While it may seem odd to us today, accustomed as we are to charges that many dry breakfast cereals lack food value and to advertising attempts to convince us otherwise, breakfast cereals actually began as part of the health-food craze of the 1890s. The first dry, flaked breakfast cereal was developed by the Kellogg brothers, two of sixteen Michigan siblings. They came from a family of Seventh Day Adventists, a religious group headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, that emphasized attention to health and a simple, vegetarian diet. classify term="John Harvey Kellogg" project="wsd/wi" type="bookxref">John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) was a young medical doctor when he took over the Adventist Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek in 1876. He renamed that Institute the Battle Creek Sanitarium--deliberately changing the common term sanitorium--and promoted his patients' health through good diet. Dr. Kellogg constantly experimented with ways...