What’s for breakfast?

It is part of Western breakfast meal to have cereals on their table. Cereals, of course, in the general sense, including wheat, rice, maize (corn), rye, oats and barley were among the earliest plants grown by man. But packaged or processed cereals are modern development.

Breakfast cereals owe their origin to the vegetarians of the last century and health fanatics who believed they could save souls by preaching the virtues of a non-meat diet.

Granula, which was the beginning of Grape-Nuts, was launched in 1863 by a man called James C. Jackson, of Danville, New York. Henry D. Perkey brought out Shredded Wheat in 1893 and Puffed Wheat was developed by Alexander Anderson in 1902.

The religious sect, the Seventh Day Adventist, made Battle Creek, Michigan, the cereal headquarters of the world when the sect formed the Western Health Reform Institute at Battle Creek in 1868, later called the Battle Creek Sanatorium. John Harvey Kellogg, who was a doctor and a writer, took over control of the sanatorium in 1876 and his advocacy of cereals helped to develop what was to become a vast new food industry. His brother, W.K. Kellogg, started a cereal producing company in 1906.

C.W. Post was another cereal pioneer and his Postum Cereal Company formed into General Foods Corporation.

The basic idea behind packaged cereals has remained largely unchanged.

Anyhow, cereal is not part of my meal or 90% of the Filipino community’s meal. Beside our staple food, which is rice, typical Filipino breakfast consist of sunny side up, coffee/hot chocolate, and other canned goods like corned-beef or meat loafs. The amusing thing is, sometimes I don’t eat my breakfast and according to research, breakfast is the most missed meal of the day.