Dr. Katherine Dolan (2:42)

Sure. I'm Katherine Dolan. I go by Casey, so please feel free to call me Casey. And this started. So I am an American literature professor and I usually study literature, but the angle that I take for literature is through food studies. And so how are stories being told about food? And how does food appear in stories? And one of the examples I always give, actually, when I'm explaining my little angle and my little research focus is thinking about the dining scenes in the Godfather or something. Right. And how food is actually so important sometimes in stories. So I was thinking of doing a research project on breakfast cereal as this kind of late 19th century health food movement with Kellogg and Post and, you know, all these sanitariums. And I might have seen the movie the Road to Wellville or something like that, and then felt like reading the book. And of course, if anyone hasn't seen it, seen that, or read that, they are wacky. It's a wacky story. And then how the 1960s counterculture was also thought of as granola. So there was granola at this one period of time and granola at this other period of time. I was like, what connected those two periods of time? So it was gonna be a purely academic article article. And then just as I started doing research, it just became so much more and so much more colorful and so much more fun. And then I started, I look, I found reaction, and I thought what a fun idea it would be to do one of these kind of introduction to kind of books instead of, you know, just an article that would end up in a journal. So, yeah, that was, you know, if you think about it, how is it that the 1960s was, you know, hippies are called granola or something. Where does this come from? And so that was how I got started.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (4:32)

Pretty reasonable place to get started, I think. I think a lot of books come from kind of. Hang on a second one. Why?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (4:39)

Right, right. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (4:42)

So that makes a lot of sense. And we'll try and answer that and many other serial questions as we go through. But starting, I suppose, at the earliest point, going chronologically as far back as we can before we get to the technicolored stuff that comes in the brightly colored boxes. How did cereal and porridge in ancient times impact civilization?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (5:04)

Right. It's basically essential what we think of as civilization and what we developed, agriculture and all that kind of stuff came from breakfast porridges. Every region pretty much in the world has its porridge. They all seem to have developed as we think at the moment. Everything changes, of course, as we learn, but developed about 10,000 years ago, for example, in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, there were the eight founder crops they started planting, which included barley and two ancient forms of wheat, Einkorn and Emmer wheat. And so these about. And people were planting them and eating them. And that's how people started agriculture, modern agriculture, and stayed put and started cities and towns and villages and things like that. And roughly about 8,000 years ago, also in the Fertile Crescent, this is where a bread wheat came out, which is basically the wheat we use today. And that was a blend, a hybrid of emmer wheat and an early goat grass. And they kind of hybridized together and became the wheat that we now think of. So that started there often Asia. They were also starting to develop rice as. And making that into congee is like a porridge, a rice based porridge. And that became a way that they could have their societies and their culture. And everyone can kind of become sedentary and work on those kinds of things and develop, you know, what we think of as civilizations. And the same thing is happening in the Americas with corn, maize, corn, and developing that out of Teosinte and hybridizing that so that you can't actually grow corn without human intervention, actually it turns out, so that domesticated itself to. To be with us. And of course, corn developed all these Mesoamerican civilizations and again, roughly 10,000 years ago. So, yeah, everything we think of in terms of how civilization developed was because of these cereal grains. And one of the interesting things I noticed about this book, and it was something I thought about in terms of just the porridge part was before was the need of a pot, you know, the need of a ceramic bowl to. To cook things and cooking fires and things like that. Without those, that's basically the Neolithic revolution right there. Like, that's what turned us from quote, unquote, hunter gatherer societies into agricultural societies. Was actually having a pot. Before that, you would have to have. You couldn't have just had breakfast when you woke up. You would have had to have hunted breakfast or gathered your breakfast or, you know, gone out and gotten the foods that you would then eat. There was nowhere to store. There was nowhere to keep it away from predators or scavengers or other kinds of animals or people or whatever. So it was the development of storage, storage containers, cooking containers, pots, those kinds of things. That really is what obviously had to develop in order for breakfast. The porridge kind of breakfast cereal to take off and once porridge took off, I mean, that's solid, good calories, energy, good rich carbohydrates that could keep laborers laboring in that, you know, what develops the pyramids and all these kinds of things.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (8:26)

So that I think in a lot of ways makes a very good case for kind of why cereal is important way earlier than right. But I admit that I wasn't really expecting the book to start with cereals and porridges. And as soon as I realized why I wasn't expecting that, I felt kind of dumb about it. And then I turned the page over and was like, oh, I not the only one who has also not necessarily linked these things together. Because I had not thought about the ancient porridges and cereals as being related to breakfast cereal as we have today. Because the ancient things are hot and breakfast cereal now is cold. And I felt sort of dumb. I'm like, oh, but they're still the same thing, right?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (9:07)

Yeah. The same grains. Wheat usually, or oat or rice. Yeah.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (9:11)

But it does seem like a pretty big change. So how did that happen?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (9:19)

