Early developments
The first cold breakfast cereal, Granula, was invented in the United States in 1863 by James Caleb Jackson, operator of Our Home on the Hillside which was later replaced by the Jackson Sanatorium in Dansville, New York. The cereal never became popular, due to the inconvenient necessity of tenderizing the heavy bran and graham nuggets by soaking them overnight.[11][12][13]
George H. Hoyt created Wheatena circa 1879, during an era when retailers would typically buy cereal (the most popular being cracked wheat, oatmeal, and cerealine) in barrel lots, and scoop it out to sell by the pound to customers. Hoyt, who had found a distinctive process of preparing wheat for cereal, sold his cereal in boxes, offering consumers a more sanitary and consumer-friendly option.[14][15]
Kellogg and Battle Creek, Michigan
Packaged breakfast cereals were considerably more convenient than a product that had to be cooked, and as a result of this convenience (and marketing that emphasized the point), they became popular. Battle Creek, Michigan, was a center both of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and of innovation in the ready-to-eat cereal industry, and indeed, the church had a substantial impact on the development of cereal goods through the person of John Harvey Kellogg (1851–1943). Son of an Adventist factory owner in Battle Creek, Kellogg was encouraged by his church to train in medicine at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City in 1875. After graduating, he became medical superintendent at the Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek, established in 1866 by the Adventists to offer their natural remedies for illness. Many wealthy industrialists came to Kellogg's sanitarium for recuperation and rejuvenation.
In Battle Creek sanitarium guests found fresh air, exercise, rest, hydrotherapy, a strict vegetarian diet, and abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea. (They were accustomed to breakfasts of ham, eggs, sausages, fried potatoes, hot biscuits, hotcakes (pancakes), and coffee.) To supplement the center's vegetarian regimen, Kellogg experimented with granola. Soon afterwards he began to experiment with wheat, resulting in a lighter, flakier product. In 1891 he acquired a patent and then in 1895 he launched the Cornflakes brand, which overnight captured a national market. Soon there were forty rival manufacturers in the Battle Creek area. His brother William K. Kellogg (1860–1951) worked for him for many years until, in 1906, he broke away, bought the rights to Cornflakes, and set up the Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Company. William Kellogg discarded the health food concept, opting for heavy advertising and commercial taste appeal. Later, his signature on every package became the company trademark.
Charles W. Post
The second major innovator in the cereal industry was Charles W. Post, a salesman who was admitted to Kellogg's sanitarium as a patient in the late 1800s. While there, he grew deeply impressed with their all-grain diet. Upon his release, he began experimenting with grain products, beginning with an all-grain coffee substitute called Postum. In 1897 (or 1898) he introduced Grape-nuts, the concentrated cereal with a nutty flavor (containing neither grapes nor nuts). Good business sense, determination, and powerful advertising produced a multimillion-dollar fortune for Post in a few years. After his death, his company acquired the Jell-O company in 1925, Baker's Chocolate in 1927, Maxwell House coffee in 1928, and Birdseye frozen foods in 1929. In 1929, the company changed its name to General Foods. In 1985, Philip Morris Tobacco Company bought General Foods for $5.6 billion (equivalent to $ billion today) and merged it with its Kraft division.[19] Because of Kellogg and Post, the city of Battle Creek, Michigan, is nicknamed the "Cereal Capital of the World".[20]
Muesli
Muesli is a breakfast cereal based on uncooked rolled oats, fruit, and nuts. It was developed around 1900 by the Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner for patients in his hospital.[21]
United Kingdom
In 1902, Force wheat flakes became the first ready-to-eat breakfast cereal introduced into the United Kingdom. The cereal, and the Sunny Jim character, achieved wide success in Britain, at its peak in 1930 selling 12.5 million packages in one year.
National advertising
Kellogg began the breakfast cereal marketing and introduced the first in-box prize in the early 1900s.[22] Quaker Oats entered the market with Puffed Rice and Wheat Berries it had introduced at the 1904 World Fair, with raw grains shot with hot compressed air from tubes, popping up to many times their size.[23] They were marketed as a revolution in food science.[22] In the 1920s, national advertising in magazines and radio broadcasts played a key role in the emergence of the fourth big cereal manufacturer, General Mills. In 1921, James Ford Bell, president of a Minneapolis wheat milling firm, began experimenting with rolled wheat flakes. After tempering, steaming, cracking wheat, and processing it with syrup, sugar, and salt, it was prepared in a pressure cooker for rolling and then dried in an electric oven. By 1925, Wheaties had become the "Breakfast of Champions". In 1928, four milling companies consolidated as the General Mills Company in Minneapolis. The new firm expanded packaged food sales with heavy advertising, including sponsorship of radio programs such as "Skippy", "Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy", and baseball games.
Sugar cereals
After World War II, the big breakfast cereal companies—now including General Mills, who entered the market in 1924 with Wheaties—increasingly started to target children. The flour was refined to remove fiber, which at the time was considered to undermine digestion and absorption of nutrients, and sugar was added to improve the flavor for children. The new breakfast cereals began to look starkly different from their ancestors. Ranger Joe, the first pre-sweetened breakfast cereal of sugar-coated puffed wheat or rice, was introduced in the US in 1939.[26] Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, created in 1953, had 56% sugar by weight.[27] Different mascots were introduced, such as the Rice Krispies elves[28] and later pop icons like Tony the Tiger
Granola
In the 1960s, the modern version of granola was invented and popularized. It evolved from a product called Granula (similar to Grape Nuts) to the recognizable modern form involving at a minimum: sweetened toasted oats, but also possibly: dried fruit, puffed rice, nuts or chocolate.
Modern cereal
Over 2016 to 2017, Americans purchased 3.1 billion boxes of cereal, mostly as ready to eat cold cereal.[30] In a $9.8 billion cereal market, cold cereal purchases were 88% of the total (12% for hot cereals), with the overall cereal market declining due to reduced consumption of sugar and dairy products.[30] Kellogg's and General Mills each had 30% of the market share for cold cereals. Honey Nut Cheerios was the leading cold cereal.[30]
