Originally published on March 20, 2023 at 4:00 AM (Episode 308)
Introduction
Breakfast cereal sounds humble; its history is anything but. As Kathryn Cornell Dolan shows in Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2023), the morning bowl sits at the crossroads of agriculture and urbanization, industrial food and wellness fads, family routines and factory shifts, religion and reform, marketing and mass culture. From grain cultivation and milling to Seventh-day Adventist sanitariums and Progressives promising clean living, cereal became a vehicle for anxieties about health and a canvas for America’s talent for branding. Our conversation traces that sprawling story: Battle Creek’s reinvention of breakfast; the rivalry between Kellogg and Post; cereal’s role in shaping (and being shaped by) changing ideas of nutrition; and the late-20th-century turn to cartoon mascots, vitamins, and claims on the box.
About the Guest
Kathryn Cornell Dolan is Professor in the Department of English and Technical Communication at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Her books include Beyond the Fruited Plain: Food and Agriculture in US Literature, 1850–1905 and Cattle Country: Livestock in the Cultural Imagination.
For Further Investigation
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Related Episodes
Episode 44: Rachel Laudan on the deep history of food
Battle Creek Sanitarium architecture (Atlas Obscura)
Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens—see what breakfast cereal can buy
“Our 14 Best Porridge Recipes from Around the World” (Saveur, September 18 2018)
💬 Listen & Discuss
How did a health reform movement become a marketing empire? What do changing breakfast habits reveal about work, gender, and family time? Have “fortified” foods changed how we think about nutrition? Share your thoughts below—and pass this along to your favorite food historian or breakfast skeptic.
