🥐🍳☕ Breakfast Is Literally A Scam!

You’ve likely heard the old adage: “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” But what if we told you that this beloved piece of wisdom didn’t come from nutritionists or ancient tradition—but from a 1944 advertising campaign by General Foods designed to sell more cereal?

Yes, cereal—the boxed, sugary, ready-to-pour staple of modern mornings—owes its status not to ancestral diets but to savvy marketing and social engineering.

A Manufactured Meal

Before cereal took over breakfast tables, there was no uniform idea of what “breakfast” was—let alone a consensus that it was nutritionally essential. In fact, the ancient Romans believed in eating only one meal per day.

It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that breakfast became standardized. As workers flooded into cities and adopted rigid work schedules, the need for a quick morning meal emerged. Enter breakfast as an institution—and a market opportunity.

In the 19th century, American breakfasts looked more like dinner: roasted meats, cornbread, flapjacks, and butter piled high on morning tables. These heavy meals didn’t exactly pair well with early factory shifts or office jobs. What followed was a movement toward lighter fare—allegedly for health, but ultimately for profit.

"The Romans believed it was healthier to eat only one meal a day." This is what we call intermittent fasting nowadays.

Before the invention of cereals, breakfast was not even a standard routine. Breakfast became a daily, first thing in the morning institution with the onset of the industrial revolution. Once large masses of people moved to cities and became employees with set schedules, breakfast became a thing. Breakfast has been a market share battleground ever since.

Cereal: Born from Abstinence, Packaged for Convenience

The modern cereal revolution started not in the kitchen, but in the moral philosophies of the time. Sylvester Graham—yes, of graham cracker fame—was a dietary reformer who believed food influenced virtue. In 1863, James Caleb Jackson created the first cold cereal, “granula,” a wheat-and-bran brick that required soaking before eating. John Harvey Kellogg, a Seventh-day Adventist and anti-masturbation crusader, later modified this concept and brought us corn flakes.

Kellogg believed that stimulating foods like meat encouraged lust and degeneracy. His solution? A bland, plant-based cereal to suppress the urges of body and spirit alike. And yet, this “health food” quickly evolved into the sugary, cartoon-covered cereals we see today—sold with the promise of vitality, speed, and childhood joy.

The Power of the Pitch

Cereal didn’t win the breakfast battle because it was better for you. It won because it was marketed better. By the mid-20th century, Americans were being told—with the backing of radio, print ads, and eventually television—that skipping breakfast was a health risk. That message persists, even as we now reconsider the science behind fasting, metabolism, and processed food.

So, What’s for Breakfast?

Today, we’re seeing a new shift. From keto to intermittent fasting, consumers are questioning the breakfast status quo. But the legacy of the cereal empire remains—a testament to how powerfully food habits can be shaped by marketing, convenience, and cultural narratives.

In conclusion, breakfast is the most marketed meal of the day. That says a lot...