Health Nut Extraordinaire!

You probably recognize the name Kellogg from cereal boxes, but did you know that John Harvey Kellogg, the co-inventor of breakfast cereal flakes, was also a famous surgeon and health expert?
He and his brother, Will, were working on creating healthy foods for their patients when they accidentally discovered how to make cereal flakes. The flakes were so popular that the two brothers started the Sanitas Company. Will eventually created his own business, and the Kellogg company, as the business was named, became the world’s leading producer of flaked cereals.

John Harvey Kellogg was born in Tyrone, New York, in 1852. His family moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, when he was young, and he grew up there with his fifteen brothers and sisters. As a boy, he had to work hard, and by age 10 he was working in his father’s broom factory. After finishing high school in a year, he became a public school teacher when he was 16.

James and Ellen White encouraged him to study medicine, and they helped pay for his tuition. He completed a two-year medical course and was placed in charge of the Health Reform Institute, which had been started by the Adventists.

Under his management, the institute became the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a very successful and highly recognized health facility. You may have heard of some of the rich and famous who were treated there: J. C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Booker T. Washington, Amelia Earhart, and Warren G. Harding, who later became President of the United States.

John Harvey Kellogg did a lot to promote healthful living. All his adult life, he taught people about the importance of good nutrition, exercise, rest, and fresh air. A prodigious surgeon, he performed more than 22,000 operations! Some of his many inventions are on display at Adventist Heritage Village, including a bucking horse exercise machine. Corn flakes and many nut-based foods are among his credits.

Unfortunately, Dr. Kellogg began to have conflicts with church leaders about how to manage medical institutions. He also promoted strange pantheistic teachings, saying that God was present in everything. Ellen White sent him many messages of warning, but he ignored them and ended up leaving the Adventist Church. As Ellen White wrote, during the more than 30 years he worked for the church, he “occupied the position of leading physician in the medical work carried on by the Seventh-day Adventists.”