“Breakfast is a corporate scam.”  That’s the message from author Anneli Rufus, writing in Alternet recently. She explains that nearly every breakfast staple (from cold cereal to bagels spread with cream cheese – and even orange juice) is considered a staple only because some marketers somewhere decided to convince us that these are good ways to start the morning. I was reading this as I was enjoying my own favourite breakfast: a bowl of Cheerios with half a banana sliced over it, and, of course, my French-pressed Saltspring Island coffee.

But did you know that cereal first became popular for breakfast in the Western world as a meatless anti-aphrodisiac food back in 1894?  That’s when John Kellogg (a Michigan Seventh-Day Adventist surgeon and anti-masturbation activist) developed the process of flaking cooked grains to feed to his sanitarium patients.  Continue reading →