Saturday, November 14, 2009

An introduction to Fletcherism

Introducing the Pierini DIET here

Last week I received an e-mail from a person in Milan, Italy who earlier had requested a copy of The Pierini DIET. This person gave me some helpful feedback along with a comment that some of its concepts are similar to “Fletcherism”.

My Italian cyberspace friend sent me a PDF copy of a book written by Horace Fletcher at the turn of the 20th century titled "FLETCHERISM: WHAT IS IS; OR HOW I BECAME YOUNG AT SIXTY”. The book is a whopping 179 pages in length in sharp contrast to the 22 page The Pierini DIET.

Horace Fletcher (1849-1919) was an American health-food faddist who earned the nickname “The Great Masticator” by arguing that food should be chewed thirty two times – or, about 100 times per minute – before being swallowed. One of his famous saying was “Nature will castigate those who don’t mastigate.”

It’s true that chewing your food slowly to “milkshakefy” it before swallowing is one of the techniques of the Pierini DIET but there’s more to the diet than that.

One of the first things that caught my attention in reading this book is what Horace Fletcher described as the following five principles of Fletcherism for optimum nutrition:

First - Wait for a true, earned appetite.

Second - Select from the food available that which appeals most to appetite, and in the order called for by appetite.

Third - Get all the good taste there is in food out of it in the mouth, and swallow only when it practically "swallows itself".

Fourth - Enjoy the good taste for all its worth, and do not allow any depressing or diverting thoughts to intrude upon the ceremony.

Fifth - Wait; take and enjoy as much as possible what appetite approves. Nature will do the rest.

I'll share more as I read the book so today's blogflection is just an introduction to Fletcherism.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

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