National Cereal Day

National Cereal Day - Friday, March 7, 2025

Food & Beverage Healthy Food Pop Culture

There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t know a bowl of cereal, a spoon and some milk (Lactaid, Almond or soy milk all count!) equals a party in your mouth! Fiber, sugar, raisins, or even lucky charms – the flavors and prizes each box holds are limitless and can add to any humdrum morning. So, let’s snap, crackle and pop through all the reasons why National Cereal Day on March 7 should be in your day planner and on your menu!

National Cereal Day timeline

1984

Mr. T cereal makes its debut

Mr. T’s cereal was the first licensed ready-to-eat cereal manufactured and marketed by the Quaker Oats Company… and I pity the fool who never had it.

1939

Sweetened Cereal was born

“Ranger Joe Popped Wheat Honnie” showed up in grocery stores, on radio and TV ads to show kids liked sugar and cereal didn’t have to be healthy.

1877

Cereal was invented… by accident

John Harvey Kellogg and Will Keith Kellogg were experimenting with boiled wheat, as brothers do. They left a batch out overnight and returned to find it stale. They tried the same process with corn, and created what we know today as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

5 Facts About Cereal That Prove It's More Than Just O’s And Flakes

  1. Cereal is for everyone, everywhere

    Cereal is a staple crop, and its grains are grown in greater quantities and provide more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop.

  2. The first prize was a book

    In 1909, The Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Book came with the purchase of two packages of Corn Flakes.

  3. It gets its name from a goddess

    The word cereal is derived from Ceres, the Roman goddess of harvest and agriculture.

  4. Cereal has been to the moon

    Astronauts ate Kellogg's Corn Flakes aboard Apollo 11, which was the first moon landing.

  5. It's explosively delicious

    Using an army cannon converted into a pressure cooker, Quaker Oats developed a method called "gun-puffing" in order to create puffed cereals.

National Cereal Day Activities

  1. Have cereal for every meal

    Be sensible and start with some Fiber One. For lunch, live a little and have a more robust Lucky Charms (they are magically delicious). When dinner rolls around, go a little crazy and mix regular cornflakes with some frosted ones and follow up with a Rice Krispy treat for dessert!

  2. Try a new cereal you’ve never had before

    There are quite possibly over a hundred cereals to choose from and if you want to expand your breakfast horizons, why not pick one you’ve never had before like Cranberry Almond Crunch or Grape Nuts or even Kellogg's Honey Smacks which is nearly 56 percent sugar by weight! Good thing National Dentist Day is on March 6th to prepare for the crunchy, sugary festivities of March 7th!

  3. Buy one or two cereal fun packs and hand them out

    Whether it’s to co-workers, friends or any mailmen or Jehovah witnesses that come to your door, hand them a small box of cereal to commemorate the occasion. If you’re more of a DIY type of person, get some zip lock bags and fill them with a potpourri of your favorite cereal!

Why We Love National Cereal Day

  1. It’s not just for breakfast

    Lunch, an afternoon snack, dinner, a middle of the night treat, or, if you get all fancy with it, a delicious dessert. It’s one of the few foods where there’s no judgement on when you eat it. And with such a wide range of flavors and creative recipes, it’s like the mad libs ingredient that you can fill in to create an “any time of day” meal.

  2. Even the worst chef can't ruin cereal

    We can’t all make Turducken (not that we all necessarily want to) but when you put together a bowl of cereal, you get the opportunity to put on a chef’s hat (especially if one is included in the box). You get to work out just the right cereal to milk ratio, and add fruit or nuts, feeling like the Julia Child of Cinnamon Toast Crunch — all without risking burning down your kitchen.

  3. You can discover your inner breakfast mascot

    Are you more of a Toucan Sam or a Captain Crunch? Do you have the same adversarial relationship with kids as Trix the Rabbit or is your outlook on life as positive as Tony the Tiger? You have so many personnas you can try on every time you pour yourself a bowl to set the tone for the day.

Also on Fri Mar 7, 2025...