BOLTING OF FOOD

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4676, 1 February 1945, Page 3

BOLTING OF FOOD

(By the Department of Health) this habit of bolting food when you’re young and hungry has, in our time, probably earned most of us a smart rap across the knuckles or a curt reprimand. In toddlers the tendency is natural enough, but it is not desirable, and solicitous parents see in it an oblique reflection on their instruction in table manners. It can be curbed without resort to- direct action. Babies suck down their food for six or nine months before they got on to anything like solid meals, and when foods require chewing are given to thorn they want to go on sucking them down—bolting them, or. if they don like them, spitting them out. Bolting of food at toddler age does not give enough exercise to the jaws, and teeth consequently lose that stimulus to correct growth—that spacing in rounded jawbones that comes from plenty of chewing. Healthy children arc more hangrv than grow T n-ups, and consequently their saliva- flows faster. This facilitates the bolting of food, because it is - ell lubricated.. You know yourself lout you cat faster when hungry, and you can cat things you like faster than those you dislike, because the flow of saliva comes more readily. A good way to correct the bolting habit is to include some foods that require chewing, that slow the toddler tip when he is rushing a meal. Try apples, raw carrots, baked bread, or dry rusks. These require some ru'cri to get down, and will keep those small jaws working naturally and healthfully. Aad start this treatment as soon as you can, before bolting food becomes too strongly entrenched as a habit.