Horace Fletcher

“ If what Taste rejects, after having selected nutriment out of a morsel of [Pg 199] 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." ”

“ There are two ways of putting a limit to a meal—to eating. One—the wrong one—comes in the shape of a protest on the part of a too full stomach while the appetite is yet ravenous. The right one comes naturally from a perfectly satisfied feeling—a ceasing of desire for anything more, no matter how previously alluring to the palate, before the stomach is overburdened. The former is evidence of glut, or gluttony, and the latter is Nature's way, for which there is every desired reward. ”

“ If we can devote ten thousand actions of the jaw, daily, to senseless or vicious gossip, WHAT SENSE is there in denying adequate jaw service to the most important function of living?
WHAT SENSE is there in a rich person glutting his Mind-Power Plant with more food-fuel than it needs, just because he happens to have an abundance to glut with, or glut on? ”

“ The truth is that it is the first and most important solvent necessary to digestion, the good offices of which are to separate, make alkaline, neutralise, saponify, and otherwise render the succeeding processes within the delicate organs of the body as easy as their delicacy requires, and thus not to strain and inflame them into festering breeding grounds for the myriads of microbes of diseases which we are compelled to draw in with every breath of air we inhale. ”

“ Every artificial method that has been suggested to coax Nature into changing her problems to suit man's poor interpretation has failed, but Nature has been patient withal. Her door to reform is never closed, and her patience is boundless towards prodigal and foolish children.
Nature has put the keenest of the senses at the threshold of life to serve both as hosts and servants, but Appreciation has heretofore failed to recognise their true office, while Ignorance, blinded by Greed, has spurned and abused the best of servants. ”

“ Even among men of scientific habit of thought, unduly constipated by stale conservatism, the old, old corpse of tradition, "The accumulated experience of the whole race must be correct," is revived and used in argument contentiously; but to this relapse into non-scientific reasoning comes the reply: "If the accumulated experience of the human race is evidence that crime and disease are natural, then disease and crime are good things and should not be discouraged." ”

“ Can a man on such a diet, even though it suffices to keep up body-weight and apparently also physiological equilibrium, do work to any extent? Will there be under such condition a proper degree of fitness for physical work of any kind? ”

“ Mastication and thorough mouth-treatment seem to allow the appetite to prescribe what my body needs and this is the essence and substance of your discovery. It pleases me very much that Drs. Kellogg and Dewey have confirmed your researches and find that your claims are not over-drawn. They have such splendid opportunities to test things dietetic and are such open-minded, natural-born altruists that their confirmation counts for even more than that of the very conservative men in Science who stand for scientific authority and who want a thing thrice proven before they give it endorsement. ”

“ It would seem, therefore, that the perfection of nutrition requires the proper mixture of saliva added to all food substances, and that mastication is not only a means of separation in order to give saliva a chance but a valve opener for salivary glands in order to make the proper solution for the stomach; and, that taste exists, in one of its important functions, to indicate how long the process should continue and when it has effected its healthful purpose.
Any one who tries it, no matter how perverted the taste has become by abuse, will find that Nature is not only kind but alluring. ”

“ Just now a man has ended a thirty-two day fast under my care, and has begun taking food again, with an appetite and a relish that his memory does not recall having enjoyed before. He swallows nothing that is not reduced to thin liquid. Only occasional abstinence from food for a time and such attention to mastication, makes health possible with the majority of people, tempted by quanti [Pg 76] ties of soft and rich foods. No other one has taught so wisely how available brain power can be saved from wastage in the stomach, as have you—the value is beyond all estimate. ”

“ THERE IS SENSE in carefully attending to the voluntary preparation of the food for the stomach, so that the involuntary functions of digestion and of assimilation may be performed with natural ease and freedom, thereby defying and preventing disease!
If we can save two-thirds of present [Pg 198] consumption and yet furnish all that is necessary for perfect nutrition, WHAT SENSE is there in wearing out our Mind-Power Plant with a glut of surplus?
Unless a person has a pressing engagement with his own funeral, WHAT SENSE is there in hurrying with his meals? ”

