The Weird History behind Corn Flakes — John Harvey Kellogg and the Battle Creek SanitariumToda

The Weird History behind Corn Flakes — John Harvey Kellogg and the Battle Creek SanitariumToday John Harvey Kellogg is most popularly known as the inventor of Corn Flakes, one of the most popular breakfast cereals in the US.  However, in the early 20th century Kellogg was a popular national figure for much different reasons.  A devout Seventh Day Adventist, Kellogg founded a special sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan that was run using Seventh Day Adventist principles.  Essentially an early 20th century health spa, the Kellogg Sanitarium advocated daily exercise, a vegetarian diet, and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.  The typical day at the sanitarium involved calisthenics, numerous sports and activities, various exercises, hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, and an exceptionally healthy diet.  While this may seem sensible today, Kellogg’s beliefs and ideas went far beyond physical fitness and dabbled with the bizarre.  For example,While Kellogg was a big fan of modern medicine, many of the treatments he advocated are now considered dubious at best.  His sanitarium was filled was scores of health machines that did absolutely nothing.Kellogg had very odd views about sex, at least odd today but completely normal for the time.  Kellogg believed that both married and unmarried couples should have as little sex as possible.  In addition, Kellogg believed that masturbation was terribly detrimental to both physical and mental health.  To prevent masturbation, Kellogg recommended that willing participants be circumcised to decrease sensitivity of the genitals.  Kellogg recommended this for both men and women, and as a skilled licensed surgeon often performed the procedure at his sanitarium as a part of the whole health package.  Kellogg was so zealously against masturbation that he once quoted,  "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism (masturbation)“During his honeymoon, he wrote a book about the evils of sex.As part of his health philosophy, Kellogg believed in a squeeky clean colon.  Among the therapies practiced at his sanitarium, clients were administered daily enema’s to promote healthy bowels.Kellogg was among the first to advocate for the use of probiotics (intestine friendly bacteria) in maintaining digestive health.  Thus he advocated the daily consumption of yogurt.  Sounds quite advanced for the age except, you didn’t eat the yogurt.  It was administered by enema as well.While Kellogg’s ideas and methods may seem bizarre today, in the early 20th century it was accepted medical theory.  In fact, Kellog’s sanitarium became wildly popular, attracting customers such as President William Howard Taft, Mary Todd Lincoln (wife of Abraham Lincoln), Sojourner Truth, Roald Amunsen , Richard Halliburton, Amelia Earhart, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and George Bernard Shaw.As for cornflakes, the recipe was actually invented by John Kellogg’s brother, Will Keith Kellogg.  John Kellogg wanted to make cornflakes the ideal health food of his sanitarium, and wanted to market it nationwide as the healthiest breakfast food in America. John Kellogg founded the Sanitas Food Company to market cornflakes, which would ultimately morph into Battle Creek Food Company. His brother however, wanted to add sugar to the cereal for flavoring.  This sparked a decades long feud between the two brothers. John Harvey Kellogg died in 1943 at the age of 91.As for the Battle Creek Sanitarium, it fell into bankruptcy during the Great Depression in the 1930’s.  Afterwards it was converted into an army hospital.  Today it serves as the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center. -- source link

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