There’s nothing quite as refreshing as a bowl of corn flakes smacking around your chops in the morning.

But the original purpose of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes is far from that of maintaining a balanced diet.

It turns out that corn flakes were invented to stamp out sex and masturbation.


Yep, take that and drizzle it over your Snap, Crackle and Pop.

Did you know? Dr Kellogg was a seventh-day Adventist, a Protestant Christian denomination. Despite inventing the corn flake, it wasn’t actually Dr Kellogg who founded Kellogg’s – that was his brother Will.

John Harvey Kellogg was a staunch believer in the benefits of celibacy, believing that sex was unhealthy for the body, mind and soul. Masturbation, meanwhile, he considered even worse.

‘Self-pollution is a crime doubly abominable,’ he is quoted as once saying, while in his book Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life he said masturbation caused epilepsy, bad posture, stiff joints, fickleness and palpitations.



Dr Kellogg, who died aged 91 in 1943, never consummated his marriage and rather than have sex to procreate, he chose to adopt several children and foster 42. His wife slept in a separate bedroom.

So where do cornflakes come into this?

American doctor John Harvey Kellogg (1852 – 1943, left) in conversation with Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950), (Picture: Getty Images)

Dr Kellogg’s believed meat and rich or flavoured foods increased sexual desire – and plain foods suppressed it.

This led to him creating a range of breakfast products, while a physician at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, that he believed would stop people pleasuring themselves.

His first invention was ‘granola’ before moving on to inventing an enema machine and stuffing half a pint of yoghurt up his anus as a ‘cleanse’. The other half pint would be consumed by mouth.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) pictured dictating to his secretary

His final invention was plain cereal – including corn flakes – which he marketed on a mass scale with his brother Will. The brothers fell out after Will, who also died aged 91 in 1951, added sugar to the recipe and formed the Kellogg company on his own.

Metro.co.uk has approached Kellogg’s Corn Flakes for comment.

So there you go.

Oh, and there is no evidence that eating cornflakes leads to less sex.

Hat tip: Mental Floss.

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