Early history of breakfast cereal

The word “cereal” comes from the name Ceres, the ancient Roman goddess of the harvest. Cereals have been people’s basic food since Neolithic times, following the birth of agriculture, which initially focused on the cultivation of wild grains.

Around 7000 B.C the first cereals (wheat & barley) are cultivated in the Middle East.

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. Eating breakfast began in the Neolithic (late Stone Age) era, when large stones were used to grind grains to make a sort of porridge. Porridge was also a staple of Roman Soldiers’ diets – they called it pulmentus.

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

During the middle ages, barley and hops were used to make beer which was served up in the morning to hungry peasants alongside oatcakes or porridge.

A porridge called samp had been eaten by New England colonists since shortly after they arrived in America. It was described by Native American language scholar Roger Williams as ‘the Indian corne, beaten and boiled and eaten hot or cold with milk or butter, which are mercies beyond the Native plaine water and which is a dish exceedingly wholesome for the English bodies’.

During the American Civil War, Union soldiers were glad to get a hot breakfast cereal, especially when they were in the march or cut off from supply trains.

Cooks used foodstuff on hand to make, panada, a hot breakfast gruel affectionately known as ‘bully soup,’ which the main ingredients were watery corn meal and crumbled hardtack, both of which were standard issue.

Another cornmeal porridge can be made by boiling stale cornbread. Cush-cush is a Louisiana dish that was standard camp fare for Confederate soldiers during civil war.

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.

Health food movement emerged in the nineteenth century United States, in a particular among followers of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church which emphasized a vegetarian lifestyle.

At that time most Americans did not consume enough dietary fiber and many suffered from digestive disorders as a result.
Early history of breakfast cereal