[// Pregenerate link to episode ahead of time: - clicktotweet.com- sharelinkgenerator.com]: #
This week's episode is gr-r-reat, probably because we can see why kids love the swirl of Nicks in every bit of this week's episode... on Breakfast Cereal fans!
Next week, we'll have special guest friend, [EFG Nick](http://www.epicfilmguys.com/), to talk about fans of fad foods!
## Episode outline
### Fandom Facts
**History and Origins:**
Breakfast cereal is a type of food, often made of grains and eaten as the first meal of the day (in Western society, at least). Cereals are often fortified with vitamins, lack the vitamins needed for a healthy breakfast, _and_ are often high in sugar. In 1970, there were only 160 different kinds of cereal in the US; in 2012, there were almost 5000.
[//Apparently, breakfast cereal has profit margins of 40-50%? That's a lot ]: #
Breakfast cereal actually shares its history _way_ back with indigenous North Americans who had found a way to make ground corn palatable (later, called "grits" or "hominy")... though it never gained a foothold in the northern US. Apparently, there was a group of food reformers who wanted to cut back on excessive meat consumption at breakfast (including Seventh-day Adventists, who made the food reforms part of their religion).
Flash forward a bit to the end of the 19th century with a certain John Harvey Kellogg, son of an Adventist factory owner, medical superintendent, _and_ masturbation rehabilitator. The institute he worked at often had wealthy industrialists visit for recuperation and they were accustomed to egg, ham, sausage, fried potatoes, coffee... and so on; at the facility, they found abstinence and a vegetarian diet. Kellogg experimented with granola, which eventually lead to Cornflakes, the archetypical breakfast cereal. Later, Charles W. Post (a patient at Kellogg's sanitarium), impressed by the all-grain diet, began experimenting on his own and eventually introduced Grape-nuts.
...But there is a lot of history. Too much for me to get through. Read it for yourself [on wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_cereal#History_in_North_America).
**Search Data:**
Would you believe that we are in the middle of a [slow growth in interest in breakfast cereal](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0l6sg)? While there was a decline in interest from 2004 to about 2008, it seems that interest is slowly on the rise again.
The top 10 countries by search volume: Poland, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore, South Korea, Norway, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand.
**Fanac Fast Facts:**
- There are over 1000 fanfics when searching for cereal on [Archive of Our Own](http://archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search%5Bquery%5D=cereal)
- [Frankenberry caused a strange health epidemic in the 70s](https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-strangest-stories-behind-famous-cereals-and-their-mascots)... because kids were eating a lot of the cereal leaving their stool discoloured
- There were some really racist and weird cereal mascots, like [So-hi and a creepy clown for "Rice Krinkles"](http://mentalfloss.com/article/53218/6-controversial-moments-world-breakfast-cereal) (later, Cocoa and Fruity Pebbles)
- [Cap'n Crunch has a backstory](https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-strangest-stories-behind-famous-cereals-and-their-mascots)
> Taken from the official website as well as commercials and official social media posts, Crunch Island, located in the Sea of Milk--a magical place with talking trees, crazy creatures and a whole mountain (Mt. Crunchmore) made out of Cap’n Crunch cereal--is the birthplace of Cap'n Horatio Magellan Crunch.
>
> — [Odyssey - 4 Strange Things You Never Knew About Your Favorite Breakfast Cereals](https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-strangest-stories-behind-famous-cereals-and-their-mascots)
### [Last Episode's](http://fanthropological.com/e/wonder-woman-lassoing-the-truth-about-the...
