Your breakfast bowl has a very unclean secret . You might think of corn whisky flakes as a basic , if not painfully bland , meal to start your day . However , its story actually begins in thestrange overlap between nineteenth - century medicine , thoughts on onanism , and strait-laced Christian beliefs .
John Harvey Kellogg first created corn flakes in 1898 alongside his brother , WK Kellogg , in what’soften brandedto be a fail attempt at make granola . The termination of this misfired experiment was a dead plain foodstuff to feed patient role at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan where he worked .
Although a MD and nutritionist by trade wind , his devotedness to the Seventh - day Adventist Church mean that his newly - invented corn chip were consider in a different light . Around the bend of the 20th century , Kellogg was a big player in the “ unobjectionable living movement ” , a morality - infused public health crusade that punctuate the grandness of hygienics , cleanliness , and pureness .
This head him to be deeply against sexual practice in all its glorious physical body . It ’s often note that he and his married woman slept in separate bedroom and never consummated their marriage . Above all , he was really , reallyagainst masturbation .
Dr Kellogg was so crazy by the grubbiness of human sexuality , he decide to pass weeks compose a whole book about sex , masturbation , " filthy dreams ” , whoredom , and other sexual vice .
His originative account book – unmingled Facts for Old and Young : Embracing the innate History and Hygiene of Organic Life – contains some go - to tips on how to help a person “ obsessed ” with onanism and “ self - abuse ” , with a strong emphasis on exercise and dieting .
plentiful and risque foods were the enemies , in his eyes , but a simple diet could avail subdue the urge to masturbate , including bare foodstuffs just like his freshly patent corn eccentric ( commodious , eh ? ) .
And so , the innocent corn flake was drafted to become a foot soldier in the state of war against masturbation .
Anti - masturbatory morning meal were just the tip of his princely plans , however . Kellogg wrote some rank extremist methods of preclude masturbation around this time . For women , he advocated the “ program of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris ” to forbid “ unnatural excitement” . He also recommended that all young boy be circumcised as a “ remedy ” to masturbation . In fact , he ’s often described as one of the main driving force behind unremarkable infant circumcision in the US that remains common to this 24-hour interval .
Most of these melodic theme sound like horrid empiricism by today ’s standard . However , if there ’s any defense of John Harvey Kellogg , a few of his ideas have stood the trial of time . He was a vast early proponent of the“germ theory of disease”that proved specific microscopic being are the effort of specific disease . He was also way ahead of his metre when it came to infer the microbiome of the intestinal nerve tract .
If it ’s any recompense to Kellogg ’s more unsavoury musical theme , it ’s dependable to say that his anti - masturbatory meal did n’t work – mass still enjoy corn flakes and many more revel masturbation .
