THE EATER'S DIGEST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 227, 29 October 1943, Page 18

THE EATER'S DIGEST

(Written for "The Listener" by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the

Health Department)

IGESTS are now in vogue, and so, dear eater, why not Inok into yours? While keeping strictly to the text, we have to follow its complexities. It has a good beginning if the food prepared is attractive in flavour and colour, and if the surroundings are pleasing as to clean cloth, vase of flowers, and touches of colour to the food; carrots, greens, radishes, beetroot, have their place in pleasing our minds as well as satisfying our nutritional needs. Nor must we forget the company and the conversation, nor lose sight of the fact that hunger is the best sauce. We must remember, too, that fatigue, worry, and rancour are opponents of the secretion of juices which make a good digestion. Our psychological approach to food is the first thing that pushes the button for that complicated set of acivities whereby the various ferments are poured cut in succession; one digestive activity leads on to another, much in the same way as occurs in the inner workings of an automatic telephone. It is thrown out of gear just as easily too, by temporary disturbances-anger or fear acting as if it were a bit of grit in the works. Living at crossed purposes with life is just as bad as crossed telephone wires. Chewing is Good for You As to the mechanical side, the maxim to chew well is a good one. We New Zealanders do not eat enough of the hard foods that need chewing. This is surely one of the reasons why our teeth are crowded in narrow jaws-not enough chewing in childhood to widen the developing jaw. It appears to be also one of the factors in prevention of dental decay. Unfortunately, there is a vicious circle here-60 per cent of the adult population have artificial teeth, hence the food is made soft to suit their reduced powers of mastication, the children’s dental development suffers, their teeth decay-and so it will go on unless we break the vicious circle by giving the children hard things to chew. Perhaps you have forgotten the day when the sweet crispness of raw turnips or carrots or Brussels sprouts made you remove them without permission from your father’s (or someone else’s father’s) vegetable patch. Again, the alimentary tract often objects to lumps of food which appear to cause spasmodic contraction of its walls, to hold the lumps back till they are reduced in size. Digestion begins in the mouth, for here the saliva acts on starches, turning them, with a speed which is remarkable, into substances of smaller molecule, and finally into malt sugar. We have tfaced our food to the swallowing point only. Next time we shall have~ to follow its strange career after it gets out of sight.