The entire principle of economic nutrition is simple and practical. It does not prescribe that we shall follow any special diet nor do away with any of our meals. It simply requires you to throw present habits and conventions to the winds, and for a little time try the experiment of giving the matter of your every-day living honest, intelligent thought. Eat all you crave, but do not eat more than this simply because you have been in the habit of doing so. See to it that each morsel put into your mouth is thoroughly masticated and mixed with the saliva before going down into the stomach, which is not equipped to perform the work which the teeth and salivary glands were given you for. The stomach will struggle bravely to overcome the abuse which you heap upon it, but in spite of all it can do to manage hastily chewed food, undigested portions remain which clog the intestines and interfere with the healthy conditions which Nature intended. The appetite is given as an indicator of what the body requires. If you crave potato, the system needs starch, which the saliva makes digestible, but which the acids of the stomach cannot dissolve. Other needs of the system are similarly indicated. Take the trouble of asking your appetite the question, instead of accepting the conventional number of courses simply because they are set before you. The appetite will close the valve when you have eaten enough, if you will give it a chance. Suppose your time for eating is limited; in twenty minutes you could not eat slowly the luncheon which you usually select. Then eat that much less. The amount of food which you can eat and thoroughly masticate in twenty minutes will give you more nourishment and will sustain you better than twice the amount thrown into the stomach in the same manner in which a man usually packs a trunk. Why is it that so many men require a “bracer” at eleven o’clock? Because they have loaded their stomachs with a heavy breakfast, and instead of gaining nourishment from it, the smothered organ is doing its best to tear the undigested morsels to pieces, that they may pass into the intestines and prevent sickness, or even death. The time finally arrives when it finds itself unable to do this, and then comes acute indigestion, or something worse, and the system becomes run down, ready to receive typhoid, or any other germs which happen to come along. Do you know why griddle-cakes hurt you? Because the syrup, which is cane-sugar,--and as such is indigestible,--is allowed to pass through the mouth and down into the stomach, without being properly mixed with the saliva, which makes it digestible. As soon as it enters the stomach it becomes acid and interferes with everything it meets. Had the cakes been properly masticated and mixed with the saliva, the cane-sugar would have become grape-sugar, and in this form it is easily digested.