The year is 1863. Cheerios won’t be invented for almost 60 years; Lucky Charms won’t emerge for more than a century. But a middle-aged doctor in upstate New York is at work on a snack that will change the American breakfast – and, some might argue, the nation itself – for ever.
Dr James Caleb Jackson, who ran a sanatorium in upstate New York, has invented what he called Granula: a recipe made from water and dried graham flour broken into pieces. The stuff was so hard that it had to be mixed with milk to be edible – and thus breakfast cereal was born.
