Part 6
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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.
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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.
[Footnote 7: Before the eruption of teeth in a child there is no secretion of saliva, only mucous; but mother's milk is strongly alkaline, and hence has no need of saliva to prepare it for digestion. All milk that has "stood" or has been mixed with water is acid, and requires saliva to give it the quality of mother's milk.]
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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.
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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.
[Footnote 8: The actual time required by the author during the Yale tests to secure full alimentation, maintain weight, and fully appease a "workingman's appetite," was from twenty-four to twenty-six minutes, divided into two meals for each day. The common habit is to bolt food and waste time afterwards in torpid inactivity, while all the energy is busy in the stomach and intestines trying to get rid of the great excess loaded upon them.]
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.
[Footnote 9: Five years of Epicurean enjoyment and study of the food instincts and food economics have taught the author to like many things better than slices of dead pig sandwiched between slices of delicious bread. Vegetarian extremist and faddist the author is not, but an attention to natural leadings inclines one away from dead meat, which is believed to induce much uric acid, and in favour of first-hand food elements as fresh from the heart and the breast of Mother Nature as possible, leaving the second-hand, once-digested, already decaying, natural food of the savage _carnivora_ and the emergency food of savage man for emergency occasions or a vegetable famine. Much meat excites lust, intemperance, and savagery in man and gives explosive, non-enduring force. The question is, do we need such force in the twentieth century, especially when we know that it tends to shorten life and predispose to disease?]
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.
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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.
THE MIND POWER-PLANT
A USEFUL ANALOGY
All of the functions of the body are operated by something very much akin to electricity--mental energy--so that aside from the fermentation which gluttony makes possible, the mere drag of handling of dead material in the body, that the body cannot use, for two or three days, is a wasteful draught on the available mental capacity.
Using an electric power-plant as analogous to the Mind Power-Plant of the brain, and a trolley railroad as analogous to the machinery of the body--analogies which are very close by consistent similarity--the loading of the stomach with unprepared food, as in gluttony, is like loading flat cars with pig iron and running them around the line of the road in place of passenger cars, thereby using up valuable energy and wearing out the equipment without any profit resulting from the expenditure.
To those who are familiar with the modern electric power-plant the analogy between it and the human individual equipment, or Mind Power-Plant, seems very remarkable.
To those, however, who have not visited an electric power-plant a description is necessary.
DESCRIPTION OF A MODERN ELECTRIC POWER-PLANT
Fuel, of course, is the source of the power. Furnaces which are capable of producing heat with the least consumption of fuel, tubes within the boilers that permit the freest possible contact of the heat produced and the water to be turned into steam, steam pipes that are flexible and yet strong, machinery that moves with the least friction in order to concentrate and utilise the power of the steam, and dynamos out of which electricity is evolved, together with auxiliary pumps and hoists and blowers and whatnot other devices to help create, control and economise the energy, are the essential parts of an electric power-plant. To insure economy and accuracy these are made as nearly automatic as possible.
At one end of the furnace house there is sunk in the cement floor a large iron scoop or tray into which cartloads of lump coal are dumped. This scoop-shaped receptacle is also the platform of a weighing machine so that each load is weighed. In the bottom of the scoop there is a trap-door, which, being opened, permits the coal to drop through between the teeth of a crusher where the large lumps are reduced, usually to the size of a small nut.
From the crusher the coal falls into the buckets of an endless chain-hoist and is conveyed aloft to great hopper-shaped bins which occupy the entire space under the roof over the furnaces. Leading back from each bin to the constantly moving grate bars of the furnace underneath is a pipe which delivers the crushed coal to the grate bars and distributes it evenly over their surface as fast as it can be received into the furnace, regulated, of course, by the consumption that is going on inside the furnace.
To accomplish this automatic feeding each set of grate bars is constructed in hinged sections, and forms a wide endless iron belt which revolves and carries the coal within the cavity of the furnace.
The coal crusher, bucket hoist, movable grate bars, ash collectors and sifters, pumps, blowers, lights and all other utilities of the plant, as well as the great travelling crane which can hoist and carry many tons' weight--any part of the enormous dynamos--from place to place, are operated by electricity which is generated in the dynamos.
Automatic gauges that measure and indicate, and switch-boards that regulate the energy created and stored in the dynamos play important parts in the economy and working of the plant and are analogous to appetite and taste in man.
ANALOGY ILLUSTRATED
The full analogy may be best illustrated by arranging the similar functions of the two energy-creating machines opposite each other in parallel columns.
ELECTRIC AND MIND POWER-PLANTS COMPARED
ELECTRIC POWER-PLANT MIND POWER-PLANT
Fuel. Food.
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Selection of fuel as to Selection of food for steam-making and economic nutritive value; normal qualities. appetite serving as an exact guide and gauge.
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Crushing coal so as to Masticating food so render combustion as that the juices of the easy and complete as mouth can act on the possible. substance with greatest freedom; taste being evidence of the working of the process.
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Automatic conveyal of Automatic reception of the prepared fuel, first to properly masticated and the bins and then on to thoroughly insalivated the furnace as required. food into Nature's Food Filter and emptying into the furnace of the stomach by Involuntary, or Compulsory Swallowing.
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Combustion in the furnace. Digestion in the stomach and intestines.
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Generation of steam in Generation of material the boiler tubes and storage for vital energy and storage in the boilers. in the body.
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Steam. Blood in circulation.
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Steam Gauge. Pulse.
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Engine. Heart.
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Dynamo, with its numerous Brain, with its complex coils and extensive convolutions in constant friction surfaces. frictional activity.
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Volt Gauge, indicating Strength, indicating the the power available. available energy.
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Electricity. Mind. Energy. Nervous Force.
AUXILIARY OPERATING MOTORS
Electric motors attached Nerve-cell motors attached to the separate to glands and parts or machines of the muscles, connected with plant, connected by wires the brain by nerve-fibres and drawing power from and drawing on the mental the dynamos. or nervous energy for power.
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