Corn Flakes Whipped Up To Pour Cold Milk On Serial Sinners

Sun Herald

Sunday August 26, 2007

David Dale

SOMEHOW I can't see Uncle Toby succeeding in his current scheme to transform the breakfast habits of a nation. Have you noticed how he's spending millions to promote a new product called Oat Brits?

He's hoping we've retained enough of the cholesterol paranoia that started in the 1980s to shift from our decades-long addiction to wheat and corn in the morning. But Uncle Toby is pushing fibre uphill. He'll never replace the mighty rectangle. Consider this Nielsen chart of market share in the cereal business ...

What Australians eat for breakfast: 1. Weet-Bix 8.7 per cent; 2. Kellogg's Nutri-Grain 7.2; 3. Uncle Tobys Plus 5.4; 4. Kellogg's Just Right 4.9; 5. Kellogg's Coco Pops 3.8; 6. Kellogg's Special K 4.4; 7. Kellogg's Sultana Bran 4.4; 8. Sanitarium Up & Go 4.2; 9. Kellogg's Corn Flakes 3.7; 10. Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes 2.5.

So entrenched are the breakfast habits of Australians that there's been very little change in that chart for 20 years, apart from a slow decline in demand for Corn Flakes and the arrival last year of Up & Go, which is simply Weet-Bix in liquid form.

(If you want to know the rest of the Aussie morning ritual, most of us cover our cereal with Pura or Paul's milk, throw down a glass of Berri or Golden Circle fruit juice, spread Vegemite on a slice of Wonder White, and drink a cup of Nescafe Blend 43).

Despite the homely sounding name, Uncle Tobys is owned by one of the world's biggest food companies - Cereal Partners, a consortium of America's General Mills and Europe's Nestle. Kellogg's is American, of course. Weet-Bix is Australian-owned, produced by Sanitarium, a branch of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

It seems odd that a church would be in the food business until you learn why. Breakfast cereal was invented in the first place to stop the "sin" of masturbation.

When Dr John Kellogg became superintendent of the Seventh Day Adventist Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1876, he found that the patients were prone to all manner of unhealthy practices. He concluded this was because they were not regular. The answer lay in starting the day with high fibre.

By toasting blobs of maize hash, he created a product he called Corn Flakes, and by shredding and compressing wheat, he created rectangles he called Granose. His brother Will Kellogg formed a company in 1906 to market the vision to the world.

One of Dr John's disciples at the institute was a young Australian Adventist minister named Willy White. He returned to Melbourne in 1898 and set up the Sanitarium Health Food Agency, which started making corn flakes and granose.

After Kellogg's set up in Australia in 1924, Sanitarium changed the name of its shredded wheat rectangles to Weet-Bix, and became Australia's biggest competitor to the US company that had provided its inspiration.

With all the effort now put in by Sanitarium, Kellogg's, and Uncle Tobys to ensure our morning regularity, it's a wonder there's a single masturbator left on this continent.

© 2007 Sun Herald

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