Louise Foxcroft looks to the history books:
In the Victorian age the true "medical idol of the moment", according to the Lancet, was Horace Fletcher and his mastication theory. Dieters chewed everything several hundred times (700 times for a shallot) and not only slimmed down but defecated less. Fletcher was so proud of his faeces that he always carried one with him to prove that it smelled like a hot biscuit and weighed only 2 ounces. Franz Kafka and Henry James were fervent Fletcherites and came to loathe food.
The Dish 