If we expect to live from what we eat, we must be sure that what we eat is masticated so perfectly well, until the stomach juices (which have no teeth), with its hot acid, can digest the food without too much work.

THE AMERICAN EATERS, I believe, when it comes to a human being, are the fastest of all on the earth in eating their food.

On many work jobs, they are only allowed 15, 20 and 30 minutes to eat their food. Here goes food down the throat in wads that have never been chewed as it should; not allowing it any time to take on the nature (saliva) which attacks our food at the entering of the mouth, to try to help it to go down to the stomach.

All through our food’s travel down the throat, it is being sprayed with this saliva. And, down in the organ of our stomach (which scientists say holds about a pint and a half of fluids), it is processed again with the same digestive juices which are a little stronger than that which they get coming into this organ. Then, it takes on a dash of gall, and is distributed throughout our small intestinal area to the big colon that looks like a frame running down from the right to the left.

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TO HASTEN OUR MEALS down in these areas that were mentioned, that make up the machination of our digestive system, half-masticated, puts too much labor on this machination of our bodies and causes sores in the stomach and in the intestinal tract, that we refer to as ulcers and from ulcers to cancers. (I want you to see how we destroy our own body.)

A man should chew his food (as many doctors teach us and agree with what is said here) until it slips away into the throat, before swallowing.

This is America’s number one cause of her many ailments coming to her (fast eating; half-chewing her food), and eating half-done foods such as half-done peas and half-done lima beans and all kinds of beans and half-done meats and bread. Take bread, for instance, when it is not baked thoroughly done and has not been given time to dry out for a day or two (of which the foolish call it stale bread; after it leaves the oven if it stays there a day or two). The scientists have proven there is no such thing as stale bread. When the bread is old, and creating what they call mold, that is your best bread.

All of your trouble–hospitalization; and bad stomachs–is caused from fast eating and bad food.

YOU MUST REMEMBER when you are eating bread, when it gets into your stomach it rises again, and if it is not prepared right and baked right outside, before entering our stomach, it has the tendency to buckle in the stomach and intestines. But, when it is baked thoroughly done, it does not do a lot of rising after it gets into our stomach.

Bake your bread thoroughly done!! We could eat bread that has been baked two or three times.

Chew all of your food slowly and eat only one meal per day, if you are well. If you are sick, that is different. You will find yourself not having doctors to roll you into hospitals to cut away your stomach of ulcers and cancers and your years will be longer.

Oh! You “sweet tooths,” stay off of that sugar and those sweets (bread, cakes, icings and what not) …You are only killing yourself and happy to do so, because of the taste of sugar. Please remember this–eat to live, not to die.

(Text from “How To Eat To Live,” Book II, 1972.)