Breakfast Cereal Origins: From Civil War Rations to a Health Revolution

During the American Civil War, Union soldiers were especially grateful for hot breakfast cereals, particularly when they were on the move or isolated from supply lines. The challenging conditions and constant mobility made it difficult to consistently access fresh food. Consequently, soldiers often had to make do with whatever ingredients were available to create makeshift meals that could provide warmth and nourishment.

Cooks used the available ingredients to prepare panada, a hot breakfast gruel affectionately referred to as 'bully soup.' The primary components were watery cornmeal and crumbled hardtack, both common in soldiers' rations. Hardtack, a dry, hard biscuit, was a staple due to its long shelf life. When mixed with cornmeal and water, it formed a filling, albeit bland, meal that could be quickly cooked over a campfire. This simple gruel offered a comforting reprieve for soldiers enduring the hardships of war.

The early history of breakfast cereal traces back to the 1830s, influenced by the health reform movements that emphasized diet's role in maintaining well-being. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a pioneering nutritionist, played a significant role in this movement. In the 1860s, Kellogg conducted experiments at the sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, which eventually led to the creation of the first breakfast cereals.

Kellogg believed that a proper diet could cure various ailments, prompting him to develop a range of grain-based foods, including granola and corn flakes, designed to be easy to digest and nutritious. Initially intended for sanitarium patients, these cereals quickly gained popularity among the general public. Their convenience and perceived health benefits transformed breakfast habits in American households, revolutionizing the morning meal.
Breakfast Cereal Origins: From Civil War Rations to a Health Revolution

The early history of breakfast cereal in America

The term "cereal" has its origins in Ceres, the ancient Roman goddess associated with harvest. Cereals have been a vital part of human diets since the Neolithic era when the cultivation of wild grains marked the beginning of agriculture.

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

Ready to eat breakfast cereal mixes

Breakfast cereals are processed grains, convenient for human consumption, typically ready-to-eat, and to be eaten as a main course in the morning. They are relatively shelf-stable, lightweight, and convenient to ship and store. They are made primarily from corn, wheat, oats, or rice usually with added flavor and fortifying ingredients.

Market-driven factors and breakfast food cultures have both contributed to promote three generic ready-to-eat breakfast cereals which are found on supermarket shelves nowadays.
*Flaked cereals
*Puffed cereals
*Cereal mixes

Ready-to-eat cereals are produced by a variation of several technological operations such as cooking, shape forming, finish drying, sweetening, flavoring, enrichment with vitamins and minerals.

Ready to eat cereal mixes are cereals combined with other grain, legumes, seeds or dried fruits. Granola cereal mixes are an example of ready to eat cereal mixes. Ready to eat cereal mixes may contain a mixture of wheat, rice or corn or all of these.

Granola is highly nutritious product categorized as snack food and can be prepared using diversified ingredients. Some of these ingredients may include: cereal grains, rolled or flaked oat and barley, cereal grain germ part, honey, nuts, raisins and some other ingredients.

Breakfast cereal mix is recommended to be served as 40 g of the mix with 150 ml of warm milk to provide high sensory appeal.
Ready to eat breakfast cereal mixes

Oats breakfast cereals

The chief food use of oats is as a breakfast cereal. Hot cereals are made from oat groats, which may be “pan-toasted” and which are either flake or “steel-cut" to reduce the size and decrease the cooking time.

Oats groats as collected from the field do not have much flavor; what little flavor they do posses is not particularly appealing. Desirable flavor are developed by the wet and dry heating steps applied during processing.

Breakfast cereals are diverse in nature but may broadly be classified as uncooked and ready to eat. Uncooked breakfast cereals are typified by porridge, which traditionally is made from oatmeal or rolled oats.

Coarse oatmeal is not cooked during manufacture unless heated to inactivate lipases and requires considerable cooking. Rolled oats are partially cooked during manufacturing and require less domestic cooking.

Steel cut oats, which are also called Scotch oats or Irish oatmeal, are chewier, have more texture and are slower to cook.
Oats breakfast cereals

Iron fortification in cereal

Fortification means the addition to food of nutrients in such amounts that their final levels in the food are greater than those that were naturally present. Some of common foods which are present fortified with iron are commercial infant formulas, infant cereals and breakfast cereals.

