PICK-ME-UPS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 4 December 1914, Page 3

PICK-ME-UPS.

Many people excuse themselves for taking a pick-me-up before dinner on the ground that it is an excellent thing to start on, just "to help the digestion along." It doesn't. As a matter of fact, the particular contractions of the stomach give us the sense of "feeling hungry" are stopped by alcohol in any form. At the same time the end-organs of taste and smell, ns well as those which have a delicate sensitiveness "on the way down," are excited by the alcoholic tonic. Thus when you drink a pick-mo-up you have the queer mixture of i the mouth and g-ullet telling the stomach to get ready to be hungry and the stomach itself losing interest in the proceedings, for it has the effect of stopping the contracting motions inside which remind us that we are hungry. After the meal has begun, however, i and there is souk* food in the stomach, beer or a little white wine does not have this harmful effect. It is when the stomach is entirely empty that the harm of the pick-me-up is greatest—anil that is the time such alcoholic tonic usually is taken. It is far wiser to start the meal by oat ing a piece of bread than by drinking a pick-me-up, or even by attaching a plate of soup. A solid substratum, sots thctstomach working in the way that it should. The pick-me-up excites ihe sense of last*; rather than tho sense of hunger, rt tickles the palate of the diner and makes him more particular in his tastes after he has taken it, although he will be less hungry. He will want more highly spiced and usually, therefore, more expensive food, and the restaurant or cafe proprietor will, profit thereby, if one is compelled-to face the ordeal of a banquet it may bo wise to take a tonic beforehand, for then our gustatory sense will he awake to appreciate the dainties set before us, but as a regular custom there is nothing which is so v/ell calcuj lated to lead to indigestion and djsi tress as a "gin-and-bitter.s" or any I one pf the dozen other pick-me-ups.