It is not enough that girls and boys at school should be taught to
cook; they should also learn how to eat.
Few learn this at home. They are usually taught table etiquette: that
they must eat silently, and not take soup off the end of a spoon
(though that is the only rational way of doing it) or put the knife
into the mouth; but the infinitely more important art of mastication is
entirely ignored.
The art of eating is a branch of physiology and should be taught in all
schools by experts, the earlier the better. If it were thus taught the
next generation of mothers and fathers would know that it is a crime
to let their children swallow food, particularly milk and cereals and
vegetables, before it has been kept for a while in the mouth to be
mixed with saliva and thus made digestible.
Children (and most adults, too,) are like animals: give them something
good to eat and they gulp it down eagerly and then look around for
more to stuff into their unfortunate stomachs.
When I was a boy, a story in one of the readers, entitled "The
Stomach's Complaint," made an indelible impression on my mind, and
saved me many hours of the distress caused by overeating, eating too
fast, or eating or drinking things too hot or too cold.
It should be indelibly impressed on all school children that _gluttony
is a vice which defeats its own end, and that by eating very slowly
much more pleasure can be got from one mouthful than by bolting a whole
plateful_.
One stick of candy can be made to yield more "linked sweetness
long-drawn-out" than a dozen sticks as usually devoured. Moreover, one
stick will not cause hours of discomfort as the dozen sticks surely
will; and, in addition, it will cost much less, thus leaving plenty of
money to spend on other things. Surely this argument must appeal to all
children who have brains enough to be worth schooling.
Every child should also be told over and over again, till the habit
is formed, that the pleasure derived from candy and cake and all food
can be vastly increased and intensified by consciously breathing out
through the nose while eating (as explained on pages 62-3) and that
this will be a further protection from indigestion.
If these truths were firmly impressed on all child minds, two-thirds
of the minor ills of mankind would disappear in two generations, and
most of the major maladies also; for let me say it once more, the
stomach is the source of most preventable diseases.