It is of the greatest importance that whatever diet is found to suit the individual taste, this diet should be eaten slowly and thoroughly masticated, otherwise the most suitable and wholesome food may both disagree with the eater, and lose most of its nourishing value. Nuts are a good example of this--they have an odious reputation for indigestibility which is quite unfounded, for they are perfectly easy of digestion to most people if only they are very thoroughly masticated. But swallowed in large pieces, in any pieces in fact except the smallest, they are exceedingly indigestible. Similarly, also, many nuts are extremely rich in proteids (the chestnut, for instance, containing 14·6 per cent., the peanut[6] upwards of 28 per cent. of proteid), but in order to _get at_ the proteid they must be bitten almost to powder and thoroughly mixed with saliva. Otherwise they are not distributed (_i.e._, digested), but are passed through the body in the same way as chests of gold (securely fastened up) can be sent by train, so to speak, through a country without enriching it. It is of equal importance thoroughly to masticate all starchy foods (bread, potatoes, &c.), so that the saliva may penetrate them and begin the work of digestion in the mouth, and it is largely for this reason that doctors recommend toast or biscuits to dyspeptic patients rather than bread, because it is impossible to swallow crisp toast without properly biting it, whereas lumps of soft bread can be swallowed without actual pain. On this point we adopt a fearless dogmatism, and assert that it is good for nobody to swallow unmasticated food, both because the act of mastication is part of the digestive process, and because mastication itself renders the nutritive elements of the food accessible to the stomach. Thus less bulk of food is needed, there is less waste, and the digestive juices of the stomach are not, so to speak, called on to make violent assaults on what they receive, to behave like burglars, wresting what is valuable from the food. The burglary is done by the teeth, which, by the way, seem to be kept in better repair by mere mastication than by any other means, and the energy otherwise used by the stomach remains undrawn upon. Also, if one bites food well it is far easier to know correctly when one has eaten enough; lumps of food bolted are for the time being “locked up”; it is uncertain whether they are going to satisfy hunger or not. Even if unnutritious they will produce a feeling of satiety for the time being, and an hour later they may be found wanting. A certain amount of bulk, as we have said, is needed, but beyond that the richer a food is in the desired qualities of power of repair, and of supply of energy, the better is that food, provided it is easily digestible. And its full value cannot be brought into play, especially in the case of starhy foods, without thorough mastication.[7]