Sure. And this is where the kind of obvious, this is the cereal we're talking about kind of thing gets started. The porridge chapter was actually a fairly late addition as I was researching the book, because it really was just not what you automatically think of. And as I was going back and forth with my editor, they were like, well, what about. And I'm talking about oatmeal even, and I'm talking about modern day warm porridges. But they were like, what about the development of that? And that really is a kind of a novel thing to have researched there. But the cereal that we're all thinking about and the boxed cereal and the grocery store and the supermarkets that had an actual, like, it's. It's really hard to pinpoint porridges because they're just. They're so ancient that, you know, I say roughly 10,000 years ago. And that's about as good as we can do with actual in a box breakfast cereal. You know, the cold stuff, I can pinpoint that. That's 1863, and that's in the US in a place called Danville, New York. A man called James Caleb Jackson was had. He had been sick and had kind of, you know, kind of digestive complaints. And he went to one of these sanitariums and it. And they had a very strict diet as part of it. And he was doing the water cure, which was a movement where you would drink lots of water and take showers and baths and they would draw out the toxins from you in these different bathing techniques. And of course, you always ate really, really healthily and didn't drink any alcohol, et cetera, and wouldn't eat processed sugar and things like that. So he went through the water cure and it worked. It helped him. And he regained his health and he became a total convert. And so he came to New York where he lived, and he said, I want to do one of these. I want to start my own. And so he called his the House on the Hillside. And he. And part of these health spas was to have very healthy diets and the people that would go to them. And there is a tendency for these unwell people to be very wealthy white people and very popular and famous and stuff. But actually, Kellogg himself wasn't. Jackson himself wasn't. These were just normal people that went for their own health. But so he. Jackson developed a cereal to be eaten at his health spa as part of his overall practice. And it was called Granula, which sounds a lot like granola. And I will explain why it sounds a lot like granola. And so the way he made granula was he took a large flour wafer, so a big kind of shallow cake or something, and he baked it twice. Baked it. And then they. He broke it into really small little nuggets. So kind of like a tiny, tiny little Weetabix or something. And so it was that. That is actually the first ready to make, ready to eat breakfast cereal. The first cold ready to eat breakfast cereal. So 1863. But the problem with Jackson's invention was that you couldn't eat it. Actually, it was. You had to soak it overnight in either water or milk to make it palatable. So this was not going to be the success. You know, this would never sell in a grocery store or anything. But for his spa, it worked. It was something that people were willing to tolerate and eat for breakfast. And of course, the cooks and stuff had soaked it overnight. And so it was. It was more or less palatable, but it was never the popular option. But John Harvey Kellogg and Ellen White and the some Seventh Day Adventists that would go on to develop the Battle Creek Sanitarium, they actually went to this Danville spa to check it out and see what they were doing and get some ideas for their own place. And Kellogg had this granula and appreciated the idea behind it so much that when he went back and when they developed the Battle Creek Sanitarium and he got to fiddle around in his experimental kitchen, he made a version of his own. And he also baked, you know, twice baked these wheat wafers, broke them up into little biscuits, you know, little nugget shapes. And his was a little bit better. It didn't have to go to soak overnight. Basically. I always picture Jackson's version as just cardboard or something. I can't imagine this cereal actually working. But his was a little bit better. The problem was he was calling it Granula and Jackson, of course, had developed Granula. And so he had to worry about litigation and being sued. And so he changed the name from Granula to Granola. So that was the first grade granola that was developed, but it still was not the kind that we would picture in terms of granola. It was still a bit bland and you needed to soak it not for overnight but for a while for it to be in any way something you would want to eat. And basically it ate something healthy. Right. It didn't eat something tasty. But that really is where things got started. Jackson invented this idea and then Kellogg kind of ran with it.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (14:28)

So obviously I have to ask more about Kellogg because obviously.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (14:32)

Yep, right.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (14:32)

If we know nothing about current breakfast cereals, that's still a name that's going to be quite familiar. And he's already come up in the story. So kind of how big a deal was Kellogg actually? Given that in a lot of senses today it looks like it could just be branding.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (14:48)

Right, Right. Actually, John Harvey Kellogg is the figure when it comes to cold breakfast cereals. He. Nothing would happen without him because obviously the Jackson invention wasn't going to go very far. The branding comes around from his brother, W.K. kellogg or will Keith Kellogg. But John Harvey is the one that makes breakfast cereal into what we think of in this package as, you know, as we think of it now. He. So he invented, he adapted the granula and created the granola out of it. And he, that was something he just served at his sanitarium. Then he also went on to fiddle. And they had this experimental kitchen at the sanitarium and he was very proud of it. He was a self aggrandizer. He might not have been the marketing genius that his brother was, but his sanitarium and setting that all up and being the lord of his domain there was very, very important to him, obviously. And in the experimental kitchen it was himself, John Harvey and Will Keith and John Harvey's wife, Ella Eaton Kellogg. And the three of them worked together on all these different recipes, fake meat products, because Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarians, all kinds of, you know, so Breakfast cereals. Things that would, you know, for all the different meals and stuff. But of course, the breakfast cereals are the ones that historically became so significant. So. So they fiddled and fiddled and fiddled. And by 1894, John Harvey Kellogg actually patents the flaked cereals and process of preparing same and that. So flaked cereals, if that sounds familiar to you, that's Corn Flakes, right? So that's where Cornflakes come from. And Corn Flakes is the first of the boxed cereals that takes off. That is the thing that people start thinking about. What started was the patients. Visitors to the sanitarium could then buy the product to take home. Or they could order it via mail when they got home. And they wanted to keep up with the diet that they had started eating at the. At the sanitarium. It wasn't really a grocery store kind of an item. It was more of a specialty market. You know, almost like you would imagine a health food store nowadays or something like that. Then what the interesting thing here and the second big name in the history. So definitely Kellogg is the guy that starts everything and makes it so famous. And presidents went to the sanitarium and ate the breakfast cereal there. Taft is one of the American presidents that went there. The Rockefellers went there. I think Mark Twain went there. You know, just everyone's going to these health spas and the sanitarium is like the one to go to. But one of the people that goes there is someone that was very, very sick. And once again, the sanitarium, these health spas and the diet there really helped and made him feel a lot better. CW Post. So if that name is ringing any bells, Post as in post serial. And post serial happens because CW Post, it has such a good experience at the sanitarium and the Kellogg's. And this is where John Harvey. So John Harvey was the mind behind it, but he wasn't the marketer behind it. And John Harvey was so proud of his product and so proud of what he was doing that he invited everyone to go through his kitchen and see what they were doing and how. And all this. So Post went. And he was so happy with how healthy he felt after spending time at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. And this. It cracks me up because how people's brains work. But the first thing he thought to do was to steal their idea. All this worked great for me. I clearly should steal it and then make a lot of money off of it. And that's almost exactly what he did. He went to The San. He got as much information as he could from their kitchen. And then he started a health spa almost right across the street called La Vida Inn, for one thing. And so he started across town, almost across town, rival almost instantly. And then he developed Post Cereal. And he started selling a flaked cereal of his own. And he put it in boxes and he sold it in stores. And that is where W.K. kellogg went up to John Harvey and said, wait, we can't let this happen. How dare he get the money from this product that we have developed and we created and made it into a thing that people might actually be interested in. And the Brand brothers fought back and forth for a long time because WK Said clearly we should start a company, a big company that sells these on a larger scale, rather than just kind of this small health food scale kind of a market. And John Harvey was a purist and didn't want to do that. And WK eventually won, obviously. Obviously, because there are boxes of Kellogg's cereal all over the place. And one of the things they fought over tooth and nail was the amount of sugar to add to it. So the cereals that we eat, that we know of now, obviously, are much, much sweeter than anything anyone would ever tell you to eat as a health food. And they've become even more so since, like, the mid 20th century. But even in the time of their first creation, there was a change from the stuff you would eat at one of these health spas and then the stuff that gets marketed to people in a grocery store. And the WK rightly said, and CW Post as well, were, no one's going to buy this if they, you know, if it tastes as bland as it really tastes. People, of course, that are at the health spawn are really unwell and doing anything to try and make themselves feel better. Of course they'll eat whatever, but. But if you're actually trying to get market share and going up against, you know, bacon and eggs and other kinds of breakfasts and stuff, then you got to make it taste good. So WK eventually wins. He creates Kellogg cereal. So then there's the two competing cereal brands, and those are the first two cereal brands. And it's funny because they're still two of the biggest companies out there. And a funny little detail to think about. And if you ever look in the grocery store again, you'll notice this. And you'll never be able to unnotice this. The. Can you picture the Kellogg logo, the kind of the way it's written out? WK Would sign every box of cereal because he had one of their early marketing ideas was that they were the original and everyone else was a cheat basically. And specifically they meant CW Post. So he signed the boxes. So that Kellogg is a. It's like now it's like a, you know, stamped version of the signature. But originally that it's because it was actually the Kellogg signature because it was their way of saying we are the authentic ones. Everyone else is a knockoff.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (21:40)

