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When Dr. John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes, he wasn’t thinking about millions of little kids running up and down supermarket aisles, stuffing cartoon-adorned boxes of breakfast cereal into the shopping carts of their frustrated mothers.

He was thinking about his many patients with poor, or no, teeth who couldn’t chew their food into the gooey pulp that encouraged adequate saliva flow.

After months of experimentation, Kellogg developed a process for toasting and dextrinizing grains to make them dry, crisp, and easily flaked. When he applied it to corn he found what he was looking for.

A simple, humble, bland food.

Kellogg liked bland. He adored bland. Bland, he believed, would save your life. Of course, he also felt that way about yogurt enemas.

Little wonder, then, that Kellogg is considered to be one of the true visionaries of the healthy-lifestyle movement—or a leading candidate for induction into the Snake Oil Salesman Hall of Fame.

John Harvey Kellogg was raised in Battle Creek, Michigan, an otherwise unremarkable mill town except for its being headquarters of the newly-formed Seventh-day Adventist Church. Kellogg was deeply affected by church teachings, and many— including the benefits of fresh air; exercise; a low-fat, vegetarian diet; and an alcohol-free, non-smoking lifestyle—served as the foundation of the health regime he was famous (or infamous) for.

Kellogg was also a medical doctor and, in 1876 at the age of 24, the combination of religion and science landed him the job as medical superintendent of the Western Health Reform Institute, a clinic owned by the church.

With his participation, the church changed the name to the Battle Creek Sanitarium (“the San” as it became known), the new name projecting the positive qualities of medical science that would appeal to middle-class patrons anxious to regain and sustain their well-being.

And appeal it did.

At its peak, the San treated 7,000 people at a time, including the likes of Henry Ford, Mary Todd Lincoln, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding.

It was at the San that Kellogg not only espoused blandness, but also developed unusual treatments that earned him the reputation of visionary or quack, depending upon how you felt about electric light baths; daily water baths combined with salt scrubs, towel rubs, hot and cold compresses; and those yogurt enemas.

And his corn flakes were a part of it all.

Kellogg touted them as an ideal substitute for the standard steak-and-eggs breakfast beloved by his middle-class patients because corn flakes contained none of the animal proteins that so repulsed him.

Animal proteins, and the spices that went with them, over-stimulated the senses and led to the most debilitating of all afflictions, the one Kellogg devoted most of his life to combating…masturbation.

Masturbation, he wrote, was “perverting the energies and demoralizing the minds of many of our fairest and best.” Blandness was the key to stifling the scourge.

For some reason, it’s a benefit I’ve never seen on the box.

As they say, however, sex sells. Apparently, no sex sells even better.

Kellogg’s corn flakes were so popular among the patients that he and his younger brother, William Keith (Will) Kellogg, formed a business to manufacture and sell “Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes.” for patients to eat at home.

Not only did the company thrive, it inspired competition. In its heyday, Battle Creek—due in large part to John Harvey’s decision not to trademark the name corn flakes—was home to some 40 cereal companies.

But John Harvey wasn’t one to take success lying down.

An argument with his brother over expanding the business turned ugly when Will suggested adding sugar to the corn flakes to enhance their taste (and consumer appeal). Add Sugar? Add a substance on John Harvey’s list of forbidden foods?

Never.

Will had had enough. In 1906 he left the San (where he’d been keeping the books) and set up the W. K. Kellogg Company. To separate his product from his brother’s, Will put his now-famous signature on the box. John Harvey retaliated by selling corn flakes under the name Kellogg Food Company.

Faced with a relationship that was anything but bland, John Harvey and Will did what you would expect brothers to do.

They hired lawyers.

In 1910, John Harvey sued Will in an action that led to Will’s gaining exclusive rights to the Kellogg name. The two brothers rarely spoke again, and today there is barely a mention of John Harvey on the Kellogg’s corporate website.

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes is now the country’s best-selling breakfast cereal even though the word “bland” was never officially part of its marketing pitch.

As for “masturbation,” I wouldn’t even bother to ask.