Silent eating

1.  You need the services of your tongue while eating. You also require the services of the same tongue while talking. The poor tongue can’t do two things at the same time! That’s why you should eat when you are supposed to eat and talk when you are supposed to talk. If you talk while you eat, the food gets stuck. But you don’t care. So it’s high time you realize you are sitting before the food for a purpose and so concentrate on that one task.

You have two-fold advantage if you chew your food properly while eating. First, food begins being digested in the mouth itself. So a healthy practice is to chew solid food until it becomes liquid. At that time, if you try to talk, the tongue has to free itself to do so. It drives out the food into the esophagus before it is completely chewed. The mind, which has to decide whether the food is turned into liquid or not, and whether it is digested or not, is otherwise busy, so the tongue escapes its duty.

Our elders did not tell us for no reason that we should chew our food 32 times. Food is digested 30% in the mouth, but for talkative, only 10% gets digested. If you can eat the food in small morsels and chew it properly, then the digestion in the stomach will be quick and effective.

The digestion in the mouth is equivalent to the primary education from kindergarten to fifth grade. Just as the primary education lays a strong foundation for higher education, the digestion in the mouth lays a strong foundation for the digestion in the stomach. Follow a simple logic. God hasn’t given us teeth in the stomach. This means each thing has it own place and has its own duty to perform. We should not neglect this duty. We are not born as animals to gulp food in a hurry and ruminate later. We are different from them and so let us eat differently.

Food that isn’t chewed enough in the mouth consequently cannot be digested properly. As a result, it stays long in the stomach and creates new problems. It becomes sour and produces gas, bloated-ness, belching, breathlessness, etc. Another problem is, however much you eat half of it goes out in your stool undigested. That’s why though you eat a lot, you still feel weak.

The second advantage is, if you eat silently, the saliva glands in the mouth, from contact with food, produce more saliva. As a result, the food in its first stage gets mixed up thoroughly with the saliva and digestive juices. Moreover, since you chew it more, it touches the upper part of the mouth more and so fills you with the pleasure of eating. So only those who chew their food well get the full pleasure from it.

You won’t get hiccups if your food is mixed well with saliva when it enters the esophagus. If you do get hiccups, it means your body is sending you a warning signal that you are not chewing properly. Instead of realizing this, you drink water and continue to gulp food. That’s wrong. Man alone is given the ability to reason, but he does not use his reasoning ability properly.

Your food should get mixed up with saliva, not with water, mind you. After all, you talk the whole day. Can’t you keep quiet for the few minutes while you eat? Haven’t you learned, “Speech is silver, silence is gold”? Practice silence, especially while eating. It helps you in so many ways.