Food for Thought: The Fascinating History Behind Kelloggs

Morning Mafia!

When people ask us what’s the craziest story we’ve learned about the food system, we tell them the truth.

It’s not the fact that glyphosate was patented as a pipe cleaner before becoming the most widely used industrial chemical in food.

It’s not the fact that the chicken has tripled in size over the last 100 years.

It’s not the fact that Ancel Keys cherry-picked all of his data in the seven countries study.

It’s this.

John Harvey Kellogg, the founder of your children’s favorite breakfast cereals, originally invented Kellogg’s to prevent kids from having sex.

Here’s the full story:

It's no secret that our diet has drastically shifted from the foods we are meant to eat. Saturated Fats, Meats, and eggs are demonized, while refined carbs, sugars, and seed oils are everywhere you look. Seriously, just go walk the inner aisles of the grocery store.

The more I learn about nutrition, the more I realize how we have come to accept dietary traditions that make no sense. Cereal is considered a "balanced breakfast." Big Food companies create cartoon logos to lure children in and get them addicted at an early age.

I'm going to expose the creepy history behind the original Kellogg's cereal. There is much that you do not know. Understanding the history will allow you to come to your own conclusions about nutrition and break yourself out of the Matrix of the Industrial Food Complex.

In the 1880s, the average breakfast in America consisted primarily of meat and coffee. Oats and Grains used to take a while to prepare, which allowed for meat to be a more convenient & more nutritious preparation. Enter John Harvey Kellogg...

John Harvey Kellogg was born on February 26, 1853, in Tyrone, Michigan. He grew up during America's Sanitary Revolution. This revolution was not just about cleanliness & flushing toilets. There were many campaigns around the dangers of sex & alcoholism.

Kellogg became fascinated with the concept of "Biologic Living." He viewed the body as a "living temple" and embodied a religious lifestyle that encouraged veganism, prohibition, and sexual abstinence. He considered participation in these three "vices" to be self-pollution.

John Harvey was disgusted by sex his entire life and never consummated his own marriage. He fostered 42 children with his wife but never had any biological children. He had some bizarre violent ideas about sex such as sewing a man's penis to prevent erections. Bizarre.

He believed a particular diet low in meat and high in yogurt, grains, and nuts would encourage men to stop practicing two of life's deadliest sins: Sex & Masturbation.

John Harvey got his medical degree in 1875 and became president of an Adventist Sanitarium in Michigan. John practiced his principles on his patients, who found his diet so boring that even his wife Ella and brother W.K. started eating cereal to spice up their diet.

John and W.K. formed the Sanitas Food Company and created new products that incorporated: Granola biscuits, Wheat Flakes, Corn Flakes, and Peanut Butter. These were all designed to be alternatives to the traditional meat and caffeine-laden breakfasts that Kellogg detested.

One night in 1894, the brothers created Wheat Flakes when trying to manufacture an easily-digestible type of bread. They named these wheat flakes "Granose" and started selling it to consumers. Granose became the world's first flaked cereal product.

The brothers were soon making over $3M a year through their cereal products. Eventually, the brothers became engaged in a heated lawsuit over the usage of the name Kellogg. W.K. ultimately won the lawsuit and built Kellogg's into the powerhouse brand that it is today.

Kellogg's is now the largest cereal brand in the world. In 2020, the company recorded sales of almost $14B alone. They occupy 30% of the total market share in the cereal industry. Their brands have extended far beyond corn flakes and now include Special K, Cheez-Its, Pringles, Frosted Mini Wheats, Rice Krispies, Pop Tarts, and many other products that we are using to destroy our metabolic health.

Let's take a look at the ingredient list for the popular brand Frosted Flakes, which is being targeted to our kids as breakfast. 45g of sugar per a single serving, which is the bare minimum of what a person would eat. Milled Corn and Sugar are the primary 2 ingredients here.

How about we take it a step further and look at Cheez-It crackers, a popular snack food that we are giving to kids with their lunch. This label screams: Enriched Flour, Seed Oils, and fake dairy. This is what we are giving to our kids.

Lastly, let's take a look at Raisin Bran. This is one of Kellogg's "heart-healthy brands" being marketed to American consumers. 50g of carbs, 20g of sugars. Ingredients: Wheat, Raisins, Wheat bran, sugar, brown sugar syrup. Another Frankenfood being marketed as healthy.

I share this thread so you can have some history & context into the breakfast cereal that we deem as a "normal" part of the Standard American Diet. We deserve better than this. Our kids deserve better than this.

We are metabolically failing as a country. Currently: 70% of US adults are overweight or obese. 86 million US Adults (1 in 3) are Prediabetic. 1 in 3 of our children are considered overweight or obese.

Every dollar we spend on food is essentially casting a vote. Do you choose to buy the sugar-filled cereal because it is convenient? Or do you choose to buy & prepare the grass-fed meat, eggs, and fish because you know that you and your child deserve better?

There is a way out and the solution is real food. Yes, Real Food. No ingredient labels. Meat, Fish, Vegetables, Fruit, Honey. Hyper-localized from our farmers and not industrial food conglomerates. We will continue to educate, spread love, and win this fight.

Kellogg’s gets sued…

Speaking of Kellogg’s, one of our favorite podcast guests of all time, Jason Karp, put out a message yesterday announcing that he’d filed an activist letter to push Kellogg to stop the unethical usage of certain chemicals in their food. Jason highlighted that the ingredients for Kellogg’s products in Europe are vastly different than the ingredients in the products sold in the US. Check out the full story here.

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