TARDY APPRECIATION
All experience warns against overeating and improper eating as the most common causes of disease; and troubles of the stomach and intestines are known to be the parents of all other bodily ills; yet no fixed guide has been set to determine what is "overeating" and what is "improper food." The reason for this is probably because no two bodies require the same quantity or kind of nourishment, and, "What is one man's food is another man's poison."
Nature has not been so unkind, however, as to leave man without a means of knowing just how to gauge the quantity of food required for her best service, and probably, when we learn the secret, has equally well provided us with certain discrimination relative to the quality of food that is best for harmonic development.
Investigation never fails to find provision for both guard and guide in all of Nature's plans and man's nutrition is of such importance that she surely has not left it out of the list of the protected.
Of the power of taste to discriminate accurately in the matter of comparative value of foods I am not sure as yet, although I am confident the power rests somewhere within our reach if we can only discover it; but I have the best evidence possible that taste has the power to advise accurately in the matter of the kind of food and the quantity required; and, having selected what it wants or needs out of a morsel of food, rejects the rest by ceasing to taste.
The message or warning which taste gives in connection with eating is, "THAT WHILE ANY TASTE IS LEFT IN A MOUTHFUL OF FOOD IN PROCESS OF MASTICATION OR SUCKING, IT IS NOT YET IN CONDITION TO BE PASSED ON TO THE STOMACH; AND WHAT REMAINS AFTER TASTE HAS CEASED IS NOT FIT FOR THE STOMACH."
WHAT SENSE?
When one comes to think about it, what sense is there in throwing away a palatable morsel of food when the taste is at its best, or while taste lasts at all, even if the purpose of the meal is merely to contribute to the pleasure of eating?
"Some people live to eat and others eat to live" is a saying that is familiar to everyone, and yet how few appreciate that the perfection of living includes the perfection of both these desiderata!