Trivia Junction

A Compendium of trivia I find interesting
...for the curious

Dr. Kellogg had some flaky ideas

It started with sex.

On May 31, 1894, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg filed for a patent on a process for drying and flaking corn. He called the resulting product granose.

Kellogg was the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a Seventh-day Adventist health facility. He was obsessed with sex – or, to be more accurate, not having sex.

He believed sex acts depleted vital energies and led to all sorts of illnesses and immoral behavior. He also believed that fats, animal proteins, sugar and spices provoked sexual desire.

To overcome desire, he advocated a diet high in grains and vegetables and free of stimulating offenders. He hoped his cornflakes would encourage grain consumption.

Granose was not a rousing success. Will Kellogg, the doctor's brother, was less interested in moral science and more attuned to making money. To his brother's horror, Will Kellogg discovered that adding salt and sugar made the granose tasty. Kellogg's Corn Flakes was introduced in 1906.

A recent National Public Radio feature about the centenary of Kellogg's Corn Flakes said there are 100,000 Web sites listing recipes using cornflakes.

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