Jenn McKinlay: It's National Cereal Day! Now I'm not saying you have to have cereal for dinner, but I'm not not saying it either.
When I saw this day on the national day calendar, I realized I had no idea about the origin of breakfast cereal. The librarian in me could not let this stand. So here's what I learned from a fabulous article in the New York Times by Kim Severson: A Short History of Cereal.
"In 1863, James Caleb Jackson, a religiously conservative vegetarian who ran a medical sanitarium in western New York, created a breakfast cereal from graham flour dough that was dried and broken into shapes so hard they needed to be soaked in milk overnight. He called it granula. John Harvey Kellogg, a surgeon who ran a health spa in Michigan, later made a version and named it granola. Using the same idea, a former Kellogg patient, C.W. Post, created Grape-Nuts, which would become the first popular product to offer a discount coupon."
The 1920's heralded the invention of Wheaties, and its slogan "Breakfast of Champions" followed in the 1930's. Frosted Flakes and Tony the Tiger debuted in the 1950's. And in the 1960's there was very popular space inspired cereal called Quisp. Kind of sorry I missed that one.
Then cereal went all to heck in the 1970's with sugar overload and the Federal Trade Commission had to take a look at how cereal was being marketed to kids. By the 1990's organic was all the rage and remains a hot ticket to this day.
Okay, true confession, time, my favorite cereal of all time is...
Raisin Bran. Not even kidding. It's the only cereal besides oatmeal that my mom let us have as kids, so it's my comfort cereal. I like it even better when the bran flakes get a little mushy. My favorite bad for you cereal? Lucky Charms, natch!
So, Reds and Readers, chime in, what's your favorite cereal?
