Do you not remove cherry pits, grape skins, the shell of lobster, bone, etc., when you encounter them? Then why not remove the fibrous matter found in tough lean meat, the woody fibre of vegetables or anything rejected by instinctive desire to discard it after taste has been exhausted, and which is a protection provided by beneficent Nature? In well selected and well cooked food there is little found that the juices of the mouth in connection with the teeth cannot take care of and prepare so as to be acceptable to Nature's Food Filter.
If fibre is found in the food it can be put upon the fork in the same manner that a cherry pit is usually handled and transferred to the plate without observation.
Another fancied objection to thorough mastication is that it interferes with the sociability of a meal.
This is also a senseless bugbear. It is true that one cannot converse freely with large morsels of food in the mouth. It is also true that it is nothing less than a gluttonous custom to greedily take a big mouthful of food, and, if accosted with a question, to bolt it in order to answer.
It will be found easy to carry on conversation without disagreeable interruption and yet follow Nature's demands in properly masticating food by taking small morsels into the mouth. It will be found also to add to the real pleasure of eating, and eventually will become a habit by choice.
Another objection raised by those who are afflicted with the habit of gluttony is the lack of time permitted by their business occupation.
The time needed to appease the natural appetite of a hearty and active man, to compensate for the daily waste and keep the weight at normal, is from thirty to forty-five minutes for twenty-four hours.[8] This requires attention and industrious mastication. Divided into three meals it is less than a quarter of an hour for each meal.
Epicurean habits, however, incline one away from three meals a day and make two meals sufficient for ordinary activity.
One objector, on the spur of momentary discussion, claimed that in travelling by railway the time allowed for eating would not permit Epicurean methods.