Today, breakfast is a smorgasbord: People kick off their days with bagels, granola bars and other grab-and-go options. Among these is the Pop-Tart. The origin of these toaster pastries was reimagined in Jerry Seinfeld’s new Netflix movie, “Unfrosted.” The comedy, starring Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy and Amy Schumer, fictionalized the rivalry between the Post and Kellogg companies to create a breakfast pastry. But is this really how Pop-tarts came to be?
There was a competition between companies, says Malcolm Purinton, a food historian and assistant teaching professor of history at Northeastern University. But there’s more to the real story of Pop-Tarts and their role in breakfast as we know it today. Before people thought of sugary pastries as breakfast food, they usually started their day with grain mush. This was meant to fuel people up for a day of working on the farm, Purinton says. At the end of the 19th century, there was a shift when it came to breakfast food. Between the Industrial Revolution and the urbanization happening in the United States, people began to think differently about food and how it correlates with health, Purinton says.
