About this episode

This episode explores the origins and misconceptions surrounding breakfast cereal, particularly focusing on its sugar content and marketing strategies.

Corn subsidies, cartoon tigers, and fake health claims turned sugar into breakfast. Nick Pell digs to the bottom of the box on Skeptical Sunday! Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Nick Pell ! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1359 On This Week's Skeptical Sunday: Your innocent bowl of Corn Flakes was invented by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg — a Seventh-Day Adventist convinced that bland, flavorless food would stop people from masturbating. The great American breakfast staple is, at its root, a failed anti-vice experiment that accidentally became candy. "Part of a balanced breakfast" and "the most important meal of the day" aren't dietician wisdom — the latter was minted by a 1944 Kellogg's ad campaign and simply repeated until it felt like science. The health halo around cereal was written by marketers, not doctors. Nutritionally, sugary cereal is equivalent to ice cream — some brands run north of 50% sugar with barely any…

People in this episode

Host: Jordan Harbinger

Guest: Nick Pell

Topics covered

• breakfast cereal
• corn subsidies
• health claims
• sugar content
• marketing
• diet misconceptions

Keywords

• breakfast cereal
• corn subsidies
• sugar
• health claims
• Kellogg's
• diet
• marketing

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Kellogg's, Seventh-Day Adventist

Places: America

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