So clearly that explains kind of why it didn't stay in sanatoriums because yeah, that description of it is not the most enticing. And obviously there's a kind of marketing element to this. There's also a sugar element to this definitely. But those two pieces alone, at least kind of what you've told us so far to me explain how it went from just being sanatoriums, just being specialty food store to being in supermarkets doesn't fully explain to me kind of just how massive it really has become. So can you take us through sort of that stage of the national dominance, the international dominance?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (22:22)

Definitely one almost since the. Not even almost since the very development of breakfast cereal, it went hand in hand with marketing. Just it. People invented new ways to advertise because of breakfast cereals. And they were always on the kind of cutting edge of marketing, advertising, product development, scientific ways to adjust flavors and add nutrients to it for reasons, you know, so that you could then sell market as having nutrients added to it. And that's an interesting discussion in itself how cereal were involved in the breakfast cereal companies got involved in health and, and governmental policies for health for children. And you know, if you add these various vitamins and minerals then you get rid of some childhood diseases like rickets or berib, you know, the different kinds of diseases that governments populations mostly in the western world in cereal eating countries say that breakfast cereal has been really responsible for getting rid of these diseases in children's health. So and that's interesting because it's not actually marketing and yet of course it really helps to be able to say that your cereal does that. And then you put that of course on all your boxes and all your commercials and that kind of thing. But every kind of thing you think about with a box of cereal now came about and was used as a way to sell it, as a way to promote it, as a way to make it more appealing to people. From the, as you say, the Technicolor, the Froot Loops, you know, the brightest kind of cereals you can think of to just the colors on the boxes. So to walk through some of the historical points of that, you get. In the 1870s, we get our first trademarked figure on a box of any kind, and that is the Quaker on a box of oats, that kind of round cardboard box of oats that happens in the 1870s. And from then on, people. And there's a move that. Where it's an industrializing move and it's an urbanizing moment that's happening in history. And so the kind of the corner store where everyone just goes and buys, you know, their fabrics and their staples, and then they produce most of the stuff on their own little baby farms, you know, individual farms and stuff. That move is changing, and people are moving into cities. And, you know, it's not just the. The person that you are so familiar with and your family's always done business with. There's more of a level of anonymity now. So this idea of buying things in bulk and just kind of knowing where your stuff comes from no longer exists. And people don't trust stuff just in bulk anymore. So the idea of packaging it and wrapping it up and covering it was seen actually as a safety measure. And then the Quaker company, American Cereal Company at the time, as it was known as, they could say, you can trust us because we are safe. And so we have taken all these various measures and we've made it safe so you can buy it in a box. But of course, once it becomes a unit that you can buy instead of just bulk scoops or something that you're buying out of a bin at the this kind of village shop, then they can market it. They can, you know, set the price. They can set flavors. And then there could be competition between other people boxing it. That's one of the reasons they came up with the idea of a Quaker was because he kind of looks like Benjamin Franklin. And that's such an important figure and a popular figure, and people trust him and think he's so cool and, you know, that kind of thing. So they chose that figure. Then Kellogg, of course, is putting pictures on their boxes and suggestions about how they're, you know, the health of it and the. You know, there's lots of, like, slogans and information and eventually puzzles and games and riddles and things to read. As you're reading, you know, as you're eating your cereal and it's sitting there on the table, you can kind of read your boxes. The next development that'll happen is, like, inserts that'll get put into the boxes of cereal. And of Course, we probably all are remembering the toy surprises that are happening in the cereal. So that starts way back. And the Post is the guy that. He's kind of the genius of marketing. So if, you know, John Harvey is the reason that we have cereal, Post is really the reason that we have companies and cereal. You know, battles between Tony the Tiger and Snap, Crackle Pop and whoever. So he, he added recipe books, he added little brochures of his own, like, like his kind of autobiographical story. Those were actually called. These little pamphlets he stuck in boxes of cereal were called Road to Wellness. And that's where T.C. boyle got the name for his novel from in just to give you a point of reference here. So in 1896. So this is very early on in the stage of the, you know, the battle between the different cereal companies. Post spends almost $1,000 US but in $1896. That's a lot in advertising. But in 1897, he sold over $260,000 US in post cereal products. So obviously that $1,000 turned into just what? Okay, so 260 times success. My math failed me there for a second, but so he really emphasized that advertising will sell units, and these units being boxes of breakfast cereal. He got named Post CW Post was named the Success Magazine Advertiser of the year in 1903, for example. He just. He couldn't find a place. So this is the era of print media. So he couldn't find a place in print media that he couldn't stick an advertisement about Post about. There were statements on the boxes of Grape Nuts. So he invents Grape Nuts in the late 1890s and how it's so good for you and it's so good for your health and it'll get you flowing and all this kind of stuff. Then another important moment that is a biggie for the uk, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, the Force Cereal. Do you remember Force Cereal? This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (28:57)

