Food that has been completely broken up by chewing, is readily accessible to the digestive juices but foods that are swallowed in chunks require much longer time for digestion. Much energy may be saved in the digestive process if we but take a little time and chew the food. Besides this, swallowing food without chewing it leads to overeating, hurried eating and all the train of digestive evils that arise from these.

Starches and sugars that are washed down with water or coffee, will be certain to ferment and give rise to acids which will make life miserable for the one who is foolish enough to eat in this manner. When starches and sugars are bolted, fermentation follows, even though there is no fault with the combination. This occurs because the food is not insalivated and there is no provision in the stomach for the digestion of these foods. Proteins do not require as much chewing as starches.

Quantity And Bulk

I believe that Nature "intended" man to eat well when he does eat. I do not believe in the "little-food-at-a-meal" practice, or the "little-and-often" practice. Digestion is not wholly a chemical process. It is partly mechanical. The normal healthy stomach is a muscular bag possessed of considerable contractile and expansile power. The experiments of Cannon and others showed that the stomach cannot properly grasp the food, turn it about and mix it with the digestive juices and, then, pass the mass on into the small intestine unless there is a certain minimum of food in it. A certain amount of bulk, not merely in the food itself, but also in the residue remaining after digestion, is essential, not merely to good stomach digestion, but to good intestinal digestion as well.

Concentrated nourishment--foods that leave little residue--, eating "little and often," broths, liquid diets, etc., are not ideal diets and dietary practices. They may be used temporarily in a few diseased states, but even here they are, for the most part, seldom best.