Corn flakes
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Corn flakes are a food made by combining cooked maize (called "corn" in North America) along with sugar and vitamins. The dough is rolled and toasted to make the well-known flakes, which feature as a breakfast cereal, served with milk.
The history of corn flakes goes back to the late 19th century, when a group of Seventh-day Adventists began to develop new food to meet the standards of their strict vegetarian diet. Members of the group experimented with a number of different grains, including wheat, oats, rice, and of course, corn. In 1894, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the superintendent of a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan and an Adventist, used these recipes as part of a strict vegetarian regimen for his patients, which also included no alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine. The diet he imposed consisted entirely of bland foods, since he believed in sexual abstinence and following the precepts of Sylvester Graham, the inventor of graham crackers and graham bread and felt that spicy or sweet foods would increase passions, while cornflakes would have an anti-aphrodisiac property.
The idea for corn flakes began by accident when Dr. Kellogg and his brother, Will Keith Kellogg, left some cooked wheat to sit, while they attended to some pressing matters at the sanitarium. When they returned, they found that the wheat had gone stale, but being on a strict budget, they decided to continue to process it by forcing it through rollers, hoping to obtain long sheets of the dough. To their surprise, what they got instead was flakes, which they toasted and served to their patients. This event occurred on approximately April 14, 1894, and a patent for the product was registered on May 31 under the name Granose.
The flakes of grain, served with milk, were a very popular food among the patients. The brothers then experimented with other flakes from other grains. In 1906, Will Keith Kellogg, who served as the business manager of the sanitarium, decided to try to mass-market the new food and set up his own company, Kellogg's, to do so, breaking with his brother over the addition of sugar to the flakes to make their taste more acceptable to a mass audience. Corn flakes were his first marketed product. To increase sales, in 1909 he added a special offer, the Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Booklet, which was made available to anyone who bought two boxes of the cereal. This same premium was offered for 23 years. At the same time, Kellogg also began experimenting with new grain cereals to expand his product line. Rice Krispies, his next great hit, first went on sale in 1929.
A former employee of the Kelloggs, C. W. Post, started a rival company and the major other brand of corn flakes, Post Toasties.