Masturbation and mascots, the strange history of cereal...
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In the 19th century, masturbation was a public health crisis. At least, that's how some Christian fundamentalists viewed it. Anti-masturbation crusaders blamed self-gratification for a list of ailments, including blindness, infertility, epilepsy, insanity, and a fondness for spicy foods. That last one actually came from one anti-masturbation crusader in particular: an American doctor named John Harvey Kellogg.
Kellogg had a lot of ideas about the relationship between diet and masturbation. He thought the urge to self-stimulate, or self-pollute, as he called it, was related to eating meat and seasoned foods. To treat the problem, along with a host of other potential health issues, he recommended a bland diet consisting of fare like nuts and cereal grains. He even concocted some recipes that fit his health philosophy. As the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a trendy wellness retreat in Michigan, he served guests crushed-up biscuits made from wheat, corn, and oats. He dubbed the concoction “granola.” A breakfast breakthrough? Debatable. A few years earlier, a different diet guru named James Caleb Jackson was making a similar snack food called granula. Kellogg had mostly “innovated” the product by changing the U in granula to an O, which also helped him avoid lawsuits.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/...tm_source=digg