When one comes to think about it, what sense is there in throwing
away a palatable morsel of food when the taste is at its best, or
while taste lasts at all, even if the purpose of the meal is merely to
contribute to the pleasure of eating?
"Some people live to eat and others eat to live" is a saying that is
familiar to everyone, and yet how few appreciate that the perfection of
living includes the perfection of both these desiderata!
Such is the impetuosity of uncultivated or perverted human tendencies
that the desire for acquisition, sometimes called greed, impels one to
swallow one mouthful of food to take in another, without ever dreaming
that the very last contribution of taste to the last remnant of a
delicious morsel is like the last flicker of a candle, more brilliant
than any of the preceding ones. In eating, the last taste, when saliva,
the medium of taste, is most perfectly in possession of the solution,
is better than all the other stages of the process. It is the choicest
and sweetest expression of the incident, as related to each mouthful.
Then why not court it and obey, thereby, Nature's first law of health?
* * * * *
Before proceeding further with a description of its functions it may be
well to state briefly the certain result of following the guidance and
heeding the warnings of taste.
Taste determines the mastication of food so that the requisite quantity
of saliva and other juices of the mouth are added in transit, so that
the stomach and the intestines will have the least possible to do in
the matter of conversion of the food to blood, and so that the brain
and nerve centres will be taxed the least possible to assist the
stomach and intestines in their work.
If Taste is heeded in its invitation and its warnings, that which
passes into the stomach will be so suitable and ready for nourishment
of the body that the smallest possible quantity will serve the
purpose and almost no waste will be left to tax and disease the lower
intestines, while the absence of fatally inharmonious deposits in the
tissue and bone will cease to exist in proportion to the skill with
which one interprets the warnings of Taste, and in response to the care
taken in following them.