How to Eat.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 158, 26 June 1886, Page 1

How to Eat.

The primary act ct digestion takes place in the mouth. A simple statement, certainly, but one more important than it may at first sight appear. For in the mouth the food i?, or ought to be, slowly and properly masticated. This not only renders it more fit to be speedily acted upon by the juices of the stomach (gastric), but enables it to be well mingled with the secretions of the salivary and parotid glands. And what do these secretions do ? The answer is this : The saliva cootains a fermentive agent, to which chemists have given the name ot "diastase." The property of this diastase 19 that it changes the starch of the food into suorar, or " dextrine," which is soluble, the former not being go. A portion of this is actually absorbed into the blood from the mouth. Again, this diastase is only active in an alkaline versus an acrid medium, another reason why it should be mingled with the food in the mouth and not in the stomach. Slow mastication, then, is of the greatest importancoif wewould live in health and avoid the horrors ot indigestion, with the thousand and one ills, physical and mental, that follow in its train. Take lime to eat if you would be happy. Take time to eat if you would be well. Teach your children to do so, and explain to ihein the reason why. A word or two spoken to a child in a quiet and reasoning strain will olten make a very deep lasting, impression. I have a letter before me, from which I will make an extract : vI am seventy-seven years of age," Baj a the writer, " and have very few teeth, but my appetite and digestion are good, which I attributo to careful feeding. I have found by experience that all kinds of food, whether dry or moist, should rot be allowed to pas»s until reduced to a pulp and mixed with the saliva." Let me draw the reader's attention to the words "whether dry or moist." The aged but healthful writor does not allow even moiat food to pass at once into the stomach. He is right. But is it not the common practice to bolt euch food? Take milk, for example, a supper of porridge and milk, or well-boiled hominy and milk. How lone* do most people take to eat such a meal? And mind this : it ia a most wholesome one. Why, about five minutes. Can they wonder that it disagrees, that it creates acidity and eructations, flatulence and all sorts of discomforts, not the least disagreeable of which are restless nights and nightmare dreams? — "Family Doctor" in 11 Casseirs Magazine."