Breakfast cereal, an American invention, began life as an aid to digestion with religious overtones (kind of), became a sugary morning standby and today can be found in rows of boxes ranging from health food and sugar bombs.

Historians mostly agree breakfast became a daily, first-thing-in-the-morning way to start the day once workers moved to cities and had set schedules. By the Industrial Revolution, there was already a tradition of foods—like bread, cheese, ale, porridges, or leftovers—being cooked or eaten in the morning.

We’ll learn how that humble bowl of morning goodness, breakfast cereal, came to be a staple even though it began with a lawsuit.

How did a food that originated as part of a spa cure knock beefsteak and boiled chicken from the morning menu for Americans in cities, on farms, and in small towns?

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