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Dr. Katherine Dolan (29:02)

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Dr. Katherine Dolan (29:13)

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Dr. Katherine Dolan (29:23)

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Dr. Miranda Melcher (29:26)

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Dr. Katherine Dolan (29:28)

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Dr. Miranda Melcher (29:31)

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Dr. Katherine Dolan (29:48)

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Dr. Miranda Melcher (29:53)

I don't. But for complicated reasons, I'm not the most expert on all things cereal. One reason I liked your book.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (30:02)

Fair enough. So in 1902 there was a cereal company that was competing against post and Kellogg called for cereal and they developed the first actual mascot. And he's more or less vanished now but he lasted a lot longer in the UK than he did in the US and his name was Sonny Jim and he was down in the dumps. But then he started eating the, this forced cereal and he became, now he's known as Sonny Jim. And there's, there was a little jingle that went along to his story and a little figure, you know, cartoon little figure with a guy of a little Kate walking stick and stuff. That was the very first serial mascot 1902. And then of course that took off and it became again Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle Pop. These other, you know, we toe and all the different mascots that are all over the world and as we're, as we keep going through it just develops with the technology. And that's the thing is serial is like hand in hand. So the advertising in serial is so significant that every new technology serial is right there with how to advertise during it. So they had new radio when you know, when radio came about they had serial programs when there were then of course it just translated over to tv, to cinema, to social media now and the Internet. And it just keeps expanding and you know, however, you know they're going to figure out a way to advertise in the media. There's, they're in the Guinness Book of World Records as like the biggest serial event. How many people are sitting at a, how big of a table where in the world and, and all eating one kind of cereal. You know they find all these kind of, you know, pop up events however it is that you can, that will be the best way to market a thing in the moment. Cereal knows it almost more than any other food. I mean McDonald's maybe is up there with cereal. It's a different kind of a market, you know, franchise restaurants versus boxes of cereal. But yes, cereal is really there. And in the 1950s we got injection molding. So the technological developments as well. So you get injection molding. So you get the. That's where the plastic toy surprises come about because it becomes much cheaper to make little things out of plastic. And so then suddenly you can have whatever it is you want to have in boxes of cereal. In the early 20th century, actually quite in the earliest, it was at the 1904 World's Fair, they developed someone, a guy named Anderson, developed a gun, a big machine that would, you could, that would while overheat the grain of cereal and make it pop. And so every kind of cereal that you can picture that isn't like a nugget or a flake or a Shredded Wheat or something like that, anything, you know, Corn Pops or Cheerios or all those kinds of shapes, those come about because of this in this machine. This, this popping gun is what they called it. And so that happens in the 19, in the early 1900s, the plastics toy surprises, the different games and stuff on the back of boxes, that, that lasts through the 80s and 90s. But then eventually when kids start having TVs on and they're especially their cell phones in front of them, suddenly the breakfast cereal companies aren't putting stuff on the back of their boxes anymore so much because no one's going to be looking at the backs of boxes of cereal while they're eating cereal anymore. They're going to be looking at their phones. And so there's less of that now, except for in certain times when they'll do like promotions that are a nostalgia promotion or something which, which does happen. And sometimes those get cross listed. Like I think, I think it was both in the US and the uk there was one where there were board game coupons in boxes of cereal so you could eat these nostalgic cereals and then go and buy like Monopoly or something and have a coupon for Monopoly and they're like, you're sitting around the table as a family eating cereal. You can also sit around the table as a family and play this board game and have this kind of moment without yourself, you know, put your cell phones down. So those kinds of things are happening always. Yeah. So does that answer that?

Dr. Miranda Melcher (34:17)

It does. No. I thought that was absolutely fascinating to kind of realize just how closely intertwined these companies and these products were with nutritional, with, as you said, the shapes. Right. I never really thought about the shapes. Right. And then of course all of the advertising aspects and that kind of led to my next question, which then helpfully you answered in the book. So could you tell US a bit about this. Cereals are, of course, they've spread from New York, they've spread from Michigan, they're all over the U.S. they're in the UK as we've mentioned. And realistically, they're pretty much everywhere, or at least a decent number of them are. And so just like you've told us about how the serials were kind of intertwined with impacting and impacted by changes in technology over time, how has the expansion of these particular serials to a global audience changed the serials themselves? Or has it just been, does it go out equally everywhere?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (35:21)

