"How Breakfast Became a Thing"

"During the campaign, which marketers named “Eat a Good Breakfast—Do a Better Job”, grocery stores handed out pamphlets that promoted the importance of breakfast while radio advertisements announced that “Nutrition experts say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

Ads like these were key to the rise of cereal, a product invented by men like John Harvey Kellogg, a deeply religious doctor who believed that cereal would both improve Americans’ health and keep them from masturbating and desiring sex. (Only half of his message made it into the ads.)

Before cereal, in the mid 1800s, the American breakfast was not all that different from other meals. Middle- and upper-class Americans ate eggs, pastries, and pancakes, but also oysters, boiled chickens, and beef steaks...

Historians tend to agree that breakfast became a daily, first thing in the morninginstitution once workers moved to cities and became employees who worked set schedules. In Europe, this first began in the 1600s, and breakfast achieved near ubiquity during the Industrial Revolution. With people going off to a full day’s work, breakfast became a thing... 

Cereal was seen as a solution to the nation’s dyspepsia, author Abigail Carroll argues, and since it didn’t need to be cooked, it was a convenience food at a time when the Industrial Revolution meant people had less time and less access to a kitchen or farm."

http://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%207/6/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

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