CHEWING INTO BEAUTY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18043, 31 December 1926, Page 18

CHEWING INTO BEAUTY.

Modern doctors are recommending a very easy way for the plump and busy girl to get a slender line, and that is by .consistent and conscientious chewing. . It sounds too simple, and it is, if you remember, for the trouble with so many of us to-day is that we have got into such a habit of bolting our meals that it requires a real discipline to keep to the chewing habit. Women who have tried the system can prove, by measurements, that there is more than a little truth in it. There’s no lightning cure for obesity which does not also undermine health, and so there is no miraculous change from an opulent outline to the slimmest silhouette; but the wise women who are adopting the habit find that slowly, but surely, they are getting less and less. It seems that it is not the food that we digest that is responsible for the supremacy of the flesh, but the food that we eat so hurriedly that it is undigested. If you haven’t time to eat (and chew) a proper meal at lunch-time, then you

must have something light that is easily digested, such as soup or milk, and many of us u r ho lead busy lives will realise how often we have sinned in this direction. We have boasted of the very short time we need to dispose of lunch, and considered our speed in this direction a matter for pride. But no more. Now we solemnly chew and chew and chew each morsel of food—the most literal among us may even count the chews—but whatever we do, I think we will that as a result we eat less because our hunger is satisfied earlier, and there comes on the horrible thought that hitherto we’ may have eaten too much! MAKING IT LAST. Most people can* remember how, as children at a party, they have had to take tiny bites and chew unceasingly to make their piece of cake last as long as other people’s. Grown-ups talked so much that it was hard work to wait for them, but it had to be; it would look greedy to make the food disappear too quickly. The consequence was that one ate considerably less than at nursery tea, and curiously, did not feel proportionately hungry, as one would expect. The wise doctors may have suspicions lhat some of their fair patients would get on better with fewer cakes and pastries, but being tactful men, they don't even hint at such a thing. They mer'ely teil them to chew, and know they will get the result they want without being accused of heartlessness.