What are teeth made for? Why, to chew with, of course. But why are we given some teeth that are sharp like knives, and some that are flat like millstones? It seems probable that these different kinds of teeth are intended for special purposes, and so they are. If our teeth were intended only for cutting our food into bits small enough to swallow without causing pain, there would be no need for any except the sharp, knife-like teeth. But we have the big grinders, which were made to use, and it is very important that they be used in the right way. [Sidenote: Why food should be thoroughly chewed] We do not chew our food simply to make it fine enough to swallow, but for quite another reason as well. In our mouths there is a fluid called _saliva_. Think of something that you are very fond of eating, and the mere thought of it makes the saliva come into your mouth. This saliva has a very important duty to perform in connection with preparing the food for the little cells of the body. Each little grain of starch--and you will remember that all vegetable foods are composed largely of starch--has a capsule about it. This simply means that it is done up in a little package. The saliva helps to open this capsule by making it soft (just as water will soften the paper on a package of candy), so that the other digestive juices can reach the starch and turn it into the kind of sugar that is used in the body. If you do not chew your food very fine, the saliva will not reach the starch granules, the little packages of starch will be hard to open when they go into the stomach, and much of the starch will never be made use of in the body. The saliva has much the same action on the coverings of the little packages of meat, for all the meat that we eat is done up in similar packages. A great Englishman, Mr. Gladstone, who lived to be eighty-three, made a practice of chewing every bite of food twenty times, and he thought this had a great deal to do with his being such a strong and well man and living to such an old age. [Sidenote: When desserts are not harmful] After you have eaten meats, bread, and vegetables, it will do no harm to eat a piece of pie or cake, or a dish of ice-cream or some other dessert. It is not easy, as a rule, to digest these things (that is, to get them into such shape that they can be used as food by the little cells in the body), but a moderate amount of them is very good for boys and girls, as well as for grown people. If you refuse to eat the meat and bread, but wait until the dessert is served and then fill your stomach with sweet things, you will be starving some of the little cells, and you will be reminded of this very soon. Sometimes you may be reminded of it by having a pain in your stomach, but more often by getting low grades in your lessons at school. Your teacher will know it, too, because you will be so restless and inattentive in your classes that she will have to give you a low grade in deportment as well.