The author arrived at Mobile, Ala., recently with a workingman's appetite and had only twenty minutes in which to get off the train, on again, and satisfy the appetite. There is an excellent lunch counter now at Mobile, and on the counter there was a tempting array of things to eat and drink. Appetite chose at once a fat, rich ham sandwich,[9] a glass of creamy milk and a hexagonal segment of a mince pie. The twenty minutes was ample time for disposing of the sandwich and the milk, and meantime the mince pie had been wrapped in silk paper and placed in a paper bag to furnish Epicurean enjoyment for twenty miles on the road, enhanced by the beauty of a panoramic landscape.
If I had crammed the pie and the sandwich and the milk into my stomach in seven or eight minutes, which, by actual observation, is the gluttonous rate of despatching a station meal, I would have lost two-thirds of nutriment, more than one-half of taste and would have perhaps taken on twenty-four hours of discomfort, possibly inviting a cold. I would have created an "open door" for any migrating microbes that were floating about in my atmosphere looking for strained tissue or fermenting food in which to build their disease nests.
Observation proves that you do not get much more nutriment out of your food than saliva prepares in some way for digestion, gulp though you may, but you can take in a load of disease possibilities in trying to force the food past or otherwise evade proper salivation.
SPIT IT OUT
Whatever does not insalivate easily is surely dangerous.
There is nothing more pronounced of expression by its influence on inclination than the impulsive desire to spit out of the mouth anything that seems unprofitable to the senses.
INSTINCTIVE DISCRIMINATION
Muscles have been provided for this purpose (separating, collecting, and spitting-out anything which the instincts protest against) that are more facile than those of an elephant's proboscis, and these muscles move things to and fro in the mouth or expel them if they are undesirable.
If you acquire the habit of consulting the Swallowing Impulse and practise only involuntary swallowing in eating you will find that these muscles are very discriminating and will instinctively assist in the rejection of unprofitable matter.
Their sense of touch will soon discriminate against unprofitable food even when the sense of taste is fooled by some alluring sauce or condiment.