Food and flavor, a gastronomic guide to health and good living . in Di-gestion. Most persons labor—or act as if they labored—under the delusion that the mouth was made chieflyfor the ingestion of food and that the sole use of salivais to lubricate it so that it can be easily and quicklyswallowed. Mr. Fletcher did not discover the factthat the mouth is also a most important organ of di-gestion^ with the aid of saliva; but he emphasized thisimportant fact in his writings as no other writer hadever done, proclaiming it from the housetops till thou-sands began to listen and heed and learn and bene
Food and flavor, a gastronomic guide to health and good living . in Di-gestion. Most persons labor—or act as if they labored—under the delusion that the mouth was made chieflyfor the ingestion of food and that the sole use of salivais to lubricate it so that it can be easily and quicklyswallowed. Mr. Fletcher did not discover the factthat the mouth is also a most important organ of di-gestion^ with the aid of saliva; but he emphasized thisimportant fact in his writings as no other writer hadever done, proclaiming it from the housetops till thou-sands began to listen and heed and learn and benefitby his preaching; and therein lies the importance ofhis name in the history of dietetic reform. The gist of his doctrine may be given in a few words:keep all food (soft as well as hard, liquid as well assolid, moist as well as dry) in the mouth and chewit till it has become thoroughly mingled with thesaliva, has lost all its flavor, and is ready to disap-pear down the throat without an effort at swallow-ing. Gladstones directions in regard to thirty-two. HORACE FLETCHER IMPORTANCE OF FLAVOR 47 masticatory movements are all right for some foods,,but others require no more than twenty, while forsome (onions) seven hundred hardly suffice to re-move the odor and make them digestible. Unless themouth thus does its work, the lower digestive tract hasto do it at ten times the expenditure of vital force, andthe result is dyspepsia. Never, surely, was preaching more needed than thesesermons of Horace Fletcher to the victims of Americasnational scourge of chronic indigestion. It cannot be denied that there is a considerableamount of questionable faddism and exaggeration inhis doctrines. He, himself, frankly apologizes forsuch details in them as may suggest the scrappinessand extravagance of an intemperate screed, on theground that so-called screeds sometimes attract at=tention where sober statement fails to be heard; whichis unfortunately true. Many of Fletchers followers accept h
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Keywords: ., bookauthorfinckhen, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
