John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) was a doctor and nutritionist in the United States. Kellogg is best remembered for inventing the Kellogg's "Corn Flakes" cereal, alongside his younger brother Will Keith Kellogg. As a doctor, he also ran a sanitarium with focus on nutrition and exercise in Battle Creek, Michigan. He helped found the American Medical Missionary College. Kellogg was also a noted eugenicist, who believed that eugenic methods would help save the race. Kellogg embraced racial segregation. However, Kellogg and his wife also believed environment could overcome heredity tendencies to some degree,. Together they fostered forty-two children, of various race and creed, often “undesirables” in some way, partly because of their belief in their theory of environment over heredity (Schwarz, 2006, p.157). In 1906, Kellogg, Irving Fisher, and Charles Davenport founded the Race Betterment Foundation.

Kellogg believed that nutrition could be used to treat many medical conditions, and was himself a vegetarian. After becoming the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Kellogg introduced numerous healthy foods to his patients, including breakfast cereals and yogurt (John Harvey Kellogg, 2014). He also advocated exercise and abstaining from alcohol and tobacco. Kellogg believed that most diseases could be treated through nutrition. Kellogg is also noted for campaigning against masturbation, which he believed could lead to a collapse of physical health (Miller, 2005).

Kellogg was a vocal eugenicist, and he was particularly concerned with race degeneracy. He believed that race was threatened both by racial mixing and mental defectives. Eugenics and euthenics were ideological approaches that presented an answer to disease and degeneracy, as well as racial hygiene (Kellogg, 1913). Kellogg hoped that so-called well-born people would be instructed on how to maintain their heritage and pass it on to the next generation, and that eugenic legislation would be introduced across the country (Kellogg, 1913). He often used agricultural metaphors to justify his views. In later life, Kellogg founded the Race Betterment Foundation to promote his views on eugenics, particularly in encouraging people of "good pedigrees" to procreate.

Kellogg also proposed creating a eugenic registry that could be used to create a pedigree of proper breeding between people. Prospective parents who met strict standards of racial hygiene, and their children, would receive pedigrees based on their heritable characteristics, and may even earn awards based on those pedigrees. (Holmgreen, 2002). Kellogg also published extensively on his beliefs, including Needed -- A New Human Race (1914), The Eugenics Registry(1915), and Health and Efficiency(1915).

-Colette Leung

• Holmgren, C. (2002). Eugenics and the Race Betterment Movement. Retrieved from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma03/holmgren/ppie/eug.html

• Kellogg, J. H. (1913). Relation of Public Health to Race Degenracy. The American Journal of Public Health, 649 - 663.

• John Harvey Kellogg. (2014). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/314401/John-Harvey-Kellogg.

• Miller, J. W. (2005). Wellness: The History and Development of a Concept. SpektrumFreizeit, 27(1): 84-106.

• Schwarz, R. W. (2006). John Harvey Kellogg, M. D.: Pioneering Health Reformer. Rocky Hill, CT: Review and Herald Publishing Association.