Cornflakes Were Invented To Prevent Masturbation

Kellogg's cornflakes were invented to liven up your breakfast, but did you know that it was also invented to stop you from masturbating, according to dailymail.

Invented by John Harvey Kellogg in the late 19th century, the unique breakfast product was supposed to be a "healthy, ready-to-eat anti-masturbatory morning meal", according to Mental Floss. This was the age of Judeo-Christian and Victorian values.

The physician inventor was uneasy about sex, feeling that it was unhealthy for the body, mind and soul. "He was celibate, having never consummated his marriage and keeping a separate bedroom from his wife," according to dailymail. Instead of having children by impregnating his wife, he went in for adoption.

Even as he was anti-sex, he thought that masturbation was worse. "Self-pollution is a crime doubly abominable," he wrote.

He described 39 symptoms caused by masturbation in a book titled 'Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life'. The symptoms, he said, included "epilepsy, acne, bad posture, stiff joints, infirmity, poor development, fickleness, and palpitations."

The best way to cure them would be a "healthy lifestyle" with plain foods, rather than meat and rich or flavoured foods, which would hike sexual desire, he said.

As a physician at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, he created a range of breakfasts, including 'granula', a cereal in which oats and corn were "baked and then ground into tiny pieces". The breakfast was named 'granola', when a rival that was making the same product under the same name raised objections

The second step was to develop an enema machine, which could clean out the intestines with water. The next step was to ingest a pint of yoghurt---half through the mouth and half through the anus. His last step was to invent plain cereals such as cornflakes, which he thought could dampen the desire for masturbation.

It was his brother Will who decided to add sugar to the cereal and opened the new Kellogg Company. John Kellogg tried to renounce this recipe, but the brothers got into a conflict over a long period.

John's other "cures" for masturbation included applying carbolic acid to female clitoris in order to burn it, and threading silver wire through the male foreskin to prevent erections and lead to irritation.