Part 15

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NATURE'S FOOD FILTER

Nature has provided an Automatic Food Filter which, if rightly used, will prevent the introduction of any harmful substance into the stomach.

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At the entrance to the throat there are certain muscular folds or convolutions, including the palate, which, when in repose, form an organ that is nothing less than a Perfect Food Filter. This filter has also automatic qualities which compel it to empty itself by the process we call "Involuntary Swallowing."

Involuntary swallowing is really compulsory swallowing; unless a voluntary effort to restrain it is set up against it. The real Swallowing Impulse is so strong that it is practically compelling.

The Food Filter, when rightly performing its protective function, is impervious to anything except pure water at the right temperature for admission to the stomach and to nutriment which has been properly dissolved and chemically converted by salivation (mixture with saliva) into a substance suitable for further digestion.

IMPORTANCE OF MASTICATION

If we masticate--submit to vigorous jaw action--everything that we take into the mouth, liquid as well as solid, until the nutritive part of it disappears into the stomach through compulsory or involuntary swallowing, and remove from the mouth all fibrous, insoluble and tasteless remainder, we will take into the body, thereby, only that which is good for the body.

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The first thought that will arise in the reader's mind on perusal of the above declaration will undoubtedly be, "What! masticate milk, soups, wines, spirits, and other liquids; nonsense! That is impossible!"

It is not, however, impossible, and, furthermore, it is absolutely necessary to protection against abuse of the stomach and possible disease.

Liquid for adults, for anyone after the eruption of teeth, is an artificial and unnatural sustenance; something not taken into consideration when the human body was planned. Liquid food (drunk without mixing with saliva) is a sort of nutritive self-abuse, 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. For the importance of this see Dr. Campbell's able treatise on mastication reprinted from the London Lancet in the "A.B.-Z. of OUR OWN NUTRITION."

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The only things necessary to life that we are compelled to take into the body that do not excite the sense of taste are pure air and pure water. These are necessary to life, but are not what is called nutrition. They do not, alone, replace waste tissue. They do not challenge the sentinel, Taste, and hence do not require retention in the field of taste.

If water be pure and tasteless you cannot masticate it, as it will not submit to more than one action of the jaw before causing involuntary swallowing. If it have taste it is a sign that it contains mineral or vegetable substance that needs treatment of some sort to render it suitable for the body, and it will then resist some mastication, some mouth-treatment, as in tasting, before compelling swallowing, just as the sapid liquids do.

Anything that has taste, even soup, wine, spirits or whatsoever is tried, will resist numerous mastications before being absorbed by the Food Filter. Above all things, milk, wines, etc., should be sipped and tasted to the limit of compulsory swallowing.

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In considering the reasonableness of masticating everything that has taste until it is absorbed by Nature's Food Filter, it must be remembered that the only liquid food provided for man that is not artificial is milk, and the natural means provided for taking milk into the stomach is by sucking, which is like mastication. The milk of fruits, such as cocoanut milk, for instance, is found, in liquid form, only in the unripe fruit, and remains liquid only while it is ripening into pulp.

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Insalivation does not seem to be complete without jaw action, although saliva (sometimes only mucous) flows freely into the mouth without it under conditions which we term "watering of the mouth" excited by keenness of appetite. (See Pawlow's, Campbell's, Van Someren's, and other evidence in "A.B.-Z. of OUR OWN NUTRITION.")

The normal perviousness or natural opening of the Food Filter for swallowing food is directly assisted and affected by movement of the jaws exercised in vigorous manner.

Mastication, or mouth-treatment, therefore, even of liquids that excite taste, seems to be a necessary part of thorough insalivation.

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Nature has a good reason for everything she plans.

It is asserted by physiological chemists that saliva, taken from the mouth and kept at normal temperature, will dissolve breads and similar foods and convert the starch in them into maltose, glucose or sugar. The converted form is that which is suitable for further digestion. Saliva also converts some acids into alkali and readily neutralises all acids.

It is also asserted that saliva does not dissolve some things (proteid substances) nor chemically affect them as visibly as it does starch and acid, but, even if this be true, it is no less essential that the juices provided in the mouth should have an opportunity, through mastication, or, movement about in the mouth, to do what they are able to do in assisting digestion.

Experiment shows that if all foods are submitted to the examination and action of these juices until involuntary swallowing takes place, the results in aiding subsequent digestion are important in promoting healthy nutrition.