GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
HEALTH, HARMONY AND HAPPINESS
Health, Harmony and Happiness are the natural heritage of man.
The human body is the most perfect piece of mechanism possible to imagine.
The human body is intended to nourish Health, maintain Harmony, and conserve Happiness.
The body machine is self-building or self-growing, self-lubricating and self-repairing.
A simple knowledge, only, is necessary for proper (preventive) care of the body machine.
All that Nature requires of man is to supply fuel preferred and, therefore, prescribed by Normal Appetite and to direct the energy generated along alluring lines of usefulness.
Nature requires no sacrifices and imposes no penalties for obeying her beneficent demands.
Natural Laws are easily comprehended if studied objectively.
Ill health, inharmony and unhappiness come only from disobeying Nature.
God (obeyed) is Only Good.
NATURE STUDY
Nature cannot be profitably studied alone through books.
Nature has a separate message for each intelligence.
Each body machine has peculiarities which the possessor alone can understand.
Object lessons, personally experienced or observed, are the best.
"Once seeing (or feeling) is worth an hundred times telling about," is a wise Japanese proverb; and it is true.
As the swinging pendulum taught Galileo, and the falling apple suggested to Sir Isaac Newton, the law of gravity, in like manner the modern electric power-plant teaches us, by analogies, suggestions useful in the study of ourselves – our own Mind Power-Plant.
OLD AND NEW
THE OLD IDEAS
The old religion condemned man, even though unenlightened, to perdition and saved him only through special dispensation.
The old education insisted on narrow formulas and tried to cram all mentality into prescribed moulds.
The old physiology presupposed disease and glorified pathology.
THE NEW STUDY
The new religion glorifies Love, stimulates Appreciation and preaches only Optimism.
The new pedagogy aims to discover the useful tendency with which each creature is equipped at birth and to cultivate this God-given inclination as designed by the Creator.
The new physiology studies Hygiene and assists Nature by securing Prevention to avoid the necessity of correction and cure.
SAFE HYPOTHESES
Assuming that Nature's intentions are only right, ill-health is unnatural.
If Nature's invitations, as expressed by Normal Appetite, are rightly interpreted, good health must result.
When there is bad health Nature has been disobeyed.
A REASONABLE CONCLUSION
If Physiology has failed to teach a way to maintain perfect health some of her hypotheses must be wrong.
If any of the hypotheses of Physiology are discredited any one of them may be doubted.5
OUR NATURAL GUARDIANS
THE SENSES
GUIDING SUPPOSITIONS
The stomach and other hidden parts of the body have automatic functions independent of the will that perform digestion; these functions are beyond the scope of control, and hence means of preventing ill-digestion must be studied by the aid of the exterior sensations.
Sight, Appetite, Touch and Taste are the senses useful in selection of food and in the prevention of indigestion.
Sight and Appetite relate to invitation and selection, while Touch and Taste are discriminators and indicators of conditions.
Appetite and Taste are the sense functions that are most important to health, and hence they are the most important to study and understand. They are the guide in nutrition and the guard of the body machine – the Mind Power-Plant.
Smell also is an important aid in selection and discrimination and is an effective assistant of Appetite.
APPETITE AND TASTE ANALYSED
Appetite should be dignified and recognised as a distinct sense.
Normal Appetite is Nature's means of indicating her fuel and repair requirements for the Mind Power-Plant.
Study Normal Appetite and heed its invitation. It prescribes wisely. Its mark of distinction, to differentiate it from False Appetite, is "watering of the mouth" for some particular thing.
False Appetite is an indefinite craving for something, anything! to smother disagreeable sensations and frequently is expressed by the symptom of "faintness" or "All-gone-ness." [Vide the "A.B. – Z. of Our Own Nutrition."]
Taste is the chemist of the body; of the Mind Power-Plant. More correctly, perhaps, it is the report of a chemical process relating to nutrition.
Taste is an evidence of nutrition. While taste lasts a necessary process is going on.
Taste should, therefore, be carefully studied and understood.
Both Taste and Appetite differ in different individuals and in the same individual under different conditions of thought or activity.
Taste is also dependent on supply of the mouth juices usually called saliva, and these differ materially in individuals, necessitating self-study, self-understanding, and self-care to insure prevention of indigestion and disease.
The most important part of nutrition is the right preparation of food in the mouth for further digestion.
The most important discovery in physiology is the relation of compulsory or involuntary swallowing to the right preparation of food for digestion.
Taste is evidence of nutrition.
Whatever does not taste, such as glass or stone, is not nutritious.6
Taste is excited by the dissolving of food in the mouth, and while it lasts a necessary process of preparation for digestion is going on.
The juices of the mouth have the power to transform any food that excites taste into a substance suitable for the body.
