Kellogg's Corn Flakes & Shaking Hands with the Milkman

Time for a self-touch euphemism-o-rama

The latest news from Kellogg’s gives off serious “let them eat cake” vibes.

As you are no doubt aware, food prices are high, and people are struggling to feed their families. But perhaps you are unaware of Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick doing his best Marie Antoinette impersonation (who probably never even uttered that infamous phrase) by saying that families feeling the financial food squeeze should just eat cereal for dinner. Gary is basically saying, “Hungry? Go fuck yourself.” Speaking of fucking yourself, the Kellogg’s corporation has a history of fucked up opinions in that regard.

Before getting into that, know that the high cost of food is not inflation so much as it is price gouging by greedy corporations who used Covid as an excuse to jack up the cost of their products and thereby generate record profits. Kellogg’s is just as guilty of this as many others. Then, as much of the nation frets over their grocery bills, this cereal corporation CEO cockwagon who makes over $5 million a year says oh you’re too poor to feed your family an actual dinner? Just eat some fucking Froot Loops and all will be well. Fuck that guy.

A lot of people are saying fuck that guy, financially, not literally, because no one should ever fornicate Mr. Pilnick ever again. A three-month-long boycott of the company, planned via viral TikTok posts, is set to begin on April 1, and it’s no joke on this fool. People of all political stripes have already started boycotting. I’m one of them.

Since I am a history author, let’s get into a bit of Kelloggs company history, and also debunk some popular myths about its founder. In light of the recent fuckery, it would be amusing to perpetuate rumors about Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s creation of Corn Flakes as a masturbatory inhibitor. Alas, such stories are largely false. Which doesn’t mean the guy wasn’t way fucked up. I’ll get to that.

Born in 1853, Dr. Kellogg was the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which was basically a fancy health spa for rich people. He was a Jesus freak, as were most folks back then, but he was of the variety that was willing to treat the poor rather than say fuck them because Republican Jesus says that’s socialism.

He was also an early proponent of the germ theory of medicine rather than going along with the idea of disease ghosts in the air or some shit that was making people sick. Kellogg was big into science, so it seems weird that he would advocate eating some bland as shit cereal to stop kids from masturbating. It is weird, and also not exactly true.  

A number of sketchy websites proclaim that Kellogg created Corn Flakes as a “clean food” that would purge people of their evil carnal desire to celebrate palm Sunday, paddle the pink canoe, burp the worm, damn the beaver, shake hands with the milkman, have a ménage à moi.

But that’s not exactly accurate. Kellogg created the cereal late in the nineteenth century as a vegetarian breakfast option to aid digestion. He was all about health, and this was a health food, he said. In the process, the guy basically invented the modern breakfast cereal industry. Cap’n Crunch is my favorite, roof of the mouth be damned.

Now just because he didn’t create and/or market Corn Flakes as a manner of supressing your desire to bop your baloney or go digging for clams doesn’t mean he advocated people taking such a self-guided tour. The guy wasn’t just asexual, he was anti sex of any variety, even among married couples.

Kellogg was married for over forty years, but he and his wife slept in separate bedrooms, and had no biological children. It’s possible he never once played a single game of couch rugby his entire life. And that’s fine. Some people have no desire. What’s fucked up is when you use your influence to say that pretty much all sex is bad, like a modern-day Republican saying people should only copulate to procreate. Such current negativity toward rubbing slippery bits is probably related to the average GOP member having the magical ability to transform any clitoris into a clitorisn’t.

In 1887 Kellogg published a book deriding almost all forms of sexual contact, even amongst married couples. The book, which would become quite popular, went off on getting off as a solo endeavor. He referred to such “self-pollution” as “doubly abominable,” a “sin against nature” as bad as getting to fifth base. He saw tube sock rodeo as the “most dangerous of all sexual abuses” because of how it is “the most extensively practiced.” Was this dude spying on teenage James?

The book contained many “cures” for touching one’s tallywacker, berating one’s bean. One such treatment did include a “pure and unstimulating diet.” I can see where the connection to Corn Flakes was made, because bleh. In the back of his mind, he may have thought of Corn Flakes as part of a balanced, anti-masturbatory diet, but any claims that the breakfast cereal was marketed as a way to keep junior’s crusty wank socks from getting up and walking away on their own is false.

What about penile circumcision? It is alleged that Kellogg is responsible for America’s propensity for shortening of the splooge moose, and also as a way to inhibit them stroking their yogurt thrower. The first part is false. In the same book where he repeatedly proclaimed sex = bad, Kellogg was critical of routine circumcision, seeing little benefit to it. It was Dr. Lewis Sayre, a nineteenth century orthopedic surgeon and founder of the American Medical Association who popularized snipping skin off one-eyed snakes as a routine measure in the United States. Howeverthefuck, if a boy was caught toying with his trouser trout, Kellogg was for cutting away with no anesthetic, believing that the pain and necessary recuperation time would curb the lad’s desire for future wanking.

In conclusion, Kellogg was also hella fucking racist, but that’s another story. The company deserves this boycott. And fyi, Cap’n Crunch is made by Quaker Oats.

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