Right, right. No, and it's, it's fascinating. Mostly it goes out equally everywhere. Mostly, I say. And it also the global push for selling breakfast cereal happened almost instantly as well as the marketing of it. It just anywhere that US cargo ships went, boxes of cereal went with them. And so South Africa, Cairo, Hong Kong, you know, ship ports of call that had interactions with the US and with Western Europe almost instantly happens. Sometimes different countries would have a stronger relationship with one of the cereals that, you know, wasn't quite as popular in the US let's say. So for example, in the UK forced cereal was more popular for much longer, but then also a different company. Then as that market expanded and grew and went to different countries, then the countries would develop their own breakfast cereals, of course. So and this was an interesting. Actually I'm going on a tangent here. Historically, the legality of breakfast cereal and the copyright and the patenting of items and things like that that happens through breakfast cereal has been an interesting historical element that I would not have thought to research, to be honest, except for one of my students actually picked up on it and was, she was helping me with some of the research. And so, so Lily Adams, I just name dropped you. So for example, I mentioned how Kellogg is, was very litigious and, and had to change the name of Granula to Granola so that he wasn't going to be sued by Jackson. And then when he patented his flaked cereal and process of preparing same and then almost the next minute Post is out there making a flaked cereal and selling it, he sued and he sued a guy named Henry Perkey who developed Shredded Wheat, which was another technology, but a very similar cereal, if you think about it and stuff. And actually, so it turns out you really can't patent cereal just as cereal. You know, you can patent one very particular version of it, but you can't. So it really is kind of the Wild west. And people were just, if you could come up with a different shape. If you could come up with a different flavor profile, if you could come up with a different whatever, then that became your in into the market and people were anything, yeah, shapes, flavors, designs, how you cooked it slightly differently. All of those things happened. So we. So in Australia, Ellen White, the Seventh Day Adventist, that had been in Battle Creek, which was who Kellogg was working with when he developed the Flake cereals. They ended up in Australia. He broke up with the. The Seventh Day Adventist. They got in a fight over some of the food issues. And there really when John Harvey Kellogg didn't fight with by the end really. But so they actually started a community in Australia and developed their own breakfast cereals and food items in a similar way that they were doing in Michigan. And through buying up companies and developing their own and things like that. That's where Weet Bix got started, which for reasons I'm not entirely sure about, by the time that got to the UK it became Wheat Obix. So I'm not entirely sure why the name changed. But so in the in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, it's considered Weet Bix. And that those you don't find in the U.S. for example, those are cereals that are really popular in the British Commonwealth, but not so much in the US and then different cereals just that are developed in the US but just become more popular in other countries. Like. And now these are starting to get. I start. I have started seeing these in grocery stores here now. But in South Korea, the most popular cereal is something called Oreos O's. So it's like little O's, but made out of Oreo cookies, basically instead of. These are chocolate cookies instead of like a. Not even pretending to be a health food at this point anymore. It's a cereal made out of cookies. But. But those were, you know, the most popular brand that was being sold in. In Korea at the time or one of the. One of the real popular ones. But you couldn't really find it in the US For a long time and now it's starting to get seen here. But that it's just, it is really interesting how largely there's like around five basic cereals that are the ones that started it all. So, you know, Corn Flakes, Grape Nuts, supposed with his little nuggets, Great Nuts, Shredded Wheat Weed, a Bix, Cheerios. You know, these are kind of the basics. And those are the most popular cereals all over the world to the most part. I mean, there's these fun little exceptions. Like I was just Describing. But. And it almost started instantly as they were getting developed and it remains to this day. The they just. And, and it's an interesting. I, I wonder about this. I wonder why the nostalgic ones, the really, really basic ones, remain the most popular and not the super, super sweet ones, of course, are, are fun and trendy and the kids want to eat them, but, you know, largely they're not allowed to by their parents. Largely, those remain a treat. And not just your normal breakfast cereal. I don't know, have you ever even eaten Fruit Loops or something? They're not exactly delicious. Like they're.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (40:53)

Well, maybe that's it. Maybe they stop being delicious when we're adults. And so we like the idea of them, but we don't actually want to buy them anymore.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (41:04)

Like, whoa, that's a lot of sugar.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (41:06)

Yeah, maybe by the time we're able to buy our own cereal, our tastes have changed. But that's very much a reckon not scientific. So who knows, right? I'd love to ask about kind of in some ways, one of your core motivating ways into this book in the first place, the idea that you talked about at the beginning about food in culture, food in literature, food in the arts. So how have cereal and porridges been incorporated in the arts and in literature? And perhaps as part of that question, you could explain how you managed to condense what I'm sure were many, many, many examples of this into a discrete chapter.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (41:51)

Yes, largely because my editor told me I had to.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (41:54)

But still within that, how did you choose?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (41:57)

Yes, that was challenging because I had many, many, many, many more examples in the beginning. But there are some, there are some really, really standard ones, some kind of perfect examples. Like one of the earliest ones I use in that chapter is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Right. What does she eat in each, you know, the three different bowls of porridge that she eats before she finds the one that's just right. And so even in our children's stories, peas, porridge, hot, you know, is this child's rhyme that people know from forever. And, and there was a. There's a fun little children's rhyme. Is it, is it in Czech? I believe that, you know, and there's little finger gestures that go along. So you're tickling the baby, you know, while you're singing about porridge in the pan and stuff. So these are just kind of the. Some of the earliest songs and stories and things we hear about, movies we watch are based around eating porridge, eating cereal, having the comfort of an Oatmeal or a porridge or something like that. It is interesting that these really. I mean, it's not interesting historically that they still be. They're still about porridge. You know, they're still about the comfort of the warm cereal, not the cold cereal so much. Now, of course, a story that was developed before the invention of cold breakfast cereal, that would explain that obviously why. But. But it is interesting that, you know, there isn't one Goldilocks and the Bears is still really, really popular. There isn't one where it's like Goldilocks and the Fruit Loops or she's like, this one has just the right amount of added sugar. And it really is. Every culture has those kinds of stories were in novels or plays or films or something. There's a moment where the people need comfort, where someone's feeling sick. That's another thing about specifically porridges. But cereal in general, that popped up a couple of different times as I was researching this. For breakfast. Yes. But also when people feel kind of icky or you don't feel well, it's comfort food.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (44:07)

Right.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (44:07)