“ For instance, a person in possession of normal taste conditions may pass a confectionery shop or a fruit stand without temptation to eat of their wares, for they would spoil the taste already in possession of the mouth.
The expert wine tasters in Rhineland, where the full flavour of the luscious fruit is retained in the wine as Nature put it there, never drink wine. They breathe it into the mouth and atomise it on the tongue with utmost relish. To them the swallowing of the precious juice without dissipation by taste is an unpardonable sacrilege. ”

“ A person who has been without food for an unusual time, if he does not gorge his stomach when the first opportunity of breaking the fast arrives, is not only better for the rest the brain has had, but the health does not suffer in any way.
It is, then, no serious deprivation to ask a person to go without what we call breakfast—the getting-up or habit-craving—and give the brain a chance to [Pg 250] clean up the remnants of the last day's supply of food fuel, and express new desires in an earned appetite. ”

“ When a race-or work-animal shows digestive disturbance the least intelligent owner or keeper knows that it is not fit for work or racing, and yet this symbol of unfitness is common to the human race.
One of the most noticeable and significant results of economic nutrition gained through careful attention to the mouth-treatment of food, or buccal-digestion, is, not only the small quantity of waste obtained but its inoffensiveness. Under best test-conditions the ashes of economic digestion have been reduced to one-tenth of the average given as normal in the latest text-books on Physiology. ”

“ When patients have understood that they were suffering no injury from not taking food they have ceased to have hunger cravings. These hunger cravings usually come from fear or from disorder caused by fermenting food in an overloaded stomach.
We can, then, on undisputed and practical authority, treat craving for food or drink as a disease and therefore not rational, and starvation as merely drawing upon the stored fuel—fatty tissue—by the dynamo of the brain, restorable at will at any time before complete exhaustion, without injury— [Pg 248] with benefit, in fact—to the machinery of the body. ”

“ The ease with which one will learn to enjoy and "hang on" to food in the mouth, even milk and soup, after he has learned a good reason for doing so, will quickly create a counter habit which is in accordance with Nature's perfect way.
When one has discovered the delight of that last indescribably sweet flash of taste, which Taste offers as a pousse café to those who serve it with respect, he will find any food that Appetite selects is needed for his nutrition, and is good. ”

“ Watch a child take its nourishment in natural manner. The sucking action is like the act of mastication in that it excites the glands which supply fluids to the mouth. Whatever number of these fluids there may be, I will class them all as saliva. Certainly in the case of milk being taken into the stomach, saliva is not needed to lubricate it. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that saliva is intended as a part of the mixture necessary to digestion; that is, to the conversion of the food into nutriment. ”

“ The hunger of the morning is necessarily but a habit-hunger. The best evidence of this is that, when busily employed, we forget it without trouble; and also is that European peoples, where the disease dyspepsia is not known in the list of physical derangements, perform the chief physical or mental effort of the day before their breakfast, the morning coffee scarcely meaning anything in the way of what we call a meal. ”

“ Theoretically, digestion may take place far down in the digestive tract, but it is practically found that when this possibility is resorted to, by reason of neglect of the earlier buccal or gastric digestion, trouble soon happens, and we doctors are called in to try to effect cures by medicine or otherwise. For every one horse-power of work, as it were, that is slighted in the mouth, it requires perhaps ten horse-power of energy to repair the neglect further on, and all of this waste of energy is charged against the brain-power, pleasure-power reserve on storage. ”

“ If this is admitted, and the choice of the quantity and quality of food thrown on taste and appetite, we are at once provided with a natural means of ascertaining the body's actual wants from day to day. The phenomena that have resulted from the more thorough insalivation and mastication of food can only be described as remarkable and of the highest importance for the progress of that most important of all sciences, the right conduct of life. ”

“ The funny part of it is that the animals, other than man, use me instinctively and live their appointed time; while man, in his usual big-headed way, centuries and centuries ago, gave me the lowest place among the Senses, classed my chief agent and assistant, Saliva, as [Pg 205] merely a 'pusher' of food into the stomach, and ever since he has been in too much of a hurry to live quick to take the time to live long; and that's what's the matter with the world. ”