Wheat is the cereal flour that so fortified most often but several countries particularly in Central and South America - also have programs for iron fortification of maize flour.

Iron has a complex chemistry as well as metabolism and reactions are dependent upon pH, potential oxidation, competition for other minerals, and presence of food components that can block or enhance its absorption.

Cereals are the most widely used vehicles for iron fortification although many others, such as milks products, sugar, curry powder, soya sauce and cookies have been successfully used.

Elemental iron or iron salts may be added to RTE cereals by mixing the source of iron with the cereal ingredients before cooking. In some cereal systems, the iron can be added to the cooked cereal dough or mash before extrusion and cutting of the cooked dough into pellets.
Iron fortification in cereal

The good thing about breakfast cereals

Breakfast Cereal
Let's face it: Cereal is often guilty of almost every cardinal sins of nutrition. Sugar. Marshmallows. Food dyes. Artificial flavors. More sugar. But before it became an American breakfast staple with sky-high sugar counts, cereal had a clean record--as a nourishing food for health spa patients. In 1863, sanatorium operator and vegetarian lames Caleb Jackson invented the first cereal in an attempt to combat the digestive woes of a population that routinely ate meat for breakfast. The cereal, which he named Granula, was composed of heavy bran nuggets that required overnight soaking to be chewable.

Fast forward to the 1950s, when cereal morphed into an almost dessert-like food, with up to 56 percent sugar packed in one bowl! Today, many grocery aisles still overflow with not-so-healthful options, but fortunately, it is possible to return to cereal's noble roots. The fight kind can provide a host of nutritional benefits, from fiber to B vitamins like folate and niacin to minerals like iron, magnesium, and selenium.

People always recommend looking for a cereal that's flaky or puffy as opposed to dense and nuggety; lighter cereals usually contain fewer calories per portion than more dense ones. With any cereal, it's best to eat no more than 1-2 cups per serving. This can contain up to two whole-grain servings while leaving room for low-fat milk or other add-ons.

Be a Label Lover
Look for three key numbers [on labels]: calories, fiber grams, and sugar grams. It is recommended cereals that contain no more than 200 calories per cup, provide at least 4 g of fiber, and add up to less than 15 g of sugar per serving. Stay away from labels that list sugar, dextrose, and high fructose corn syrup as ingredients, particularly if they are among the first five ingredients.

Go Grainy
When selecting a boxed cereal, look for whole-grain varieties. Whole grains are high in fiber and can help prevent type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers. To glean the full benefit of whole grains.

Brown rice, barley, steel-cut oatmeal, quinoa, amaranth, millet, buckwheat, or bulgur can all provide a nutritious breakfast when cooked. Many health food stores have a bulk bin section featuring a variety of cereal grains. Expert suggests soaking the grains with dried fruit overnight, and then adding sunflower seeds and a little half-and-half after cooking it in the morning.

Substitute for Sugar
A final tips for boosting your morning bowl's nutritional value: An ideal way of sweetening cereal is to simply add some dried fruit--raisins or currants, dried apricots, prunes, mango, pineapple, or banana. Also can reduce sugar by mixing sweetened cereals with less sugary ones. Or top with fresh fruit like berries and a sprinkle of stevia or drizzle of honey.
The good thing about breakfast cereals

History of Breakfast Cereal

Breakfast cereal, a food made from grain, commonly eaten in the morning. The oldest type of cereal, known as porridge or gruel, requires cooking in water or milk.

They are called processed foods because they go through several processes to turn them into breakfast cereal.

The original motivation for the development of precooked breakfast foods seems to have been the desire of some vegetarian to add more variety to their diets.

The modern breakfast cereals, however, are entirely precooked and eaten in cold milk. The first precooked cereal was probably invented in 1863 by Dr. James C. Jackson at Dansville, New York.

Jackson’s health food as made by rolling a coarse whole meal dough into thin sheets which were baked until they were hard and brittle loaves.

He broke up hardened loaves of unleavened whole grain bread into little pieces and served it for breakfast after soaking the brittle chunks overnight in milk. Jackson named this mixture granula.