So you return to it in moments of when you need comfort food. So there's one of the classic novels in China, Dream of the Red Chamber. I am obviously putting this in translation because I'm going to have to. Congee shows up and women are trying to help a man who isn't feeling well. She tempts him with various kinds of congee, which is their version of a breakfast porridge, to make him feel better and stuff. So this is running throughout stories throughout the world, that same kind of. Of homey, loveful, you know, kind of, I don't know, Hygge kind of a feeling that happens with these porridges. But then also people have a sense of humor in their story, in their art and books and media about cereal. So an early. And this have. It starts pretty early on in the history of the breakfast. The cold breakfast cereal market. There's this fabulous story called Filboy, the story of a mouse that helped. And it's written by a British author named Saki, which is the pen name for H.H. monroe, and it's published in 1911. So if you think about the fact that cereals are really happening in the 1890s and this is already coming out in 1911, it's happening very shortly thereafter that people are satirizing the breakfast cereal market, companies advertising the idea behind it, what the actual quality of the product is. And this story is all about the fact that it's a. He's. He's working, trying to market this kind of. This cereal, and it's called Filboyd's Dodge, which is a really silly name. And. But how can he make it so that it'll sell better? So he's not selling it as much as the other, you know, the competing guys are. And they decide to market it as a way to not go to hell, to be moral and to be just and to do everything right and be good and stuff. You have to eat this really disgusting cereal. It's very boring, bland, you know, not. You don't want to eat it kind of a cereal. And there's this cute little quote from the story that it says people would do things from a sense of duty, which they would never attempt as a pleasure. So he's marketing the cereal as, you know, the dutiful cereal that you need to have to make your family healthy and stuff. And so obviously, it's a broad satire against the very market of cereals that is happening at the moment. So that's fun that that's happening already by, you know, the early 1900s. And then, you know, the kind of satire, post modern, kind of classic example of material culture commentary. Andy Warhol. So if you jump to the 1960s, you get an Andy Warhol exhibit that he puts together of the Kellogg's Cornflakes boxes. So big, you know, the cardboard crates that would have a bunch of Kellogg's Cornflakes, you know, individual boxes in them. He did installations where those boxes would just kind of get piled up in a corner in a museum. And that was. That was the installation. That was the art. And much in the same way, if you know Andy Warhol, you know, of course, the Campbell's Soup can series so much in the same way that he's making commentary on the very, you know, market, marketability and commodification of these kinds of things. The cereal is happening just as much as the Campbell's Soup can is happening now. You wouldn't have seen a picture of that in my book, though, because it's copyrighted. So I wasn't able to access this. So I can tell you about it and I can tell you to Google to go on the Internet and look it up, because it's. You can find these boxes, and they're cool. It's. It's kind of satirical, postmodern commentary happening there because, of course, because Andy Warhol. And they're, again, because they're Andy Warhol. They're wildly famous and popular and expensive. I looked it up just before our talk. And Christie's website listed a recent one in 2015 selling for $900,000 US so for a box, like a fake box of cereal.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (48:17)

Okay, then.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (48:19)

Which is totally in my wheelhouse. I could totally have bought that. So, yes.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (48:28)

All right. Well, so then the future of your life is not going to be, I assume, purchasing this box of cereal?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (48:36)

No. You know, because I'm a gajillionaire, of course, but I, you know, I got to prioritize buying boots or something instead of. Fair enough. I'm a professor. We do it for love. Right.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (48:46)

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about the art and literature examples in the book?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (48:51)

Another real fun one that I found that has had a lasting kind of influence on me. There's all these fun festivals all over the world that are cereal based. And so of course, Battle Creek has an annual festival for cereal, which they pretty much should because they're where it all got started. And Battle Creek itself is referred to as cereal city of the world or breakfast capital of the world. And all these kinds of. They really play up the fact that Battle Creek is where it all got started. In Scotland, there's a really fun one that's a porridge making championship. And the prize is the golden spurtle. And a spurtle is a kind of kitchen implement that you would use to stir. So the best porridge making of whoever makes the best porridge of the year, they get this golden spurtle. So that one's kind of just fun and a little bit tongue in cheek. And then there's quite serious and earnest festivals. So there's a laba kanji, the eight treasures Kanji, that would happen in China for Chinese New Year. And it's based on a story about the Buddha who had been trying to go to starve himself for 40 days as a way to reach enlightenment. And. And then a girl comes up to him and is had. And it was kind of this, this. It's a. It's a narrative about the kind of end of season scarcity, but the joy that comes in the very simple elements. And so it's four nuts, four grains, so eight, you know, so ultimately there'll be eight treasures. And they're just. But they're simple. You know, it's rice, mung beans, dried fruits, those kinds of things. And she offers it to the Buddha and he eats that. And he realizes that starvation is not the way to enlightenment and that stead. And he moves on to the more the meditative version of reaching enlightenment and he does successfully reach enlightenment later. So that was a really cool festival. And every year until now, you can line up at different Buddhist monasteries and they'll hand out bowls of this eight Treasures Kanji. And I've been making since I found that out, since I did that research, I've been making it myself just as a. It's a very fun, very comforting, lovely little porridge to make, actually. And it's a fun way to celebrate Chinese New Year. Yeah.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (51:15)

Thank you for sharing those with us. I think perhaps some of the future of breakfast cereals clearly is those festivals continuing with all of their fun. But what else do you think the future of breakfast cereal will look like? And why?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (51:32)

