Overeating

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Sep 7, 1905

People always listen during hot weather with more equanimity to charges of overeating, so the recent prominence of the subject is at least timely. At the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, held in Portland about the middle of July, one of the morning sessions was occupied almost entirely with a discussion of the origin of the various digestive ills to which our American people are so liable, and a definite expression as to the causation of these ailments, by prominent physicians from all over the country. There was practically universal agreement that the source of most of the ills to which the American stomach is so liable is to be found in overeating, and especially in the overconsumption of what is known as proteid material. The proteids comprise the heavier portion of the dietary, and include such articles as meat, eggs, cheese, peas and beans, and the like. These are the most expensive portions of the diet, and it was pointed out that in other countries where economy in the matter of food is a more serious question than it is with us, much less of these materials is consumed as a rule.

Of course, it has often been said that as a nation we overeat. It is only in recent years, however, that the persuasion as to overconsumption of food has been justified by scientific observations, which indicate just why and in what manner overeating is serious. The work of two investigators especially was recalled to attention in the meeting of the Medical Section of the American Medical Association, and the extreme significance of their results emphasized. Professor Chittenden, of Yale University, in a book which was recently reviewed in The Independent on the “Physiological Economy of Nutrition,” shows by experimental observation on three different series of individuals—hard workers, those moderately occupied, and those living sedentary lives—that scarcely more than one half as much proteid material is needed in order to maintain the body weight and the equilibrium of nutrition than these people had been accustomed to use during the time preceding the observation. Folin, in the Journal of Physiology, in a series of articles at the beginning of the present year, came to the same conclusion from the standpoint of physiological chemistry. Both these observers pointed out that proteid material is needed by human beings only for the purpose of building up tissues. It is never needed as an energy producer. The fats and the sugars represent the energy producers. If more proteid material is consumed than is needed, it is simply excreted, but before excretion it exists in the circulation for some time as irritant material, and then throws a lot of needless work on the excretory organs in getting rid of it.

One feature of the overeating problem was particularly emphasized. It was pointed out that when persons eat slowly there is much less tendency to overeat. If the food is brought thoroughly in contact with the palate and the various taste organs on the tongue during the course of mastication, then the appetite is satisfied with much less than when the food is bolted. This is true in general of all kinds of food, and has been experienced by every one with regard to the sugars and fats, but is also eminently true of meats and cognate materials, only here the less amount needed makes the possibility of overconsumption much easier. Americans are well known to be a nation of fast eaters, and especially to have the habit of washing down their improperly masticated food with coffee, ice water, and other unsuitable liquids. Hence, the accusation of insufficient mastication has a special significance, and was emphasized by American physicians from all over the country.

Very few people realize how inadequate is their process of mastication under ordinary circumstances unless this is actually demonstrated to them. Physicians who have to treat cases of stomach trouble and are under the necessity of using a stomach-tube not infrequently find that one of the best effects of this method of investigation and treatment is the actual demonstration to the patient of what large lumps of material are swallowed without having been masticated. Pieces of potato that sometimes evidently have been entirely untouched by the teeth are found in the stomach contents, and block up the stomach-tube, making the evacuation of the stomach contents very difficult. This same thing is true of most forms of food. Unfortunately for this state of affairs, the human stomach was not meant to crush materials in order to prepare them for digestion. The gizzard of the birds is a thick muscle, the action of which, helped by the pebbles, which birds instinctively swallow, serves to replace other mastication apparatus. Notwithstanding the fact that during the past month, as for centuries before, many a city boy has been sent by his country cousins hunting for hare’s teeth, none of them have been found. The gizzard effectually supplies for the absent teeth. In human beings, however, teeth are a triumphant gift of provident mother nature, and the stomach is only a thin-walled receptacle for food, with just muscular force enough in it to move the gastric contents on to the intestines, but without any active crushing ability.

The result is that when unmasticated food reaches the stomach, it fails to pass out properly, and as a consequence delay

of the gastric contents leads to dilation of the gastric walls. Another and even more serious accident sometimes occurs. The pylorus of the stomach, the gate through which food passes to the intestine, is composed of a rather strong ring of muscular fibers. When larger pieces of material approach this ring, they are usually refused exit. Occasionally, however, irritated by the presence of such unusual lumps, the pylorus attempts to make up for the lack of mastication, and during the egress of such material helps to crush it. After a time this exercise of an unusual function leads to overgrowth of the muscular fibers of the pylorus, and as a consequence, the opening from the stomach into the intestines becomes so tightly shut that ordinary liquid material does not readily pass through, and the consequence is, for another and more serious reason now, delay of the stomach contents, with consequent dilatation of the stomach walls.

It will thus be seen that from two different standpoints mastication is the most important and the most neglected process in eating. There are some further considerations, however, that serve to emphasize this importance. It is now thoroughly recognized that the stomach itself is by no means the important digestive organ that it used to be considered. It is mainly a receptacle for food material which helps man to store away sufficient food at one time, to enable him to pass a considerable period, some five hours, at least, before another meal will be required. It used to be thought that most of the process of the preparation of the food for absorption was accomplished in the stomach. This is now known not to be true. The stomach has been completely removed from a number of patients for cancer and other serious conditions, and such patients have proceeded to gain in weight and strength, accomplishing the digestion of food without any serious drawback. It is necessary that they take food in smaller quantities and at more frequent intervals, but nature even compensated for this, by bringing about an enlargement of the upper portion of the intestine, which to some extent, at least, supplied the place of the absent stomach.

It will thus be seen that if the stomach only passes on the food material conveyed to it, the process of digestion will be very well carried out in the intestines. At the present time it is well known that not a few persons, owing to abuses of gastric digestion, have no proper secretion of gastric juice, and that none of their digestion is accomplished in this hitherto supposedly so important organ. Such persons are never in as good health as normal individuals, but usually suffer few digestive symptoms. As a matter of fact, if the stomach motility is unimpaired—that is, if its ability to receive food and pass it on to the intestines without delay be retained—then digestive disturbances are rare. The two elements which are the most frequent causes of disturbance of stomach motility are overeating and insufficient mastication. Both of these make calls on the muscular walls of the stomach that they are unable to fulfil. The two ills form a vicious circle. People overeat, because they do not masticate enough, and so do not properly taste the food which they are consuming. They overeat of proteid material because this is not required in near such quantities as has hitherto been considered, and requires careful mastication in order to make its taste sufficient to satisfy appetite. The cure for stomach ills, then, is not the taking of drugs and ferments for gastric stimulation, but the accomplishment of the eating process with the care and completeness which so important an element of animal life requires.—The Independent.