While weekday breakfasts in Britain and Ireland often consist of a brief meal of cereal and/or toast, the fry-up is commonly eaten in a leisurely fashion on Saturday or Sunday mornings.
The history of corn flakes goes back to the late 19th century, when a group of Seventh-day Adventists began to develop new food to meet the standards of their strict vegan diet. Members of the group experimented with a number of different grains, including wheat, oats, rice, barley, and of course corn. In 1894, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the superintendent of The Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan and an Adventist, used these recipes as part of a strict vegetarian regimen for his patients, which also included no alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine. The diet he imposed consisted entirely of bland foods, since he believed in sexual abstinence and following the precepts of Sylvester Graham, the inventor of graham crackers and graham bread and felt that spicy or sweet foods would increase passions, while cornflakes would have an anaphrodisiac property or lowered the sex drive.