Nothing that is tasteless, except water and pure proteid, only by distinct invitation of appetite, should be taken into the stomach.
If we swallow only the food which excites the appetite and is pleasing to the sense of taste, and swallow it only after the taste has been extracted from it, removing from the mouth the tasteless residue, complete and easy digestion will be assured and perfect health maintained.
NATURE'S FOOD FILTER
Nature has provided an Automatic Food Filter which, if rightly used, will prevent the introduction of any harmful substance into the stomach.
At the entrance to the throat there are certain muscular folds or convolutions, including the palate, which, when in repose, form an organ that is nothing less than a Perfect Food Filter. This filter has also automatic qualities which compel it to empty itself by the process we call "Involuntary Swallowing."
Involuntary swallowing is really compulsory swallowing; unless a voluntary effort to restrain it is set up against it. The real Swallowing Impulse is so strong that it is practically compelling.
The Food Filter, when rightly performing its protective function, is impervious to anything except pure water at the right temperature for admission to the stomach and to nutriment which has been properly dissolved and chemically converted by salivation (mixture with saliva) into a substance suitable for further digestion.
IMPORTANCE OF MASTICATION
If we masticate – submit to vigorous jaw action – everything that we take into the mouth, liquid as well as solid, until the nutritive part of it disappears into the stomach through compulsory or involuntary swallowing, and remove from the mouth all fibrous, insoluble and tasteless remainder, we will take into the body, thereby, only that which is good for the body.
The first thought that will arise in the reader's mind on perusal of the above declaration will undoubtedly be, "What! masticate milk, soups, wines, spirits, and other liquids; nonsense! That is impossible!"
It is not, however, impossible, and, furthermore, it is absolutely necessary to protection against abuse of the stomach and possible disease.
Liquid for adults, for anyone after the eruption of teeth, is an artificial and unnatural sustenance; something not taken into consideration when the human body was planned. Liquid food (drunk without mixing with saliva) is a sort of nutritive self-abuse, and the only way to avoid the ill effect is to give it the same chance to encounter saliva that the constituent ingredients would have had in a more solid state. For the importance of this see Dr. Campbell's able treatise on mastication reprinted from the London Lancet in the "A.B. – Z. of Our Own Nutrition."
The only things necessary to life that we are compelled to take into the body that do not excite the sense of taste are pure air and pure water. These are necessary to life, but are not what is called nutrition. They do not, alone, replace waste tissue. They do not challenge the sentinel, Taste, and hence do not require retention in the field of taste.
If water be pure and tasteless you cannot masticate it, as it will not submit to more than one action of the jaw before causing involuntary swallowing. If it have taste it is a sign that it contains mineral or vegetable substance that needs treatment of some sort to render it suitable for the body, and it will then resist some mastication, some mouth-treatment, as in tasting, before compelling swallowing, just as the sapid liquids do.
Anything that has taste, even soup, wine, spirits or whatsoever is tried, will resist numerous mastications before being absorbed by the Food Filter. Above all things, milk, wines, etc., should be sipped and tasted to the limit of compulsory swallowing.
In considering the reasonableness of masticating everything that has taste until it is absorbed by Nature's Food Filter, it must be remembered that the only liquid food provided for man that is not artificial is milk, and the natural means provided for taking milk into the stomach is by sucking, which is like mastication.7 The milk of fruits, such as cocoanut milk, for instance, is found, in liquid form, only in the unripe fruit, and remains liquid only while it is ripening into pulp.
Insalivation does not seem to be complete without jaw action, although saliva (sometimes only mucous) flows freely into the mouth without it under conditions which we term "watering of the mouth" excited by keenness of appetite. (See Pawlow's, Campbell's, Van Someren's, and other evidence in "A.B. – Z. of Our Own Nutrition.")
The normal perviousness or natural opening of the Food Filter for swallowing food is directly assisted and affected by movement of the jaws exercised in vigorous manner.
Mastication, or mouth-treatment, therefore, even of liquids that excite taste, seems to be a necessary part of thorough insalivation.
Nature has a good reason for everything she plans.
It is asserted by physiological chemists that saliva, taken from the mouth and kept at normal temperature, will dissolve breads and similar foods and convert the starch in them into maltose, glucose or sugar. The converted form is that which is suitable for further digestion. Saliva also converts some acids into alkali and readily neutralises all acids.
It is also asserted that saliva does not dissolve some things (proteid substances) nor chemically affect them as visibly as it does starch and acid, but, even if this be true, it is no less essential that the juices provided in the mouth should have an opportunity, through mastication, or, movement about in the mouth, to do what they are able to do in assisting digestion.
Experiment shows that if all foods are submitted to the examination and action of these juices until involuntary swallowing takes place, the results in aiding subsequent digestion are important in promoting healthy nutrition.
