Today is National Cereal Day!
The day is celebrated annually on March 7.
According to the National Cereal Day website, the invention of breakfast cereal was founded on the fact that the American diet of the mid 1800’s was a poor one packed with protein, booze and caffeine.
Cereal was considered a remedy – a sort of 19th-century health or wonder food for the ailing masses.
By 1939, thanks to sugar and marketing savvy, cereal as a health food started to change. That’s when the first sweetened cereal, Ranger Joe Popped Wheat Honnie appeared in grocery stores, which would set the trend for a sweetened product that appealed to children, according to the National Cereal Day site.
Of the more than 314 million people in the U.S., 49% start their day with a bowl of cereal.
There are 2.7 billion boxes — enough to wrap around the earth thirteen times — of cereal sold every year.
