The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-12-07
The Instinct to Eat.



A few years ago a physician bought
a monkey in order to study his meth
DDS OF eating. He fed aim cherries,
which the monkey seemed greedily to
swallow whole. But after the stock of
| cherries was exhausted it was found
that the monkey had merely stored
them in his cheeks. He had taken
them as rapidly as possible, for fear.
apparently, he should loose his chance
of getting them all.
AS soon as he perceived that no
more We're forthcoming he began, from
the little storehouse on each side of
| his mouth, to press with his finger one
cherry after another into his mouth.
He then chewed it thoroughly, put out
| the pit skin and stem and swallowed.
Among the consequences of food
boiling we must probably count the
excessive use of flesh foods. Meat is
one o. the few foods which can be
eaten rapidly with impunity. 1t re-
quires less subdivision and less mix
turc with saliva than other foods. 1t
is significant that the fiesh-eating ami
mails, such as the dog, lion and tiger,
are rapid eaters, whereas the grain
eating animals, such as the horse, are
slow eaters. Those who, like Mr..
Fletcher, have overcome the common
hurry habit and have reverted to thor
ough mastication have found them
selves unconsciOusly diminishing their
consumption of foods like meat, which
are proper to faSt-eating animals, and
substituting foods like cereals, which
are proper to slow-eating animals. A
man who eats as fast as a dog or a
lion will want to eat the foods which
dogs and lions use. A man who eats
slowly will find q cereal, fruit and nut
diet mere satisfactory.
The practice of slower eating is
spreading rapidly, and is even reach
ing into the athletic world. Were the
movement merely q fad, it would soon
die d natural death but there is too
much sound physiology behind it to
make such a result Iikel% Never be-
fore has there been SO much interest
in human nutrition and never before
have So many scientists been at work
on IietetiC problems AS yet the study
has only begun. As Professor Chitten-
den stated recently: we are only just
beginning to learn little in the
science of dietetics" 1t will doubtless
take wears before that science is thor
oughly established. In the meantime
the average man, without needing to
study dietetics in any technical way,
can getethe advantage of scientific
diet by following his appetite, if only
he will give up the hurry habit by
which that appetite has become per-
verified. 1t is not necessary to make
bore of eating. On the contrary. he
who counts his chews or makes hard |
work OF mastication by attending only |
to 1he mechanical act of chewing will
receive more harm than good from the |
practice. Pawlow has shown that the
appetite juice" in the stomach will !
not flow unless we attend to the taste |
and enjoyment of our food. The food |
should be chewed and relished with no
thought of swallowing. There should |
be no more effort to prevent than to
force swallowing. 1t will be found that |
that ii we attend only to the agreeable |
task of extracting the fiavors from our |
food. nature will take car of the /
swallowing. which will become. like |
breathing. involutary. II will also be
found that taste will grow more dis
eliminating and can be depended upon |
to guide us. both in respect to the kind |
of food and also in respect 10 the
amount The men who took part in
the Yale experiment remarked with
surprise on the keen sense of taste
they developed and the number of fla
vors formerly unsupported which they
had grown to appreciate in foods like
bread, which formerly had been al
most tasteless.