Separation, neutralisation, alkalination, saccharidation, of the proteid and carbohydrate elements of common foods and perhaps a partial emulsification of fats are all possible in the mouth and are more easily and quickly done there than inside the body. Much care in Mouth-Treatment is an assurance of economy and safety in Alimentation.
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED
One of the objections usually provoked by the suggestion that all tasteless residue remaining in the mouth after the taste or nutriment has been dissolved out of it should be removed is generally expressed in this wise, "How is it possible to remove refuse from the mouth while eating without appearing disgusting to others at table? You have to swallow things to get rid of them."
This is merely a bugbear prejudice. It has no good reason.
Do you not remove cherry pits, grape skins, the shell of lobster, bone, etc., when you encounter them? Then why not remove the fibrous matter found in tough lean meat, the woody fibre of vegetables or anything rejected by instinctive desire to discard it after taste has been exhausted, and which is a protection provided by beneficent Nature? In well selected and well cooked food there is little found that the juices of the mouth in connection with the teeth cannot take care of and prepare so as to be acceptable to Nature's Food Filter.
If fibre is found in the food it can be put upon the fork in the same manner that a cherry pit is usually handled and transferred to the plate without observation.
Another fancied objection to thorough mastication is that it interferes with the sociability of a meal.
This is also a senseless bugbear. It is true that one cannot converse freely with large morsels of food in the mouth. It is also true that it is nothing less than a gluttonous custom to greedily take a big mouthful of food, and, if accosted with a question, to bolt it in order to answer.
It will be found easy to carry on conversation without disagreeable interruption and yet follow Nature's demands in properly masticating food by taking small morsels into the mouth. It will be found also to add to the real pleasure of eating, and eventually will become a habit by choice.
Another objection raised by those who are afflicted with the habit of gluttony is the lack of time permitted by their business occupation.
The time needed to appease the natural appetite of a hearty and active man, to compensate for the daily waste and keep the weight at normal, is from thirty to forty-five minutes for twenty-four hours.8 This requires attention and industrious mastication. Divided into three meals it is less than a quarter of an hour for each meal.
Epicurean habits, however, incline one away from three meals a day and make two meals sufficient for ordinary activity.
One objector, on the spur of momentary discussion, claimed that in travelling by railway the time allowed for eating would not permit Epicurean methods.
The author arrived at Mobile, Ala., recently with a workingman's appetite and had only twenty minutes in which to get off the train, on again, and satisfy the appetite. There is an excellent lunch counter now at Mobile, and on the counter there was a tempting array of things to eat and drink. Appetite chose at once a fat, rich ham sandwich,9 a glass of creamy milk and a hexagonal segment of a mince pie. The twenty minutes was ample time for disposing of the sandwich and the milk, and meantime the mince pie had been wrapped in silk paper and placed in a paper bag to furnish Epicurean enjoyment for twenty miles on the road, enhanced by the beauty of a panoramic landscape.
If I had crammed the pie and the sandwich and the milk into my stomach in seven or eight minutes, which, by actual observation, is the gluttonous rate of despatching a station meal, I would have lost two-thirds of nutriment, more than one-half of taste and would have perhaps taken on twenty-four hours of discomfort, possibly inviting a cold. I would have created an "open door" for any migrating microbes that were floating about in my atmosphere looking for strained tissue or fermenting food in which to build their disease nests.
Observation proves that you do not get much more nutriment out of your food than saliva prepares in some way for digestion, gulp though you may, but you can take in a load of disease possibilities in trying to force the food past or otherwise evade proper salivation.
SPIT IT OUT
Whatever does not insalivate easily is surely dangerous.
There is nothing more pronounced of expression by its influence on inclination than the impulsive desire to spit out of the mouth anything that seems unprofitable to the senses.
INSTINCTIVE DISCRIMINATION
Muscles have been provided for this purpose (separating, collecting, and spitting-out anything which the instincts protest against) that are more facile than those of an elephant's proboscis, and these muscles move things to and fro in the mouth or expel them if they are undesirable.
If you acquire the habit of consulting the Swallowing Impulse and practise only involuntary swallowing in eating you will find that these muscles are very discriminating and will instinctively assist in the rejection of unprofitable matter.
Their sense of touch will soon discriminate against unprofitable food even when the sense of taste is fooled by some alluring sauce or condiment.
Nature is truly a marvel of good sense if you give her a chance to express her likes and dislikes without restraint.
Natural Appetite is the best possible judge of what the system needs, and the senses which Nature's Food Chemist employs in her work are unerring in their selection whenever they are permitted to act as intended by Nature.
GIVE NATURE A TRIAL
Try Nature's way for a week or a month and you will never have a desire to be even mildly gluttonous again.
