Citing its “values as a company” to justify its decision to withdraw advertising from the Breitbart News site, Kellogg’s failed to mention that its flagship cereal was invented as a cure for masturbation.

A Michigan physician named John Harvey Kellogg came up with Corn Flakes while searching for a cure for auto-eroticism, believing that flavorful or seasoned foods increased sexual desire, while bland, tasteless food could curb it.

While working as chief physician at Michigan’s Battle Creek Sanitarium, Kellogg developed a few different eating ideas for the patients, which he denoted as “healthy, ready-to-eat anti-masturbatory morning meals.”

Described as a “fanatically religious” Seventh Day Adventist, Kellogg believed that all sex was evil and never even consummated his own marriage, sleeping in a separate bedroom from his wife and adopting all their children.

“If illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin,” Kellogg wrote, “self-pollution is a crime doubly abominable.”

In Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life, he laid out 39 different symptoms of a person who engaged in masturbation, including general infirmity, defective development, mood swings, fickleness, bashfulness, boldness, bad posture, stiff joints, fondness for spicy foods, acne, palpitations, and epilepsy.

Seeing the success of Corn Flakes at the sanitarium, Kellogg partnered with his brother Will, the institution’s bookkeeper, to produce the cereal for sale to the general public.

Will believed that the product would sell better if sugar were added to the flakes to make them more palatable, but John rejected the idea. Will eventually started selling his brother’s cereals through his own business, which became the Kellogg Company.

In June of 1930, Will Kellogg also founded the non-profit W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which has grown into the seventh-largest philanthropic foundation in the United States.

In recent years, the foundation has embraced some of the most extreme elements of left-wing partisan politics, with close ties to radical anti-American billionaire George Soros. In its push for a far-left political agenda, the foundation has given major donations to Soros’ Open Society Institute, as well as his Tides Center.

Last November, Kellogg announced that it would no longer advertise on the Breitbart News site, kowtowing to what the New York Post called “a concerted effort on social media that calls on companies to cease advertising on the site.”

To justify its attack against Breitbart, Kellogg’s spokesman Kris Charles said Breitbart News and its tens of millions of readers “aren’t aligned with” the cereal maker’s “values as a company.”

Considering Kellogg’s rather creepy history, this seems like quite a good thing for Breitbart News readers.

Those interested may sign the #DumpKelloggs boycott petition here.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter