EATING SLOW OR FAST

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 10, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 40.

EATING SLOW OR FAST.

While we have always maintained that rapid eating is unfavorable to digestion, yet there is something to be said against that sort of slow and deliberate eating in which one thinks all the while about the food, with a sort of worry lest some particle may go down before it has had sufficient attention. Mastication should be performed with energy and with a sort of pleasure. The energy given to it stimulates the flow of saliva and the gastric juice and favors digestion. One danger in mumbling over our food is that it inhibits these secretions. It does not follow, however, that with energetic mastication we should bolt our food half chewed. We should simply form the habit of masticating it with vigor, with energy, as if it were a pleasure rather than a task.—Journal of Hygiene.