13 - Principles of Good Digestion

"Fear and desire are the two things that rule us. Now, how much of a Master are we of those two things?"^*

There are a few essential points on the principles of digestion that blend with Nature's process so smoothly that mankind has overlooked them completely, although all herbivorous creatures observe them naturally. Man is the highest form of creation and his digestive tract is designed for a herbivorous diet.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE is the thorough chewing of starches in the dry form, to mix the starch molecules with the saliva and with the enzyme ptyalin, to start the digestive process in the mouth, while breaking up the fibrous envelopes or coverings of the grasses and grains by means of this thorough mastication and insalivation. Every cow and buffalo follows that naturally, by instinct. They can even bring up their cud and chew it over, because they have a storage stomach for that purpose and they are not in a hurry.

If the starches are ground-up cereals that are cooked, such as oatmeal, cream of wheat, and other breakfast cereals, then the saliva cannot penetrate the molecules of the starch thoroughly because they are already fully saturated with moisture in the cooking process. Even insalivating them then does not penetrate the saturated particles to mix the enzyme

^* This chapter was originally written for inclusion in the Urdu edition, published in India in 1970.