American breakfast was heavy fare: a lot of meat and not much fiber. In the late 1800s, a group of Seventh Day Adventists in Battle Creek, Michigan, called for a purer lifestyle, including a healthier meal to start out the day. Under the leadership of John Harvey Kellogg, the group's Medical and Surgical Sanitarium attracted wealthy clients who hoped to improve their digestion. After years of experiments, Kellogg made the first wheat flake in 1895, calling it "Granose." Kellogg didn't have much marketing vision, however, and he sold the cereal only to the people who visited his sanitarium. It was one of those clients, Charles William Post, who decided to start up his own business in Battle Creek, manufacturing and selling cereal to the rest of the world. Kellogg's younger brother, Willie Keith Kellogg, did Post one better by inventing Corn Flakes and creating his own cereal empire. The advent of cereal flakes made it easier for American families to prepare breakfast each morning, but its original creators would probably be horrified at the over-sugared cereals found today on supermarket shelves.