One week of faithful trial without lapses should fix a habit of consulting involuntary swallowing as an automatic guide in eating so that attention will not have to be strained to heed it.
One week of constant attention to obeying Nature's demands in eating will so impress its usefulness on the student of Epicureanism that an accidental act of forced swallowing will be a shock to the sensibility.
One week of obedience of Nature's simple requirements will demonstrate that she imposes no penalties for following her natural requirements, but only for disobedience of her protective laws.
One week of earnest, open-minded study of Nature's first principle of life – nutrition – will convert a pitiable glutton into an intelligent and ardent Epicurean.
DIFFERENCES
Individuals differ greatly in the quantity of the supply of the juices of the mouth which are active in salivation. They differ so much that it is safe to say that no two have equal provision.
One person may dispose of a morsel of bread in thirty mastications so that the last vestige of it has disappeared by involuntary process into the stomach. Another person, of similar general health appearance, selecting as nearly as possible an equal morsel of bread, may require fifty acts of mastication before the morsel has disappeared. The next week, by some change of conditions this order may be reversed. While there may be some structural or chemical difference in the two morsels of bread, this is not sufficient to account for the different mastications required. The dissimilarity lies in the difference of the copiousness and strength of the secretions at the time of trial.
This liability to changed conditions would constitute a serious danger if it were not for the protective Food Filter, or, Reflex of Deglutition, which Van Someren has so well described in the "A.B. – Z;" and whenever mouth-treatment of anything to be ingested is neglected, and forced swallowing – hasty bolting of food or gulping of liquid food – is indulged in, this protection is eluded and the danger is converted into actual internal self-abuse.
WARNING
Above all things don't strain to be careful. Strain inhibits – paralyses – all of the glandular functions and deranges the nervous nicety of adjustment. Just eat slowly, deliberately, small morsels, and sip and taste small quantities of liquids and observe what happens. You will soon learn to Know yourself and "Know Thyself" has been the advice of all the sages from the beginning of time.
GLADSTONE'S RULE
Numbers of mastications as related to given quantities and kinds of foods are no guide to be relied upon.
Gladstone's dictum, "Chew each morsel of food at least thirty-two times," was of little value except as a general suggestion. Some morsels of food will not resist thirty-two mastications, while others will defy seven hundred.
The author has found that one-fifth of an ounce of the midway section of the garden young onion, sometimes called "challot," has required seven hundred and twenty-two mastications before disappearing through involuntary swallowing. After the tussle, however, the young onion left no odour upon the breath and joined the happy family in the stomach as if it had been of corn-starch softness and consistency.
It will be difficult, without actual demonstration, to convince the advocates of "Total Abstinence" that any whisky can be taken in a seemingly harmless form, but it is true that thorough insalivation of beer, wine or spirits, until disappearance by involuntary swallowing, robs them of their power to intoxicate, partly because appetite will tolerate but little.
TEMPERANCE PROMOTED
As a matter of fact, whisky taken in this analytical way is a sure means of breaking up desire for it, and it is an excellent protection in drinking as well as eating. Many of our test-subjects have been steady and some have been heavy drinkers but persistent attention to Buccal-Thoroughness has cured all of them of any desire for alcohol and in time it surely leads to complete intolerance of it.
It is also true that, taken in the way suggested, the body refuses to tolerate more than sips and thimblefuls of these liquids and then only on rare occasions, so that the Epicurean habit is the best possible insurance of temperance.
NORMAL CONDITIONS RESTORED
While the difference in the supply of the juices of the mouth is an important factor in digestion, insufficiency need not cause alarm. Nature is so gladly and quickly recuperative that the moment abuses of her functions are stopped she begins to repair damages and re-establish normal conditions.
One of the subjects who submitted himself to experiment was found to be woefully deficient in saliva and, was a pitiable dyspeptic, but, as the result of patient mastication, the secretions gradually increased until they were ample, and dyspeptic symptoms disappeared even long before the secretions became normal. The strain of excessive and (acid) fermenting food being removed, the acute discomfort was at once allayed even before the repair was complete.
"KNOW THYSELF"
"Know Thyself" has been the admonition of sages from earliest times. "Become acquainted with your Normal Instincts, with Appetite and with your food chemist, Taste, and follow their directions with implicit confidence," is the admonition taught by our experiments, for they can lead you to robust health and greatly increased vigour of body and mind. Study and heed them patiently for a week and you will follow their invitations and warnings through life.
Thorough repair of an impaired body may not be effected immediately, although wonderful results – almost miraculous – have been attained in three months; but a week's faithful and attentive study of the possibilities of Epicureanism, with right alimentation as its basic requirement, in adding to the comfort and enjoyment of life will result in right eating being made philosophically and religiously habitual, and will give a backbone of Epicurean character that will not easily succumb to gluttonous impetuosity.