Today’s Wonder of the Day was inspired by Kenan. Kenan Wonders, “Who invented cereal” Thanks for WONDERing with us, Kenan!
Does your morning routine go something like this? You crawl out of bed and walk sleepily to the kitchen. As you stretch and rub your eyes, you grab a bowl and a spoon. Then you survey the cereal boxes.
What will it be this morning? Flakes of corn? Loops of fruit? Super sugary nuggets of pure goodness? You make your choice, open the box, and fill your bowl. Then it's on to the refrigerator for the milk.
You soak your cereal with a good bit of milk and then dive in spoon first. Breakfast accomplished! Soon it'll be time to get dressed and out to the bus stop.
That may not be your routine every day. You may throw eggs and bacon or pancakes and waffles into the mix every now and then. But many kids do love a good bowl of cereal.
And why not? A walk down the cereal aisle in any grocery store will reveal what most kids already know: there's a cereal out there for every possible taste. Some kids get overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices when asked to pick out a cereal.
We even know some adults who still love to have cereal for breakfast. In fact, we know some adults who love to have cereal for dinner or even a late-night treat. You never can get too old for cereal!
Have you ever WONDERed who came up with breakfast cereal? Here's a hint: it wasn't a tiger or a leprechaun.
Eating processed grains as the first meal of the day dates back hundreds and hundreds of years. For example, in Europe, barley was often used to make porridge as a breakfast dish.
In 1863, James Caleb Jackson created Granula, which was a breakfast cereal made of heavy bran nuggets. It never caught on, though, because the cereal needed to be soaked overnight in order to be tender enough to eat.
The cereal flakes we know today were developed in the late 1870s by the Kellogg brothers. In 1877, John Harvey Kellogg created wheat flakes by accident. One night, he accidentally left a batch of boiled wheat soaking overnight. The next day he rolled it out and let it dry, thereby creating the first wheat flakes.
His brother, Will Keith Kellogg, used a similar method to create corn flakes later on. Will eventually started the Kellogg Company in 1906. Over time, he developed better packaging (boxes), improved the taste of cereal by adding sugar, and began marketing breakfast cereals to kids using cartoon characters.
Although some people occasionally eat cereal by itself, most people eat cereal with milk. Why is that? The first people to create and experiment with cereals often soaked them in milk to add protein and make them easier to eat. The simple answer, though, is that it just tastes good! Can you imagine eating your favorite breakfast cereal with water, orange juice, or soda? Yuck!
Standards: CCRA.L.3, CCRA.L.6, CCRA.R.1, CCRA.R.2, CCRA.R.4, CCRA.R.10, CCRA.SL.1