Right. So it's interesting, the present of breakfast cereal, the kind of very now moment, is an interesting little moment because honestly, people are not wanting to eat breakfast cereal quite as much. Well, and Covid threw this all into a bit of a spin. So up until Covid, there had been a downtick, a slight downtick in breakfast cereal on the global market. Because people had just decided, and this says something about modern society, I think probably isn't great, that suddenly sitting down and eating a bowl of cereal was just too much to ask of us. And so you had to come up with like handheld cereal bars. Right. So you get the granola bar or the muesli bar or something. And that became the development in the. In the kind of the now as a way to grab back that breakfast cereal market. Also, the big companies are trying to market to traditionally to cultures and countries that don't traditionally eat breakfast cereal for breakfast. There's billions of people in the world and largely in the Asia Pacific region, they eat savory breakfasts instead of these kind of overly sugarized breakfast cereals. And they're. That's a huge market. And so all the main companies are definitely trying to break into that market. And so they're trying to think of ways to make cereals more appealing and. Or make. Yeah, makes basically make cereals more appealing, whether through just sheer advertising and not having to change the product much at all. Or is there some way that you can make them slightly more savory or a flavor combination that's more familiar to people in Asia instead of in Eastern Asia specifically, and stuff instead of what. What the US and the UK and stuff would be used to. And that, I think is definitely where the future of breakfast cereal, one of the places that the future of breakfast cereal is going, is trying to break into these other markets and find ways and fruit food combinations and taste combinations that will work for a whole, you know, a large chunk of the world basically of the population that at the moment is just like, no thanks, we're not that interested. And there's. They've celebrated small victories. I'm trying to remember which cereal it was. I think it was Weed, a Bix, Sweet Bix, made it to some Chinese soapy soap opera kind of drama TV show. And one of the characters was eating that box of cereal and there was honestly a run on the market for that cereal. And so they, they enjoyed that. So is that kind of product placement going to be enough or will they have to actually change it to some of the flavors that are more. And keeping like, you know, pandan based for the Philippines or something like that or some, you know, South Pacific islands. So yeah, that's definitely like a realistic logistical place that the future of breakfast cereal is going to go for marketing. Now what I am enjoying thinking about is where it shows up in stories and movies and you know, how they imagine cereal looking in the future. So, and that seems to go a couple of different ways. And if you think about movies you've seen over the last 20 years years or something, you can probably see some examples of this as well. Like in the Matrix, you know, people are eating a kind of Neo porridge. It's there for nutrients sake. It's not there to be enjoyed. It's just food that you're putting in your body to kind of, you know, keep yourself going. There's a kind of post apocalyptic vibe to some of these future cereals, if you will. And of course one of the examples being Soylent Green, which of course is like the most dramatic example of that happening of this kind of unpalatable porridge that just keeps people going. But so that seems to pop up in science fiction films a lot. This, this kind of a, like a post apocalyptic porridge. Then also if you think about examples in, in films and TV shows and stuff, there's that pill version where. So then if you think about the Jetsons, right, you, you have a pill and you put it in the microwave or something and it comes out as a turkey dinner, you know, so there's that idea of cereal as well where you, you have a pill and you, you do it and it expands into the best bowl of cereal you can think of and you just, and your perfect little cup of tea. And so those are things that people are imagining happening. And as we imagine, you know, far out kind of future cereals, I don't know if I'm down for pill based foods or for the unpalatable porridges, to be honest. But they're fun to think about, so.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (56:12)

They definitely are.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (56:14)

Yeah. And one of the ones I am seeing happening right now, and I don't see this lessening anytime soon, I see it expanding, if anything is another push for cereal. So if you can't, if you can make it happen, you know, these are the companies thinking here. If they can bring it out to different parts of the world, great. You know, that's more people buying it. And the other way to expand markets is to have it not just be for breakfast anymore, to have it be kind of a fourth meal snack food inserted wherever you need it kind of a moment. And I see that happening too. And definitely, and they aim at college students a lot for this. And since I work at a university, this, you know, this fits. And if you've noticed, they'll be, you know, you get your cafeteria meal times, but let's say outside of meal times, a lot of times more and more you'll see they just leave the cereal bins up kind of all the time. And then there's like a big milk dispenser as well. And so you can kind of grab a bowl of cereal whenever. And it doesn't just have to be when the cafeteria, you know, the lunch rush or whatever at the cafeteria. And so that I think is a, is a very good way and a very strategic way to market it to students that are studying late or that had, you know, slept in and missed the breakfast time, specific time and all that kind of thing. And then of course, if they remember cereal as being a thing that maybe you eat for dinner instead of for, you know, just for breakfast, or you eat it, you know, before you go to bed or before you do your late night study session or. In my, in my life, that would be the late night grading session, of course. But you know, if cereal can take the place of that kind of a meal and it's very, you know, of course it's very simple. You just, all you need is the bowl, the box and the milk and you don't have to prepare a whole lot. And that's one of the beauties that, and it's always been the case for cereal is this is one of those things that, you know, even a kid can do it. That's one of the reasons that breakfast, that's another one of the reasons that breakfast cereal was so popular since the beginning is you can't trust a little kid to make porridge because Hot and stoves and all this kind of stuff, but you can trust a little kid to pour a box of cereal into a bowl, pour some milk into the bowl, and then take care of their self for breakfast. That actually went. Both parents are going into the workforce, and everyone's gotten real busy in the. In the morning and stuff. That was another really important moment for cold breakfast cereals. But, yeah, I think that. I think that's gonna take off and is taking off and will just continue to do so. Is this idea of cereal becoming this meal that you eat throughout the day? And that is wildly ironic and. Sorry, I think I just cut you off there. But there is an element, I am noticing of a full circle that is happening in terms of the world and the history of breakfast cereal. And if you think about the ways that porridges were used as the food that you fed to the laborers all times of the day, and it just was like the kind of standard meal that would get them through, and that's how they built the pyramids and how they did all the work and stuff was through these very sustaining porridges. And now we have this idea of, like, even cold breakfast cereal, but that you would eat it throughout the day, and it would be the food that would get you through that next round of work and stuff. Very full circle there.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (59:29)

Very full circle. Well, as we circle round towards the end of the interview, that's my attempt at a segue. We'll see how successful that was. I've obviously been. I found a bunch of things in the book, sort of. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, that's quite surprising. But you're obviously the expert in this. Take us behind the scenes. Was there anything in particular that you found surprising in the process of researching or writing this?

