Andrew F. Smith

Kellogg Company

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

Founded in 1906 by Will Keith Kellogg (1860–1951) as the Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake Company, the Kellogg Company develops, manufactures, and promotes high-fiber, low-fat, ready-to-eat breakfast cereals such as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, All-Bran, and Rice Krispies. These cereals are primarily whole grains that have been cooked, flaked, and then toasted. They reflect a long-standing corporate tenet that convenient, low-cost, nutritious breakfast cereals can improve health.

Although the Kellogg corporate doctrine has a scientific basis, the company has historical roots in the religious principles of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which established the Western Health Reform Institute at Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1866. Later renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium, this facility functioned as a retreat, hospital, and spa, focusing on a vegetarian menu and dietary counseling. The vegetarian diet represented a form of abstinence, a religious response to the high-fat, low-fiber American diet prevalent in the late nineteenth century.