Chew

My granddad always used to tell me to chew my food 32 times. I don't know where the number came from. It feels somewhat unlikely that extensive field tests had been conducted with a troupe of volunteers munching away on a specially prepared batch of sesame seed buns, all chewing them for a different number of chews and then monitoring their digestion and testing the quality of their stools.

"Sir, I have the results! The stools which demonstrated the most efficient processing of the useful, nutritious parts of the special sesame seed bun belonged to volunteer Clyde, sir."

"Clyde? But isn't he the one you made chew 32 times because he looked at you a bit funny? Something of an own goal!"

One chew for each tooth. It's good as a beginning. If you have no teeth then I suppose you want food that you don't need to chew at all. Where it breaks down is in between. What the fuck are you supposed to do if you only have one tooth left? What requires one chew? And how can you chew with one tooth anyway, even once? It's bullshit, granddad, it's bullshit I tell you!

Still, I miss him sometimes, even if he did talk shit about chewing.