TO INTEREST HOUSEWIVES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 67, 16 February 1939, Page 14

TO INTEREST HOUSEWIVES.

THE NECESSITY OF CHEWING FOOD THOROUGHLY. Parents should teach their children to chew their food. Proper mastication in early youth is a fine preparation for good digestion in later life, since the habit, once formed, is likely to continue. This is no plea for languid eating, for dawdling over the meals, which has little or nothing to do with proper eating. It is a hint to parents of one way to promote good health in their offspring by insisting that food is not swallowed without the amount of chewing needed for its ready assimilation with the gastric juices and the elements of stomach and body. The term “Fletcherising” will be remembered by many readers as the name given to slow eating because the eminent Dr Fletcher advocated that each mouthful of food should be chewed forty times before being swallowed. Persons suffering from stomach, ailments and their train of illnesses were greatly relieved by this means of avoding swallowing improperlychewed goods. Before such a necessity arises, parents can ward off stomach troubles by teaching their j little folk to chew their food well before swallowing it. The gastric juices must be kept in correct action. ADVISED BY PHYSICIANS.

Dentists now agree that chewing food well is good for the teeth. They require action of this Lind, and the clearing of food from crevices between teeth which results. Correct chewing promotes good teeth as well as good health. Reduction of doctors’ and dentists’ bills is a natural outcome. But no negligence in going to a dentist and having periodic examinations of children’s or adult’s teeth should result. Nor should "there be any laxness in summoning a physician when symptoms of illness foretell the need. A child, or an adult for that matter, who is subject to seasickness, or car sickness which makes itself felt aboard trains, trams and sometimes in closed motor-cars, will find a biscuit or crust of bread, well masticated, a decidedlv good remedy. This is because anything that keeps the stomach in action relieves the nausea. Gum is sometimes chewed for this reason when