"The loss of the delicate food instinct in the ordinary man has been aggravated not only by the habit of food bolting, but the habit of eating what is set before us by others, instead of choosing our food for ourselves. In the experiment at Yale none of the men were served anything until they had looked over the menu and made their own choice. While this procedure is not always practicable at home or in boarding houses, it is nevertheless within the power of the ordinary individual to use his power of choice more than he does at present. If he will do so, he will usually be rewarded in a few months by reaching a condition of physical and mental efficiency of which he had scarcely dared to dream. The instinct to eat was given us for the purpose of enabling us to adapt our daily food to our varying daily needs. The realization that we have let this valuable instinct atrophy by disuse is the needed incentive to restore it to activity." 11 In adopting the practice of Mr. Fletcher's system, however, it is well not to be too conscientious in regard to the mere mechanical act of chewing. "Excess of attention," says Dr. C. W. Saleeby, "interferes as markedly as carelessness with the performance of many subconscious or semi-automatic acts."12

There is no doubt that too much thought directed upon the act of eating has a tendency to inhibit the digestive secretions. It is a perfectly healthy instinct that prompts the average man to think as little about his food as possible, and to demand only that it taste good.

"He who counts his chews or makes hard work of mastication, by attending only to the mechanical act of chewing," says Prof. Irving Fisher, "will receive more harm than good from the practice. The food should be chewed and relished with no thought of swallowing. There should be no more effort to prevent than to force swallowing. It will be found that if we attend only to the agreeable task of extracting the flavors from our food, Nature will take care of the swallowing, which will become, like breathing, involuntary. It will also be found that taste will grow more discriminating and can be depended upon to guide us, both in respect to the kind of food, and also to the amount."13

12 Dr. C. W. Saleeby: " Worry, the Disease of the Age," p. 34.

"Above all things don't strain to be careful. Strain inhibits - paralyzes - all of the glandular functions and deranges the nervous nicety of adjustment. Just eat slowly, deliberately, small morsels, and sip and taste small quantities of liquids and observe what happens.14

"Numbers of mastications . . . are no guide to be relied upon.

"Gladstone's dictum. 'Chew each morsel of food at least thirty-two times,' was of little value except as a general suggestion. Some morsels of food will not resist thirty-two mastications, while others will defy seven hundred." 15

Therefore, needless to say, there should be no attempt to " count the chews." Even Gladstone did not carry out in his own case his advice to his children to chew each mouthful thirty-two times. Dr. Hubert Higgins says16 that an interested observer in the strangers' gallery at a public dinner in Cam-bridge took pains to count the jaw movements of the great statesman to each mouthful of food, and found that the number was usually as many as sixty or seventy. Even if counting the chews did not have this tendency to check the flow of the digestive juices, the practice could be of no value as a guide to the amount of chewing required because each food demands a mouth-treatment all its own. Furthermore, because of the difference in the supply and the alkalinity of the saliva in individuals, no two persons can be sure of disposing of a morsel in the same number of mastications. "One person," says Mr. Fletcher, "may dispose of a morsel of bread in thirty mastications so that the last vestige of it has disappeared by involuntary process into the stomach.

Another person, of similar general health appearance, selecting as nearly as possible an equal morsel of bread, may require fifty acts of mastication before the morsel has disappeared. . . . The dissimilarity lies in the difference of the copiousness and strength of the secretions at the time of trial." 17

13 Professor Irving Fisher: The Independent, New York, August, 1907.

14Fletcher: "New Glutton or Epicure," p. 126. 15 Fletcher: "New Glutton or Epicure," p. 137.

16 Dr. Hubert Higgins: " Humaniculture," p. 101.

It should be noted in this connection, however, that, just as the strength of the arm is increased by exercise, so the vigorous use of the mechanism of mastication increases its efficiency. The secretion of saliva is not only increased, but is rendered more alkaline. Despite the popular idea, Mr. Fletcher himself is a fast eater. Having made a vigorous and persistent use of his masticatory appara-tus for ten years, he is now able to keep pace with the average eater and yet fulfill all the conditions of complete mastication. The actual time that he spent over his two daily meals during the Yale tests was from twelve to fifteen minutes each. From this it will readily be seen that there are no grounds for the common belief that it is necessary for a follower of Mr. Fletcher to spend an unusual length of time over his meals.

17 Fletcher: "New Glutton or Epicure," pp. 125-126.

And right here it should be emphasized that all that has been said in regard to the importance of mastication and insalivation applies to fluid as well as to solid food. As Mr. Fletcher points out, liquid food is a form of sustenance invented by civilization that Mother Nature did not count with when she planned the human body. The only fluid food provided by Nature is milk, the natural method of procuring which is by sucking, a process exactly analogous to chewing. The wisdom of this arrangement can well be understood when it is remembered that milk, when taken into the stomach, is transformed into a thick curd, and must undergo digestion as a solid. Naturally, the stomach can handle a number of these small curds much more easily than it can one large one.

In order that soups and beverages may be submitted to the digestive action of saliva, it is necessary that they should be given careful mouth treatment before being swallowed into the stomach. "Food (drunk without mixing it with saliva) is a sort of nutritive self-abuse," says Mr. Fletcher, "and the only way to avoid the ill effect is to give it the same chance to encounter saliva that the constituent ingredients would have had in a more solid state. . . . Anything that has taste, even soup, wine, spirits or whatsoever is tried, will resist numerous mastications before being absorbed by Nature's Food Filter. Above all things, milk, wines, etc., should be sipped and tasted to the limit of compulsory swallowing." 18

Mr. Fletcher declares (and the testimony of all the people who have tested his theory uphold him), that when tea, coffee, and alcoholic liquors are thoroughly insalivated before being swallowed, the appetite will refuse to receive them except in extremely small quantities, if it does not refuse to receive them at all.

18 Fletcher: "New Glutton or Epicure," p. 113,