John Kellogg was a weirdo on several subjects. Masturbation and sex were very bad and needed to be avoided (Kellogg himself never had sex with his wife). Foods with actual taste to them were a cause of sexual desire, so his flaked cereals were designed to be as bland and uninteresting as possible. His brother Will, being more of an entrepreneur, added sugar to make them more popular, and this created a rift between them. The brother won the battle for control over the company and so today’s corn flakes are a lot less tedious to eat than the original.
John Kellogg was also an aficionado of mastication - the idea being that you chew each mouthful hundreds of times, then spit out what’s left, and never, ever swallow anything. (if you do this, food mixes in with your saliva, which you swallow automatically without conscious thought, so Kellogg fooled himself into thinking he wasn’t actually eating any of the food).
So besides being bland and boring, the other key concept to the cereal flake was that it was supposed to be something crunchy that you could chew and chew and chew. You were not supposed to add liquid to it, because that would soften it, which was bad.
John Kellogg was also very obsessed with bowel movements, hence his penchant for making cereals out of whole grain. And I’ve probably forgotten several other kinds of quackery that he was all in on. If he had lived today, he would probably be writing ad copy for Gwyneth Paltrow’s web site.
TL,DR: everyone today is eating their corn flakes totally wrong. Eaten properly, corn flakes will cure you of masturbation, perversion, and constipation and ensure you don’t ever have any sexual desires. Also, for maximum good health and pure living, don’t forget to spend five minutes chewing each mouthful of food. ETA: remember, proper mastication prevents masturbation!
http://www.museumofquackery.com/amquacks/kellogg.htm
ETA: clarified which Kellogg I’m talking about, as suggested by @Brainspore.
