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They're the family-friendly way to start your day - but it's been revealed that Mr Kellogg invented Cornflakes for something more than breakfast.

It turns out it was all about SEX.

Inventing the familiar golden flakes in the late 19th Century, John Harvey Kellogg was desperately seeking a way to stop the descent of humanity into debauchery.

The physician was a prude who believed that sexual desire was wrong, and that masturbation would bring diseases, according to Mental Floss.

(Image: Getty)

Although he was married, it's believed that Kellogg never consummated his own marriage, and he spent his time writing anti-sex books and formulating something which would turn people away from getting hot and heavy, alone or with friends.

In his book Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life, he explained: "If illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin, self-pollution is a crime doubly abominable."

He claimed that symptoms of sex would include general infirmity, defective development, mood swings, fickleness, bashfulness, boldness, bad posture, stiff joints, fondness for spicy foods, acne, palpitations, and epilepsy.

It was when he was working at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan that he devised what he felt were dietary alternatives to the sins of the flesh.

(Image: Getty)

From granola to cornflakes, working with his brother Will he eventually launched his version of cornflakes to sell to the public.

The breakfast favourite was certainly a better alternative to Kellogg's treatment for children to disabuse them of any notions of self-love.

With boys, he said, thread silver wire through the foreskin to stop erections and irritate.

For girls, he was known to apply carbolic acid to the clitoris to burn it and discourage touching.