In 1877, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg created a similar cereal called granola, but not until his invention of corn flakes in 1902 did cereal become a commercial success. At first, most cereals were marketed as pure, whole-grain foods.

Eventually, however, competition resulted in the addition of sugar and other food additives and in marketing campaigns directed at children, such as the inclusion of a premium or toy in the box.

It was C. W Post, the founder of Post Cereals who first clearly comprehend that convenience and flavor were more forceful and more widely appreciated advantages than were the healthfulness and vegetable origin previously relied upon as selling points by producers of these foods.

In the 1970s, as cereals came under attack for their lack of nutritive value, many manufacturers began adding nutrients. Unlike most other grain products, breakfast cereals have shown a steady increase in per capita consumption in the United States throughout the 20th cent.

Apart from breads, cereal is the most common form in which Americans consume grain.

Now over 75% of breakfast cereals are ready to eat type made from wheat, corn, or oats .
History of Breakfast Cereal

Cereal Foods Coatings with Nutrition and Flavor

Cereal Foods Coatings with Nutrition and Flavor
In the early days if the breakfast cereal industry, pioneer manufacturers depended in consumers to liven up the flavor of cereal in their bowls by topping off their flakes, granules, shreds, or oat meal with sugar or honey and more sophisticated flavor and texture additives, such as blueberries, nuts, or maple syrup.

The list was limited only by the consumer’s imagination. However, it was not long before these variations gave birth to prepackaged product extensions starting with presweetened flakes or puffs and continuing with more complicated products, such as fruit-filled shredded grain biscuits.

Also, the need to nutritionally fortify cereals soon arose, as consumers began to view cereals as a complete meal rather than part of a well-rounded breakfast including eggs, meat, and juice. Further complicating the process in some cases is the need to add water to flake products or remove it from them to maintain a proper moisture level and thus ensure good texture and freshness over an extended period of time.

As new generation cereal products were developed and the demand for them increased, new production technique evolved. In many cases these new generation cereals were and are using an existing product as the base (flakes, puffed grains, or shredded biscuits).

As coating systems were added to existing production lines to produce consistently coated cereals, application techniques that worked effectively at flow rates of 10-20 lb/min were found to be inefficient at flow rates of 80-100 lb/min.

Flavors and additives such as vitamin powders incorporated prior to processing are subject to deterioration due to the high pressures and temperatures in processing the cereal itself.

If they are to be incorporated before processing, it is therefore necessary to oversupply flavor and nutritional additives or furnish additives capable of withstanding these processing conditions. In either case the net effects are higher production costs and inconsistent quality.

If the process permits, flavors and additives may be applied after extrusion, flaking or baking to bypass these intense conditions and thus avoid losing their initial flavor and effectiveness.

Additionally, processing and ingredient costs can be more strictly controlled by eliminating both the over application of additive and the varying rate of loss during processing. Flavor and sugar applied topically also dissolve and disperse more quickly and thoroughly in the milk than additives mixed within the cereal piece, thereby presenting a more intense flavor profile.
Cereal Foods Coatings with Nutrition and Flavor

Cereal Nutrition

Cereal Nutrition
Long before people learned to cultivate the grasses that are today’s cereal grain, they relied upon such grains as a source of nutrients.

It is thus only natural that breakfast cereals made from the cereal grains through modern processing techniques have become primarily contributors of nutrients to our diets.

The nutrients provided by this first meal of the day include those that are indigenous to the cereal grains as well as some that are added in the manufacture of the cereal.

The nutrient contribution of cereal applies to all age groups. Processed cereals are usually the first solid food fed to infants and the cereal feeding frequently is the first of the day.

No one can doubts on the popularity of breakfast cereals among children; all one has to do is look on store shelves at the large number of breakfast cereals designed to appeal to children.

According to one study, among children aged 5-12, those who ate ready to eat cereal three or more times a week consumed significantly less fat and cholesterol and more fiber, B-vitamins and vitamins A and D than those who ate no ready to eat cereal at breakfast.

Cereal made contributions to adult as well. One study shows that breakfast consumption patterns of adult aged 50 and over and concluded that for all age and sex classes, consumption of ready to eat cereal at breakfast increased the average daily intake of all vitamins and minerals particularly those identified as under consumed by elderly individuals.
Cereal Nutrition