DRINKING WITH MEALS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 107, 12 November 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

DRINKING WITH MEALS.

BY EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D. A surprising number of people arc interested in knowing whether or not they should drink while eating. Yet it is not surprising that tnej should ask, since even the medical fraternity, until a recent yesterday, were divided on ths subject. Drinking with meals was generally held to contribute to laziness in chewing—large and indigestible boluses oi insufficiently - masticated food being washed down" by copious draughts of tea, coffee, water, beer, or other liquids. These beverages were believed to dilute the gastric juices to such an extent that the pepsin and hydrochloric acid were rendered too weak to carry forward peptic digestion —to convert albumens into peptones. Consequently, tlie cure for most oi the manifold digestive ailments affecting human beings consisted in "dry diet." Liberal quantities of water were given a half hour or more before each meal, to wash out the accumulated raucous secretions and prepare the stomach for the ordeal of wrestling with a mass of nutriment. This was required to be eaten entirely without liquid aid—except as furnished by the saliva. Dry diet had one decided advantage, in that the excitable, hurrying possessor of the recalcitrant stomach had to chew and thoroughly insalivate his food, in order to avoid choking when he gulped it down. AIDING DIGESTION. In so far as "dry diet" made for a more thorough trituration of the food particles, and an increased insalivation cf the food, this was most excellent, and many dyspeptics, whose chief sin consisted in "bolting," were cured. But we know now, as the result of painstaking experiments and analyses of test meals, that a reasonable amount of fluid with the food serves only to dilute it and bring it in contact with a larger number of stomach glands than would be the case were it undiluted. This contact stimulates, probably by physiological irritation, the amount ot gastric juice secreted, and also assists in the churning (or peristaltic) action of the stomach, thus liastenng digestion It has been contended that the com parative freedom from dyspepsia existing among the Italians and French 's due to their habit of drinking diluted wino with meals. This would be excellent easoning, except for the tact that alcohol with meals —in any form or in any amount —retards digestior. Perhaps, however, the safest rub to govern eating and drinking is to take only one thing at a time in £he motuli. This will, oftoourse, compel mastication and the free flow of saliva, whib at the samo time it will dilute the s'o.n ach contents so that a maximum amount of digestion can be accomplished in a minimum length of time.