Around 7000 B.C., people in the Middle East began cultivating the first cereals, such as wheat and barley. Cereal-based breakfast foods have since become a popular choice for morning meals. Porridge or gruel, which involves cooking grains in water or milk, represents the earliest form of cereal. The tradition of eating breakfast can be traced back to the Neolithic period when people used large stones to grind grains and create a porridge-like dish. Roman soldiers also relied on a porridge known as pulmentus as a regular component of their diets.
Breakfast cereals are categorized as processed foods due to the various stages involved in their production.
During the Middle Ages, beer made from barley and hops was served to hungry peasants in the morning, often accompanied by oatcakes or porridge.
After their arrival in America, New England colonists adopted a porridge called samp, which Native American language scholar Roger Williams described as "the Indian corne, beaten and boiled and eaten hot or cold with milk or butter." Samp proved to be a highly nutritious dish enjoyed by English settlers.
During the American Civil War, Union soldiers greatly valued hot breakfast cereals, particularly when they were on the move or faced limited access to supply trains.
During those times, cooks made use of available ingredients to prepare panada, a beloved hot breakfast gruel also known as "bully soup." Watery cornmeal and crumbled hardtack, which were commonly distributed rations, formed the main components of this dish.
Another variation of cornmeal porridge involved boiling stale cornbread. Cush-cush, a specialty in Louisiana, became a standard camp meal for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.
The development of precooked breakfast foods initially aimed to offer vegetarians greater dietary variety.
In the nineteenth-century United States, a health food movement emerged, particularly among followers of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, who embraced a vegetarian lifestyle.
During that period, a significant portion of the American population struggled to consume sufficient dietary fiber, leading to various digestive disorders.
The early history of breakfast cereal in America
