WHAT SENSE is there in calling any glutton "a gentleman"?
WHAT SENSE is there in calling any glutton "a lady"?
If what Taste rejects, after having selected nutriment out of a morsel of food is _dirt_, WHAT SENSE is there in allowing it to contaminate and burden the delicate organs of digestion?
An indigestible morsel of food is like a runaway team in a crowded street. WHAT SENSE is there, then, in demoralising things in the thoroughfare of our life organism by admitting unruly substance?
An indigestible morsel of food in the stomach, and all the way through the intestines, is like a "bull in a china shop." WHAT SENSE is there, then, in smashing the delicate utensils in the laboratory of our Mind-Power Plant by rushing "bulls" past Sentinel Taste?
Physiological Chemistry declares that an important function of saliva is turning the starch of foods into dextrose--sugar--which is one of the high forms of nutrition.
An eminent physiological chemist, who is a friend of the author, and who has been experimenting with the suggestions offered by the discovery of new uses for Taste in securing perfect economic nutrition, says that the inexpressibly sweet flavour which comes with the last expression of Taste in connection with a morsel of food, especially dry breads, which are largely starch, is evidence of perfect conversion of the starch to sugar by the action of the saliva.
The sweet taste spoken of begins to be apparent in dry French bread after about twenty movements of the mouth, and increases until the whole morsel is dissolved and disappears into the stomach, leaving behind it a most delicious after-flavour. According to the quantity in the mouthful this process will take from fifty to one hundred movements of the mouth and require from half a minute to one minute.
In this connection remember, please, that if you bolt a whole slice, or a whole loaf of bread in the meantime, as soon as it is wet enough to swallow, you will get little, if any, more nutriment out of it, and none of the exquisite taste that Nature's way offers as an allurement for obeying her beneficent demands. The way of Nature is the epicurean way; the other way is nothing less than piggish gluttony.
Even if time for eating is limited, nothing is gained by bolting food. Thirty mouthfuls of bread thoroughly dissolved in the mouth will supply nutriment for a strong man for twenty-four hours, and the eating of it in the way recommended will give pleasure unknown in hurry.