Breakfast cereals

This process sheet immerses us in the American world of breakfast cereals, which is, after all, a relatively recent phenomenon.

These appeared at the end of the 19th century in the form of oat flakes and cornflakes. In some European countries, particularly France, flour, malt, then flakes and muesli, processed cereals became established as breakfast foods. 1854 marked the advent of processed cereals in the form of oat flakes, which were marketed in 1877 under the Quaker brand. In France, as early as 1890, Joseph Favrichon advocated a balanced diet with natural foods such as flour, malt, and then flakes. In the 1890s, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a young American stomatologist, John H. Kellogg, came up with the idea of crushing wheat grains, then corn, and steaming them before rolling them and browning them in the oven. In fact, he had just invented the first cornflakes, which, due to the cooking and toasting process, were easier to digest. In 1906, his brother Will K. Kellogg founded the Kellogg Company. That same year, in Switzerland, Dr. Bircher Benner invented muesli, inspired by mountain dwellers who combined milk, oat flakes, and berries. In 1930 in the United Kingdom, a whole wheat biscuit was marketed under the Weetabix brand, and the first imports to France began in 1968 with Kellogg's cornflakes. In 1969, Englishman Bill Jordans traveled to the United States, where he discovered ready-to-eat cereals called "granola." Upon his return, with the help of an engineer and his family's mill, he produced the first crunchy muesli in Europe. This muesli consisted of cereal clumped together with honey and baked in the oven: it was the birth of the first gourmet muesli.

Consumption in France remained very low until the market picked up in the 1980s. Since 2017, it has been declining for health reasons, as these products are considered too fatty, too sweet, and too salty. This fact sheet examines this rapidly changing sector .