Breakfast cereals have a praiseworthy origin. They were invented by health spa owners to offer an alternative to the typical breakfast of the time: eggs, coffee, and meat, usually in the form of beef, bacon, or sausage. Initially, breakfast cereal provided an economical use for the crumbs that fell to the bottom of the bread ovens at the health spas. The word “cereal” itself means, simply, grain, and derives from Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. We’ve traveled a long way from breakfast cereal’s origin, but unfortunately it’s been in the wrong direction.

The first mass-produced cereal, granula, was a product similar to what today we would call Grape–nuts. The name granula was derived from “granules” or “grains.” Granula nuggets were hard, and they needed an overnight soak to make them palatable. Its name, Grape-nuts, is derived from the fact that these early cereals, which were sweetened with maltose–also known as grape sugar,–had a vaguely nut-like flavor.  For several decades, a small number of whole-grain cereals similar to this one predominated.

Then, after World War II, breakfast cereal companies hired advertising agencies, expanded their vision, and began to target children. Whole-grain cereals evolved into an entirely different product. To appeal to children’s young taste buds, the new breakfast cereals were made primarily of stripped white flour (without their bran and germ) and sugar. Staggering amounts of sugar. Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks, created in 1953, was 56 per cent sugar by weight. Froot Loops was 41 percent sugar by weight. Many brands of cookies contain less sugar than that.

Breakfast cereals are what economic analysts call a “high margin-to-cost business.” Gross profit margins in the breakfast cereal industry are on the order of 40-45 per cent. The product is found in an estimated 90 percent of American homes, a phenomenon known in the industry as penetration. JP Morgan estimates that marketing, perhaps cereal’s biggest cost, accounts for 20-25 percent of the sales value.

Breakfast cereals layer a variety of different sweeteners in and among their ingredient lists. David Kessler, in The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, explains that “If a food contains more sugar than any other ingredient, federal regulations dictate that sugar be listed first on the label. But if a food contains several different kinds of sweeteners, they can be listed separately, which pushes each one farther down the list.”The resulting ingredient list appears to have less sugar than actually exists in the product. Kessler adds that “Cereals often include some combination of sugar, brown sugar, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, and molasses.” 

To me, the curious thing is that we are not really being fooled. We actually know that most breakfast cereals are a poor substitute for a nutritious breakfast. Icons of popular culture, such as Calvin & Hobbes, the Simpsons’ Krusty the Clown, and even the Berenstain Bears, remind us exactly what breakfast cereal is.

Calvin eats Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, “tasty, lip-smacking, crunchy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside [that] don’t have a single natural ingredient or essential vitamin to get in the way of that rich, fudgy taste.” Hobbes says they make his heart skip like “eating a bowl of milk duds.” These descriptions make us laugh, but we buy still more. Krusty the Clown endorses Chocolate Frosted Frosty Krusty Flakes with: “Only sugar has more sugar.” Frosted Krusty-O’s were actually sold in 2007 to promote The Simpson’s Movie. Other cereals featured on The Simpsons include “Frosting Gobs” and “Count Fudgula,” an obvious reference to Count Chocula cereal. “Coco Chums” cereal is mentioned in the Berenstain Bears book Too Much Junk Food. Our children are not eating breakfast. They are eating candy.