are you ready? 
Our story begins with a cholera pandemic which started in the 1820s. There had been many before, and many after, but this one had Europe paranoid. This one, rather than being confined to faraway corners of their empires, had found its way to Europe.
The concern spread across the Atlantic, and an American preacher called Sylvester Graham was worried. He joined the Temperance movement and began preaching on health.
Graham had theories about what was causing disease: masturbation. People were, he believed, wanking themselves sick.
He also had theories about the cause of all this wanking: eating the wrong sorts of food, such as meat, wine, highly seasoned food, tea and coffee. Feeding this to young men would cause "animal propensities" and make them masturbate.
Masturbation in turn would cause "general debility, effeminacy, disordered functions and permanent disease".
Graham's solution to all of this frenzied wanking was a plain diet. His preachings inspired a few products which still bear his name, such as graham crackers and graham flour.
Graham's preaching also inspired a few other things: the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and a famous adherent of the Church: John Harvey Kellogg.
Kellogg believed very strongly in the anti-masturbation movement inspired by Graham and his Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs. He wrote at length about the dangers of masturbation.
Masturbators, according to Kellogg, were prone to signs of consumption, premature and defective development, being easily frightened, having weak backs and stiff joints, paralysis, paleness, and all-round awful health.
Other effects of masturbation included pimples, bashfulness, boldness, "confusion of ideas" and our favourite, "attempts at joking are generally failures".
Kellogg took it upon himself to prevent masturbation, and advocated for a variety of drastic measures, including circumcision (he circumcised himself at the age of 37), applying carbolic acid to the clitoris, suturing the foreskin closed and cold enemas.
But Kellogg also had a less drastic method for preventing masturbation, inspired by Graham - a bland diet. And with his family, he invented some plain, easy to chew food which still exist to this day: corn flakes.
Corn flakes immediately became popular, and soon their popularity spilled out of the anti-masturbation movement and into the general public. And meanwhile, John Harvey Kellogg's brother, Will Keith, took control of the family cereal company and continued developing cereals.
The Kellogg company still exist, and, of course, make Pop Tarts.
And that, friends, is how a case of cholera in Russia led to frosted chocotastic pop tarts. We're sorry we buried the lede that most of the middle of the story is wanking.
Also, masturbation is perfectly healthy and doesn't cause any of the stuff the crackers guy and the corn flakes guy said. jsyk
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