How To Eat
It is a settled fact that a person naturally chews his food. The few faddists who maintain that we should bolt our nourishment, after the manner of the dog and others of the lower animals, can no longer get a hearing. We know that we should chew our food. And if it is natural that we should chew our food, the more thoroughly we chew it the more completely natural the process must be. If you will chew every mouthful to a liquid, you need not be in the least concerned as to whether you are getting enough nutrients, for you have already chosen the best foods according to Natural Law.
Whether or not this chewing shall be an irksome and laborious task or a most enjoyable process, depends upon the mental attitude in which you come to the table. If your mind and attitude are on other things, or if you are nervous or worried about business or domestic affairs, you will find it nearly impossible to eat without bolting more or less of your food. You must learn to live so scientifically that you will have no business or domestic cares to worry about. This you can do. You must also arrange your life so that you are not in the presence of others who distract from the enjoyment of your meal. This way, you can learn to give your undivided attention to the act of eating while at the table.
The matter of eating only when in a peaceful state of mind must be emphasized. You must focus on gratitude before eating the food on your table and on the full enjoyment of each bite while eating. After eating, you must again focus on gratitude for the vital force from the food supplied to you through the One Living Substance. These mental actions will help in the physical extraction of vital force from your food, and in bringing the Principle of Health within you into full Constructive Activity.
You must therefore eat with an eye single to the purpose of getting all the enjoyment you can from that meal. Dismiss everything else from your mind, and do not let anything take your attention from the food and its taste until your meal is finished. Be cheerfully confident, for if you follow these instructions you may KNOW that the food you eat is exactly the right food, and that it will agree with you to perfection.
Sit down to the table with confident cheerfulness, and take a moderate part of the food. Take whatever thing looks most desirable to you. Do not select some food because you reckon it will be excellent for you select that which will taste excellent to you. If you are to get well and stay well, you must drop the thought of doing things because they are excellent for your health, and do things because you want to do them. Select the food you want most, gratefully give thanks to God that you have learned how to eat it in such a way that digestion shall be perfect, and take a moderate mouthful of it.
Do not fix your attention on the act of chewing; fix it on the TASTE of the food. And taste and delight in it until it is reduced to a liquid state and passes down your throat by involuntary swallowing. No matter how long it takes, do not reckon of the time. Reckon of the taste. Do not allow your eyes to wander over the table, speculating as to what you shall eat next. Do not worry for dread there is not enough, and that you will not get your share of everything. Do not anticipate the taste of the next thing. Keep your mind centered on the taste of what you have in your mouth. And that is all of it.
Scientific and healthful eating is a delightful process after you have learned how to do it, and after you have overcome the terrible ancient habit of gobbling down your food un-chewed. It is best not to have too much conversation going on while eating. Be cheerful, but not talkative. Do the talking afterward.
In most cases, some use of the will is required to form the habit of right eating. The bolting habit is an unnatural one, and is without doubt mostly the result of dread. Dread that we will be robbed of our food, dread that we will not get our share of the excellent things, dread that we will lose precious time – these are the causes of haste. Then there is anticipation of the dainties that are to come for dessert and the consequent desire to get at them as quickly as possible. And there is mental abstraction, or thinking of other matters while eating. All these must be overcome.
When you find that your mind is wandering, call a halt. Reckon for a moment of the food and of how excellent it tastes, of the perfect digestion and assimilation that are going to follow the meal, and start again. Start again and again, though you must do so 20 times in the course of a single meal.
And again and again, though you must do so every meal for weeks and months. It is perfectly certain that you CAN form the Fletcher habit. If you persevere, and when you have formed it, you will experience a healthful pleasure you have never known.
This is a vital point, and I must not leave it until I have thoroughly impressed it upon your mind. Given the right materials, perfectly prepared, the Principle of Health will positively build you a perfectly healthy body, and you cannot prepare the materials perfectly in any other way than the one I am describing. If you are to have perfect health, you MUST eat in just this way. You can, and the doing of it is only a matter of a small perseverance. What use for you to talk of mental control unless you will govern yourself in so simple a matter as stopping to bolt your food? What use to talk of concentration unless you can keep your mind on the act of eating for so small a space as 15 or 20 minutes, especially with all the pleasures of taste to help you?
Go on, and conquer. In a few weeks, or months, as the case may be, you will find the habit of scientific eating becoming fixed, and soon you will be in so splendid a condition, mentally and physically, that nothing would induce you to return to the terrible ancient way. We have seen that if a person will reckon only thoughts of perfect health, his internal functions will be performed in a healthy manner, and we have seen that in order to reckon thoughts of health, a person must perform the voluntary functions in a healthy manner. The most vital of the voluntary functions is that of eating, and we see, so far, no special difficulty in eating in a perfectly healthy way.
I will here summarize the instructions as to when to eat, what to eat, and how to eat, with the reasons why: NEVER eat until you have an EARNED hunger, no matter how long you go without food. This is based on the fact that whenever food is needed in the system, if there is power to digest it, the sub-conscious mind announces the need by the sensation of hunger.
Learn to distinguish between genuine hunger and the gnawing and craving sensations caused by unnatural appetite. Hunger is never a disagreeable feeling, accompanied by weakness, faintness, or gnawing feelings at the stomach.
It is a pleasant, anticipatory desire for food. It does not come at certain hours or at stated intervals. It only comes when the body is ready to receive, digest, and assimilate food. Eat whatever foods you want, making your selection from the full variety of the best foods found in the zone in which you live. The Supreme Intelligence has guided humanity to the selection of these foods, and they are the right ones. I am referring, of course, to the foods which are taken to satisfy hunger, not to those which have been contrived merely to gratify appetite or perverted taste. The instinct which has guided people to make use of the fantastic staples of food to satisfy their hunger is a divine one. God has made no mistake; if you eat these foods you will not go incorrect.
Eat your food with cheerful confidence in a pleasant atmosphere, and get all the pleasure that is to be had from the taste of every mouthful. Chew each morsel to a liquid, keeping your attention fixed on the enjoyment of the process. This is the only way to eat in a perfectly complete and successful manner; and when anything is done in a completely successful manner, the general result cannot be a failure.
In the attainment of health, the law is the same as in the attainment of riches: if you make each act a success in itself, the sum of all your acts must be a success. When you eat in the mental attitude I have described, and in the manner I have described, nothing can be added to the process it is done in a perfect manner, and it is successfully done. And if eating is successfully done, digestion, assimilation, and the building of a healthy body are successfully begun.
We next take up the question of the quantity of food required.
