John Kellog was a seventh day Adventist, and also a kind of health guru. An incredibly popular one. A lot of his health guru shit was based entirely around his batshit crazy religion. This religion found masturbation to be one of the ultimate sins, and so John thought just about every problem, from acne to cancer, was caused in part by masturbation. So a lot of his treatments were anti masturbation based.

He did other wild shit too like giving people daily yogurt enemas and strapping them to chairs that violently shook you until you shit yourself at his healthy living camps that he did. But his true crusade was against masturbation.

John Kellog is the one most responsible in North America for popularizing circumcision here. He believed that little boys would masturbate less if they didn’t have foreskin. Jokes on him though, takes a lot less than cutting the tip of your penis off to stop ME from jackin it 24/7.

But yeah, HE wanted a more extreme version than what we got now. He wanted there to be no anesthesia, and he wanted the kids to be old enough that you could tell them it was a punishment for being a bad kid and scar them mentally. He also suggested that instead of circumcision, we could see metal sutures through the tip of the penis and the foreskin so that erections were actively painful. He also wanted to use acid to burn little girls clitoruses off to prevent them from self diddling. Fucked up shit, glad it didn’t catch on.

Anyway, cereal in general was invented by this guy because he believed that flavourful, sweet or spicey food would promote masturbation. Why? I have no fucking clue. But that’s why he invented the first breakfast cereals. To prevent morning masturbation.

Corn flakes in particular he believed could also double as a sterile douche for women to clean their vaginas.

Let me say that again. HE CREATED CORN FLAKES FOR EATING AND ALSO CLEANING VAGINAS.

So yeah, that’s the short version of THAT bonkers story.