The word ‘cereals'is derived from Cerealia munera, meaning the gifts of Ceres. Ceres is the Roman goddess of agriculture, closely associated with the small grains grown in the ancient times. The Romans offered grains such as wheat and barley to the goddess.

All cereals are members of the grass family Poaceae that are grown for their edible starchy seeds. The term cereal, besides grains, is also commonly applied to the entire plant as well as many of the manufactured foods. In addition, there are a few other botanically unrelated plants that are used in a manner similar to the true cereals and have a similar grain chemical composition because of which they are termed as pseudocereals. Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench.), quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), grain amaranths (Amaranthus spp.) and a few others are examples of pseudocereals and at present are relatively insignificant.

Cereals were among the first plants to be domesticated, having been grown long before the beginning of recorded history. According to Mangelsdorf (1953) ‘No civilisation worthy of the name has ever been founded on any agricultural basis other than the cereals’. All important civilisations were based on one or another of the cereal grains. The ancient cultures of Mesopotamia (Iraq) — Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Chaldean depended on wheat and barley.The Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilisations too were built on wheat and barley. The ancient people of India, China and Japan, looked at rice for their daily food. In the Western Hemisphere, the pre-Columbian civilisations of the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas were based on corn (maize).

Cereals were first used for food by merely parching or popping the grain to make it fit for chewing. The scorching and parching of grain is still practised in parts of the Near East. Later, parched grains were ground into a coarse meal that on soaking in water made a kind of gruel or porridge. This primitive form of food is still consumed by the toothless, both old and young. Heavy, baked, unleavened cakes or flat bread made from coarsely ground meal appeared still later. Modern bread making or leavened bread is a rather recent innovation and had to await the development of new types of wheat that are rich in gluten.