Posted on 03/30/2021 12:08:52 PM PDT by mylife
Chances are, it's never struck you as particularly odd that there's an entire supermarket aisle devoted to nothing but cereal. For most of us, cereal is the ultimate convenient breakfast, and even the most sugary of varieties claim to offer nutritional benefits and a balanced start to your day. Every brand is trying to convince you it's something different, something better, and there's probably at least one you're buying into. The "kids only" sugar bombs boast whole grains, and Special K comes studded with chocolate bits and sweet yogurt clusters.
But it wasn't always that way. Cereal's position as America's default breakfast food is a remarkable feat, not of flavor or culture, but of marketing and packaging design. It's a century-long history of advertising, a brilliant campaign that capitalized on the intersection of industrialization, health-consciousness, and changing class attitudes that completely upended the way Americans ate. And it all began at a moment when products were primed to transcend regional tastes through the rise of mass-marketing.
"America at the turn of the century was just as vast and varied as it is now," explains historic gastronomist Sarah Lohman. "Fannie Farmer's The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, from 1906, which I think is a decent judge of what the average, multi-generational, Midwestern or New England American family is eating or aspiring to eat, is showing a meal that includes: fruit; hot cereal like Quaker oats or hominy; a substantial meat like beefsteak, 'warmed over lamb,' or broiled halibut; potatoes, toast, or muffins; or, of course, coffee." In other words, a breakfast of just hominy or porridge was considered a nutritionally unbalanced poor family's breakfast—not exactly something you'd aspire to. Cereal changed all of that.
(Excerpt) Read more at seriouseats.com ...
I have cereal very rarely, and I only eat Kellogg’s Corn Flakes when I do. The rest of the time I’ll have an “everything” bagel, or some days I’ll have bacon and sausage with an omelette, or with eggs over-medium. Sometimes I make hash browns to go along with them. Toasted Italian, sourdough, or English muffin on the side. If I have a big breakfast, I have a small supper, and vice versa. I only eat twice a day.
The only time I've ever gagged myself through oatmeal is in the hospital, and was on a restricted diet. It's the only time I drank tea too, because they wouldn't give me coffee.
I do Intermittent Fasting so I don’t eat until 2PM every day.
Bah, everyone knows John Kellogg invented cereal to stop people from masturbating!
It’s never been the same without Quisp. I hardly ever eat cereal now.
“How Cereal Became the Quintessential American Breakfast”
Because grits pop & splatter?
I burnt that off as a kid by 10 am playing
And Tony the tiger too.
Never stopped me...doh!
An onion bagel toasted with egg cheese and bacon Yow!! And smear some philly cheese on there too Yow
Someone told me a long time ago that the reason there is such a long cereal aisle is that most of it is made from waste grain products from making something else. I believe it.
Watch the History Channel series The Food That Built America for more details.
Harvey Kellog was one seriously strange individual.
I like my ham & cheese eggs, hash browns and pancakes.. Or hot dog gravy over pancakes.
I have been wanting rice krispies treats lately though. I haven’t had them in a long time.
Yumm. Keto breakfast.
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