Kellogg’s: The Disturbing Reason Corn Flakes Exist

About this episode

This episode explores the strange history behind Corn Flakes and John Harvey Kellogg's influence on breakfast culture.

This episode contains adult topics and themes Ever wondered how the world's most popular cereal ended up in your breakfast bowl? The story behind Cornflakes is stranger than you'd think, meet John Harvey Kellogg, the man whose obsession with gut health and moral purity accidentally changed the way the world eats breakfast. 0:00 Intro 5:40 Two truths and a lie 7:30 The religious pipeline 10:40 Picking the doctor 13:35 The San 17:45 Gut Health 24:34 The anti masturbation crusade 29:41 The accidental invention 35:11 The rival next door 37:26 The brothers split 43:52 A note on more dark stuff 46:06 The end 50:42 Two truths and a lie Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Host: Kohler Media

Topics covered

• cereal history
• gut health
• moral purity
• invention
• breakfast culture

Keywords

• Corn Flakes
• John Harvey Kellogg
• cereal
• gut health
• breakfast
• invention
• moral purity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Kellogg’s

More episodes of How We Got Here with Chris Kohler

• How IKEA tricks you... over and over · September 6, 2026 · 51 min
• Why Uber Eats Is About To Get Even More Expensive · August 24, 2026 · 53 min
• How Housing Became So Broken · August 10, 2026 · 1h 1m
• The Toxic Economy of Gaming · July 27, 2026 · 50 min
• Why Are All Our Movies Ads Now? · July 13, 2026 · 53 min
• Hang on... was Tupperware a pyramid scheme? · June 29, 2026 · 46 min