Eat slowly, and allow the saliva to mingle with the food. Many make a mistake in drinking cold water with their meals. Ice-water or iced lemonade, drunk with meals, will arrest digestion until the system has imparted sufficient warmth to the stomach to enable it to take up its work again. But if anything is needed to quench thirst, pure water drunk some little time before or after the meal is all that nature requires. Never take tea, coffee, beer, wine, or any spirituous liquor.
Water is the best liquid possible to cleanse the tissues.
Soups, puddings, and other articles of the kind are often eaten too hot, and as a consequence the stomach is debilitated. Let them become partly cooled before they are eaten. For those who can use them, good vegetables, prepared in a healthful manner, are better than soft mushes or porridge. A second meal should never be eaten until the stomach has had time to rest from the labor of digesting the preceding meal. After the stomach has done its work for one meal, do not crowd more work upon it before it has had a chance to rest and to provide a sufficient supply of gastric juice for the next meal.