“ Upon an examination, that any one can make for himself, however, it is revealed that taste is the faithful servant of appetite; the sentinel of the stomach, of the intestines, of the tissues and of the brain, whose guidance and warning, if heeded, will give heretofore unknown enjoyment of eating, and at the same time insure perfect health and the maximum of strength. ”

“ The enthusiasm excited by a persistent study of the problem of human nutrition is inspired by the need of an intelligent scheme of information and instruction which may be understood by mothers and teachers for the benefit of children. Unlike the young of the lower animals, the babes of mankind have some years of dependent existence during which much unconscious murder is committed, and during which the innocents are more or less poisoned with bad suggestions that weaken them all through life. ”

“ The influence of visible supply or of passing or permanent opportunity of possession is a most powerful suggestion in the cultivation of economy or prodigality, of greed or moderation, of healthy nouriture or plethoric indigestion.
Man was constructed and intended to hunt his food among the grains, nuts, roots, and other fruits of earth, and in hunting food to earn a keen appetite. He found his food scattered and ate it as he found it, with the true appreciation that difficulty of possession gives. In the primitive state the requirements of natural digestion are safeguarded ”

“ Whatever does not taste, such as glass or stone, is not nutritious. [6]
Taste is excited by the dissolving of food in the mouth, and while it lasts a necessary process of preparation for digestion is going on.
The juices of the mouth have the power to transform any food that excites taste into a substance suitable for the body.
Nothing that is tasteless, except water and pure proteid, only by distinct invitation of appetite, should be taken into the stomach. ”

“ Progress of Civilisation is accelerated by constantly extending systems of individual, moral, social and sanitary quarantine.
It is not what man adds, for he can add nothing, but what he prevents, that aids growth.
Man creates nothing, but he assists Creation by removing deterrents to growth. Growth is spontaneous, constant and ever stronger if obstructions are removed. Creation does all the growing, but cultivates nothing; the seed falling upon good soil or upon [Pg 237] stony waste without other direction than that given by the caprice of the winds. ”

“ While it is an excellent thing to give thorough mouth attention to anything taken into the body, to solids alone, even if liquids are neglected, the best economic and cleanly results are only obtained when all substances, both liquid and solid, are either munched or tasted out of existence, as it were, and have been absorbed into a waiting and willing body; a body with an earned appetite. ”

“ What you have done to unfold physiologic mastication means more for human weal than all the mere medical prescribers have given the world from Adam to the present moment. I have tested the method you advise with the ailing, as you could not have had so large an opportunity to do. I have been having the care of fasters for the past twenty-six years, and now all of them, when they return to their healthy appetite and feeding, have to 'Fletcherise' every morsel. ”

“ The sense of taste differs from the process of nutrition in the fact that it does not assimilate the body tasted, but reproduces ideally the energy that makes the impression on the sense organ of taste. Even taste, therefore, is an ideal activity, although it is present only when the nutritive energy is assimilating—it perceives the object in a process of dissolution. ”

“ All experience warns against overeating and improper eating as the most common causes of disease; and troubles of the stomach and intestines are known to be the parents of all other bodily ills; yet no fixed guide has been set to determine what is "overeating" and what is "improper food." The reason for this is probably because no two bodies require the same quantity or kind of nourishment, and, "What is one man's food is another man's poison." ”

“ 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 [Pg 113] 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. ”

“ Nature has not been so unkind, how [Pg 158] ever, as to leave man without a means of knowing just how to gauge the quantity of food required for her best service, and probably, when we learn the secret, has equally well provided us with certain discrimination relative to the quality of food that is best for harmonic development.
Investigation never fails to find provision for both guard and guide in all of Nature's plans and man's nutrition is of such importance that she surely has not left it out of the list of the protected. ”

“ If you take the meat or the dry bread and masticate sufficiently, allowing the nutriment to become thoroughly solved by the saliva and separated from the dirt,—the indigestible, tasteless remainder—the taste will become more and more delicious as the saliva gets possession of the solution, and will have a final delicacy which sauces cannot equal, as a reward for pursuing Nature's invitation and rendering her the appointed service. ”