“FLETCHERISM”

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 266, 13 December 1928, Page 2

“FLETCHERISM”

45 CHEWS TO A MOUTHFUL. MOUTHFUL. “Fletcherism,” the eating fad once endorsed by Mr Gladstone and John D. Rockefeller, has for the first time in a generation been really 'tested. Like many other popular beliefs, it has proved to be a fallacy.

Horace Fletcher traced most of the world’s ills to hasty eating. His formula was that men should not eat at all unless their minds were calm and that physical salvation lay in chewing—4s chews flo a mouthful. Dr Harold G. O. Hoick, a teacher of physiology at the University of Chicago, instead of chewing 45 times to each bite, or feeling guilty because he did not, decided to test “Fletcherism.”

For two and a half years he had been eating like any unregenerate human being. Then for a year and a half he “Fletcherised” with great thoroughness. Since then for six months he has been eating normally. For all that time he has records of his condition. Dr Hoick found that in comparison with his two normal periods his weight sank 30 pounds during the Fletcher isation period, his muscular endurance dropped, his basal metabolism was lowered, his typing mistakes were more numerous.

Unchanged remained his blood pressure, pulse, temperature, sleeping time and ability at mental multiplication.

The one gain he remarked was a greater ability to solve chess problems. Most surprising result of a'l, his food proved less beneficial. His callory intake dropped from 3200 to 2800. This condition he explains by saying that his mouth and jaw suffered from fatigue and so he lost appet'te. John D. Rockefeller, who at the age of 89 plays golf every day, still carries on a modified form of “Flet 1 - cherism,’ ’and attributes to it his health and long life.