92: John Harvey Kellogg

Ill-Equipped History

This week's episode is about a health-obsessed doctor who also happened to invent one of the most famous breakfast foods of all time! Dr. John Kellogg had good ideas about health, questionable ideas about food, and unforgivable opinions about eugenics. Like many people covered on Ill-Equipped History, he's complicated!

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Sources:

“Dr. John Kellogg Invented Cereal. Some of His Other Wellness Ideas Were Much Weirder.” by Greg Daugherty (Aug 2 2019, updated May 17 2023)

https://www.history.com/news/dr-john-kellogg-cereal-wellness-wacky-sanitarium-treatments

“How the ‘Battling’ Kellogg Brothers Revolutionized American Breakfast” by Terry Gross (Aug 8 2017)

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/08/08/542145177/how-the-battling-kellogg-brothers-revolutionized-american-breakfast

“John Harvey Kellogg, MD: Health Reformer and Antismoking Crusader” by Elizabeth Fee & Theodore M Brown (Jun 2002); American Journal for Public Health, 92(6):935. doi: 10.2105/ajph.92.6.935

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1447485/

“‘To Rid Society of Imbeciles’: The Impact of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s Stand for Eugenics” by Elizabeth Stout (Dec 12 2022)

https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2022posts/the-impact-of-dr-john-harvey-kelloggs-stand-for-eugenics.html

“John H. Kellogg”

https://www.invent.org/inductees/john-h-kellogg

“John Harvey Kellogg: The Controversial Scientist Who Became the Cereal King” by Shannon Callahan (Apr 8 2022)

https://www.historyhit.com/john-harvey-kellogg/

“J.H. Kellogg Dies; Health Expert, 91” Obituary for The New York Times (originally published Dec 16 1943)

https://web.archive.org/web/20020216231918/https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0226.html

“A Recipe for Good Health” by Hillary Mohaupt (Apr 12 2017)

https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/a-recipe-for-good-health/

“Were Kellogg’s Corn Flakes Created as a ‘Anti-Masturbatory Morning Meal’?” by Dan MacGuill (Aug 16 2019)

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kelloggs-corn-flakes-masturbation/

“The Simple Life in a Nutshell (‘Biologic Living’)” by Dr. J.H. Kellogg

https://web.archive.org/web/20090430201429/http://lifestylelaboratory.com/articles/simple-life-nutshell.html

Plain Facts for Old and Young by John Harvey Kellogg. Segner & Condit, Burlington, IA (1881).

https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/19924

“John Harvey Kellogg Biography”

https://www.infoplease.com/biographies/society-culture/john-harvey-kellogg

“How John Harvey Kellogg was wrong on race” by Nick Buckley (March 21 2019)

https://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/story/news/2019/03/21/john-harvey-kellogg-battle-creek-michigan-eugenics-race-nazis/3202628002/

“Kellogg, John Harvey (1852-1943)” by James L. Hayward (Jan 28 2020)

https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=89LQ

Sound Credits:

crowd int high school cafeteria seniors busy1 Montreal, Canada.flac by kyles -- https://freesound.org/s/455699/ -- License: Creative Commons 0