Food “Preferences” Often Sign Of Faulty Eating

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27963, 9 May 1956, Page 16

Food “Preferences” Often Sign Of Faulty Eating

‘The Press’’ Special - Service

DUNEDIN, May 8. Dental research scientists have discovered that when natural teeth are lost and “masticatory efficiency” declines, people do not compensate for this disability by spending proportionately longer in consuming a meal, said Professor F. W. Craddock, professor of prosthetic dentistry at Otago University. “Instead they masticate less thoroughly and swallow larger particles of food,” said Professor Craddock. “It is common knowledge that old people often depend on very few natural teeth or on inefficient substitutes, and it is a matter of common ob ervation that they spend longer on their meals than do young people. “Indeed they do, but that is because all the actions of old people are slow. “And if you noint to obvious dental cripples, youne or old. taking their time in fashionable tea rooms. I can point to the far from leisurely performance of the same few people in the railway dining rooms at Oamaru, where 250 New Zealanders daily perform gastronomic prodigies by consuming a three-course meal in 20 minutes gross—about 14 minutes net. “In these circumstances, the dental cripples swallow large lumps,” said the professor. Professor Craddock was delivering the inaugural lecture for 1956 at the Univer ity of Otago, which was entitled “In Praise of Technology.” He outlined his own field of prosthetic dentistry, in which the University of New Zealand, in common with about eight other Commonwealth universities. had recently established a chair at the Otago Dental School. Prosthetic dentistry was the branch

dealing with “the replacement of missing teeth and associated tissues by artificial means” and was one of the youngest technological sciences, said Professor Craddock. It had also been discovered that those people whose masticatory performances were low acquired food “preferences,” he explained. “Surely it is for this reason that many people avoid peanuts and ‘prefer’ hot buttered toast to the crisper variety, chopped lettuce to the more succulent whole leaf. Vienna bread to the more tasty and satisfying coarser varieties, tinned sweet corn in white sauce to the same food as nature presents it on the cob. Grilled Steak “And notice the apprehension and vacillation with which so manv people order grilled steak, even in first-class hotels.” A preference was established not for the most tasty or nutritious foods, but for those which could be swallowed after being pressed against the palate by the tongue, said Professor Craddock. “You may object that the chewing of raw coconut or the pulling of a carrot from the garden and snapping it in half with the teeth are either subtle and uncomfortable, or, alternatively, primitive and earthv pleasures I would reply that primitive peonle who used their teeth in this manner retained them until they died and in the meantime enjoyed good general health. “And I would add that even for many highly civilised peoples something intangible is lost if feats of this kind should suddenly become impossible.”