Season 12 · Episode 52 of 68 Aired Sep 14, 2005

Cereal: History in a Bowl

Wed, Sep 14, 2005

Streaming on Prime Video, DirecTV On Demand, The History Channel, Tubi TV + 6 more

0 of 68 watched this season

Next: S12 E53

Move over pancakes, step aside bacon! Cereal is arguably the true breakfast king, a $9-billion industry with an indisputable place in pop-culture history. Full of surprise, nostalgia, and fascinating facts, our special celebrates the colorful–and crunchy–saga of a distinctly American breakfast. We see how a Presbyterian minister-turned-health-food-fanatic–Sylvester Graham, of “Graham cracker” fame–turned his countrymen from fried pork breakfasts to grain- and bran-heavy diets in 1824. We reveal the rivalries, tricks, and accidents that turned cereal into a breakfast sensation. And we examine the amazing feats of marketing used to promote the product–from creating iconic characters for packaging, to ingenious prizes that drove consumers to the shelves in droves.