John Harvey Kellogg’s legacy is often distilled into a cultural anecdote—an eccentric health reformer who introduced the American breakfast staple, cornflakes. While it is true that Kellogg, alongside his brother Will Keith, developed the cereal as part of a vegetarian regimen for patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the full contours of his influence stretch far beyond dietary habits. Kellogg was not only a physician and a health educator but also one of the most prominent American advocates of eugenics in the early 20th century. His work helped lay the intellectual groundwork for racial hygiene policies that would later find horrific expression in Nazi Germany.
Kellogg’s alignment with eugenics coincided with an increasing rift between him and the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to which he had been closely tied for much of his early life. He had been raised in the faith and received church support to attend medical school. Upon returning to Battle Creek, he assumed leadership of the Western Health Reform Institute, which became the famed Battle Creek Sanitarium. However, by the turn of the century, tensions with church leadership had reached a breaking point. His theological views—particularly the pantheistic implications in his 1903 book The Living Temple—provoked concern among Adventist leaders, including Ellen G. White, who believed that Kellogg was diluting Christian doctrine with speculative philosophy.
Moreover, Kellogg increasingly ran the sanitarium as a secular institution, populated with celebrities and businessmen rather than a ministry for the poor and sick. His bureaucratic maneuvering and personality conflicts within the church led to a final rupture in 1907 when he was formally disfellowshipped. This separation from Adventism, both institutional and ideological, freed Kellogg to pursue his views on human improvement without theological constraint.
In 1914, he founded the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek. The foundation promoted eugenics—the theory that society should direct human reproduction to eliminate hereditary “defects.” Kellogg advocated for the sterilization of individuals deemed unfit to reproduce and promoted racial segregation as a hygienic necessity. These ideas were institutionalized through three national Race Betterment Conferences and publications that intersected with the larger American eugenics movement, including the work of Charles Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin.
The influence of these ideas did not remain confined to American shores. By the 1930s, German racial scientists had openly embraced U.S. eugenics as a model. The Nazi sterilization law of 1933—the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring—was directly influenced by Laughlin’s “Model Eugenical Sterilization Law.” It led to the sterilization of more than 400,000 individuals and was the legal prelude to broader racial policies. Although Kellogg did not personally endorse euthanasia, the philosophical line from his advocacy to Nazi policies is visible. His support for biological determinism and social purification contributed to a moral framework that sanctioned greater medical violence.
The culmination of this ideology was Aktion T4, the Nazi euthanasia program launched in 1939, which targeted the physically and mentally disabled. Approximately 300,000 individuals were killed in psychiatric institutions and clinics using methods that presaged the machinery of the Holocaust. The rationale was not only economic but eugenic: lives that were “unworthy of life” were considered burdens to be eliminated. While Kellogg had promoted lifelong institutionalization and sterilization, his framework of racial health provided rhetorical and conceptual support for such policies.
In parallel, abortion policies were manipulated to serve the racial aims of the Nazi state. Abortions were strictly prohibited for “Aryan” women, but promoted or forced upon women considered racially or genetically inferior. Reproductive control became a state tool for achieving eugenic purity. In the United States, eugenic ideas also influenced abortion and sterilization policies, especially in institutions that targeted the poor, the disabled, and minority populations.
The 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell upheld Virginia’s sterilization law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declaring, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” That ruling legitimized decades of coerced sterilizations across the country—particularly in California—and remains one of the starkest examples of judicial complicity in eugenics.
In light of these historical precedents, contemporary debates around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) take on renewed significance. DEI frameworks stand in contrast to eugenic ideology by affirming the equal dignity and worth of all people, regardless of background, disability, or socioeconomic status. Whereas eugenics sought to shape society through exclusion and control, DEI seeks to foster inclusion and redress historical disadvantages.
Research has consistently demonstrated that diverse teams are more innovative and that inclusive workplaces are more effective and just.[^1] The benefits of equity are not theoretical—they are empirically measurable. Yet DEI initiatives remain politically contentious, often dismissed as ideological overreach. It is important to recognize that this resistance is not novel; it echoes earlier discomforts with democratizing access and dismantling hierarchies.
Kellogg’s legacy, then, is dual: a pioneer of preventive medicine and a contributor to one of history’s darkest ideologies. His departure from Adventism did not lead him into secular neutrality but into a biologically determinist moral order. That order rejected the theological belief in human redemption in favor of hereditary determinism. The consequences, both intended and unintended, spanned continents.
As institutions today wrestle with questions of equity, belonging, and justice, the history of eugenics serves as a cautionary tale. Policies shaped by assumptions about human worth can, when left unchecked, become mechanisms of exclusion, coercion, and violence. DEI, for all its flaws and challenges, represents a different kind of order—one that centers dignity over determinism and repair over control.
⸻
[^1]: Hong, Lu, and Scott E. Page. “Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, no. 46 (2004): 16385–16389.
[^2]: Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
[^3]: Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. University of California Press, 2005.
[^4]: Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.
[^5]: Page, Scott E. The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy. Princeton University Press, 2017.