In addition to what has been advised for diseases of the abdomen, some general directions are given below in the matter of eating etiquette of good health. They are:
1. Never drink during the meals. Period for taking water should be half-an-hour before or 2 or 3 hours after the taking of one’s meals. You do not feel the urge for water during the meals as long as it is well-munched and not gulped.
The digestive juices from the mouth themselves help to liquify the well-munched food to pass on to the elementary canal. It is only when foods are highly spicy, and thus not well-munched and gulped down to the elementary canal, that a thirst and desire for water is felt.
So to keep the regimen of no water during the meals, spicy meals should be avoided and the food well-munched.
2. Do not use mushy or soft foods, which are likely to be easily gulped without proper munching. Use dry, hard, or crisp type of food.
3. Do not eat between meals. Allow five hours between two meals. This will enable each meal to be fully digested within that period.
4. Do not use chillies, spices, sauces, condiments, etc. in your food, as these do not permit sufficient time for mastication of food.
5. Meals should be had at fixed timings. A meal may be missed, however, if you have no appetite for food at the particular timing.
6. Better eat natural foods and be vegetarian. Avoid taking refined foods, like preparations of maida, or tinned or preserved foods. A ratio of 80:20 should be maintained for alkaline and acidic foods respectively. Acid foods are refined foods, while natural foods are alkaline.
7. Do not take full-stomach meal. Leave the dining-table with an urge to have more. Observe the golden rule of keeping two parts of your stomach for food, one for water and the other one for air.
8. Better have food cooked in steam, so that their organic salts, vitamins are not lost in case of direct cooking on fire or even in water-boiling. Vegetables like potatoes, carrots, etc. should not be peeled to enable maximum use of the roughage, fibres, etc.
9. Take maximum benefit of the food content of fruits, by taking them separately, rather than with meals. Do not take unripe fruits.
10. Cast off all worries at the dining-table.