If you are having cereal, before you take another bite, take a moment to wonder about your breakfast.
It certainly wasn’t a food created by a chef in some whimsical moment. It had to be a food that had fiber that would stave off gastrointestinal disorders that existed down through the centuries. You may be surprised at how it was developed by those who did it.
In the early days, our ancestors ate mostly pork and beef. Probably, there was nothing else available for the first meal of the day. Their diets were mostly void of fiber, the thing necessary for proper digestion. It was a major problem and took its toll on the society in those days. Several industrial titans made many attempts to find the right food. There were many failures.
There was a figure in American history for whom making millions was not necessarily his goal; it was mostly a byproduct. History has it that he never looked back and kept striving to do better things for society. Being a philanthropist was more important than all the riches that awaited him.
He quit grade school to manufacture brooms in his father’s broom factory. Not only did he learn the craft of making brooms, but he also sold them. As the years passed, he learned the arts of beekeeping, salesmanship and tactfulness. He jumped at every opportunity to learn anything.
This man, being a millionaire, never felt comfortable being rich. He continued to live a modest lifestyle. The work ethic was more important to him than all the riches that came his way.
History tells us that he quit the broom factory and went to work in his brother’s sanitarium. This probably was where he fell in line with his family’s faith and became a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Helping his brother with many problems, he soon became the manager. He helped his brother with research trying to improve their patients’ vegetarian diets.
Did you know that corn flakes were not created? They were discovered. One day in 1894, Will Keith Kellogg worked with his brother in a desperate effort to find a healthy cereal for the patients of his brother’s sanitarium. They ran boiled wheat mill through rollers to create a very thin, cracker-type sheet, roasted it and ground it into a meal.
When they served it for breakfast, there was no response from the patients.
It so happened that one night, they left a batch of wheat meal out and forgot to check on it; the wheat meal had overcooked. In an attempt to salvage it, Will ran it through the rollers to flatten it. When it came out the other end, the wheat meal was in a form of flakes. Will baked the flakes until they were brown. On a gamble, he served it as a breakfast cereal. It was an overwhelming success and became the favorite breakfast dish for the patients.
As the patients rotated in and out of the sanitarium, they wrote to ask for more wheat flakes. Over time, the demand for the breakfast cereal became so great that Kellogg and his brother had to form a company to satisfy the demand of their patients. The cereal soon broke out and spread worldwide. What Kellogg did was merely substitute corn for wheat. The rest is history.
It is said that Kellogg was so hell-bent on work ethic that he gave away much of his fortune to charity instead of his family. The primary reason was the fear that if he left his fortune to his children, it would make them lazy.
Of course, there were other industrial titans in history who, like Kellogg, were considered real-life heroes. They never thought of themselves, but thought only of helping their fellow man.
A story about corn flakes
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