Dr. Katherine Dolan (59:55)

There were a couple of things that. Because, again, I knew a little bit about Kellogg, and then, you know, finding out more about him is always fun because he's wacky, but that's kind. His wackiness is kind of well known by now. But there were certain things, like the idea of breakfast itself being like a technological advancement was fascinating to me. The idea that until you could prepare foods and store them and that kind of stuff, you would just eat whatever you could harvest until then, that was just fascinating. I mean, it's hard to even imagine me waking up and not just going to the kitchen, you know, just getting started. Another one was there was this fun little moment, and I had mentioned a minute ago about how Covid had actually. So. So the breakfast cereal industry had gone down recently, but Covid actually bumped it right back up. So it turned out that when we were all staying at home and not going out to work and stuff, people had more time and they had more time for breakfast. And so there was a real big boost in breakfast cereal purchasing because of COVID And to the. To the extent that here in the US in 2020, there was a run on post Grape Nuts, and now I can't remember, do you all have post Grape Nuts in the uk? I think you do not.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (61:20)

I've looked them up. They don't seem the most enticing thing, to be honest.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (61:29)

I think the closest would be kind of a Weetabix kind of a feel, but just they're smaller, they're little nuggets and they're nutty, they're made. One of the funniest things about them, they're called Grape Nuts and they're posts. Great contribution to the. To the world of breakfast cereals. But they are neither made of grapes nor nuts.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (61:50)

Okay. Because that was confusing me, I must admit.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (61:55)

I enjoyed that moment as well. He used a cereal called Maltose and he called it Greek Sugar. And so that was where the grape came from. And he thought that the toasted wheat had a nutty flavor, and so that was where the nuts came from. But, yeah, there's no nuts in it, it's just wheat. And so it's been a very. It's. It's crunchy, It's a little bit sweet. It's not very sweet, though, in the. In the world of sweet sugar, sugary cereals and stuff. And it's a great addition to things. Like it's great to put on top of your yogurt or to just add a little bit of crunchy nuttiness and stuff to it. So I actually like it fine. But it would be weird to have just a bowl of Grape Nuts alone. For me, I wouldn't necessarily enjoy that as much.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (62:38)

Yeah, that's what I was imagining. I was also imagining that they were grapes and nuts. So, you know, there are a lot of things wrong with my mental image, it turns out.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (62:47)

And Post would have had fun with that, of course. And so. But there was a huge run on the market for that specific cereal and they ran out. So between them not realizing there'd be such a big run on the market and then having to close factories for a while because of that, you know, in the early stages of COVID when stuff was shutting down for weeks on a time and then months at a time, and etc. They just, they ran out of boxes of Grape Nuts and there became a robust black market trade in. And you could buy them for like a hundred dollars on ebay, which is strange because these are, you know, picture your, you know, two biscuits of Weetabix and. And just. Would you be willing to pay $100 for that? You know, probably not. You know, probably you're like, I will move on to something else. Toast is also a good breakfast cereal or breakfast food, but no. So that there was this big run on the market for those and it got to the point where then of course, everything got back up to pace and it was fine. And supposed as a thank you, they, if you could find the receipt of how much you spent on your box of cereal, they would reimburse you that money. They had prizes as thank yous for people that had their cute little stories about, you know, what, what links they went to to get the kind of cereal. I mean, this is the kind of stuff marketing. I mean, sheesh, you couldn't pay for this kind of marketing. But yes, so. And I found it fascinating and it remains one of the most fascinating things about this whole project is just the older ones. The older ones are the ones that remain the popular ones and the most, the favorites people aren't going for. You know, we like the novelty of the monstrous cereals or the, you know, Frankenberry and that kind of stuff, but we don't actually want to eat them. We eat Cheerios and granola and, you know, Corn Flakes. Yeah, and Corn Flakes. Yeah.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (64:42)

That's fascinating. Thank you for, for sharing those with us. And thank you for clearing up the great knops question. That's very useful intelligence.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (64:50)

It's important information.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (64:51)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, hopefully this will also be important information. I don't really know what one could do after writing a book about breakfast cereal. I mean, what else could be quite so bright and shiny? But is there something you're looking to work on next? Whether or not it's about cereal, whether or not it's a book that you'd like our audience to be aware of.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (65:12)

Right. Well, thank you for asking. It will definitely not be shiny in the same way that the breakfast cereal has been shiny, but it is building off of some of the things I was noticing as I was researching this project. I'm interested in how people are imagining food in the future. These science fiction visions of pills. Yes, yes. Why is that where our head goes when we think of what food happens in the future? That is what I'M working on right now a couple of books if you guys have read them, like Parable of the Sower, which is this young adult, post apocalyptic kind of a book where she eats something called. She eats acorn bread. And of course acorns are a thing that exist, but, but we don't tend to put them in bread, right? We don't tend to eat them. We tend to think of them as squirrel food or something. So why is it that acorns become a thing in this time of scarcity? That is disgusting, is delicious, you know, and she loves it and it's a food she really likes and stuff. And then in the, in Margaret Atwood's Canadian author Margaret Atwood's Mad Adam trilogy, they actually bioengineer a whole different kind of subspecies of humans that can eat kudzu. Which. Do you guys have kudzu in the uk?

Dr. Miranda Melcher (66:25)

I'm not familiar with it.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (66:27)

Yeah, I think you're probably not warm enough to get it. It's a very invasive species here in the US that has just kind of taken over and it's only going to take over more as it goes. And it's, it's actually palatable. You could eat it like spinach or something, it would be fine. But we don't think of it that way. We think of it as a bad plant that you want to get rid of, not as something you could eat. But so in the book, people are eating kudzu plants. So. Yeah, why is it that so? Just the reasons behind why this is where different artists brains go when they're imagining future foods. And the working title for this new project is Imagining Tomorrow's Bread. So.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (67:04)

Okay, well, when that becomes a book, hopefully we will have you back and you can tell us all about what people imagine future food is and why. But in the meantime, listeners can read the book we've been discussing, which again is titled Breakfast A Global History published by reaction in 2023. Casey, thank you so much for being with us on the podcast.

Dr. Katherine Dolan (67:26)

Thanks for having me. It's been great. Sam.