pancake

Does any of you have an idea what the meaning is of:

'Do not take nourishment except when digestion is completed.'

I suppose it means we have to wait a period of time until we eat again, but how long?

LordOfGoblins

Dont snack between meals perhaps??

Robertus

Sounds to me that we shouldn't over eat or constantly put things on our stomach.

pancake

I have read it can take 30 hours before food is digested. Hmm.... A meal every 30 hours?

cire perdue

Baha'is do regard so much as symbolic that I think we are encouraged to think about things and to seek answers. Just off hand I think it means eat about every 4 hours and is probably more to the effect not to eat again on a full stomach. We are obviously encouraged not to overeat. This may be a translation funny, but we obviously need to eat more than 30 hours. Where is this Tablet?

Rani

Sometimes Baha'u'llah did not go into detail about subjects so it is important to use our common sense.

What did he mean by digestion? If you read about it, some will describe it as the entire process that starts with mastication (chewing) and ends in the waste from the meal being excreted. Depending on what and who you read, that could last up to 3 days!

So, I think, from a common sense point of view, that when Baha'u'llah said not to take nourishment except when digestion is completed, He most likely meant the process that takes place in the stomach..Not what is happening in the large intestine and such.

And digestion in the stomach from what I've read can be as short as half an hour for fruits, and up to 3 or 4 hrs for other foods, as a guide.

If it were the latter (the whole process from mouth to excretion) it would be entirely impractical and non-sustaining for people to be waiting 30+ hrs to eat again.

Generally speaking most people of normal weight still need to eat several times a day for good health and to sustain a normal weight.

CP, this is the link that Pancake originally posted:
Tablet of Medicine

separate note:
I was surprised to find this in the tablet: 'Say: O friends! Fear and anguish are womanly qualities..' (?)

Rani

Think it worked this time:

Tablet of Medicine

cire perdue

I don't think the translation is very good. I only briefly scanned it and several things caught my eye. Remember to check if a translation is authorized or NOT. This obviously is NOT.

Rani

I happen to have a copy of a book entitled 'The Throne of the Inner Temple', compiled by Elias Zohoori and approved for publication by the NSA of Jamaica, and it does have that reference about not taking nourishment except when digestion is completed. It is quoted from Star of the West.
Just noticed a quick search on Ocean didn't bring up a reference to it though.

Comes back to the question of what He meant by digestion, and again, I don't believe He could have meant the whole process from mouth to excretion, as according to what one reads that could take anywhere from 12 hrs to 3 days, and if people waited that long to eat, they would not eat enough to sustain them for their daily life, and would wither away.
So, I would assume he meant to wait for digestion in the stomach to be completed, which is a lot shorter.

cire perdue

....for the purposes of giving medication with food, we consider that the stomach has food in it for 2 hours........

LordOfGoblins

This sortof reminds me of a practical sense thing like "dont go for a run right after you ate or you will get a stitch."
It is something along those lines...
And Yes I agree with Rani, it is talking about food passing from the stomach to the intestines. There are processes going on inside our stomach that the food is being broken down by being exposed to acid. Once its in the stage
of being mostly dissolved if you then pass raw food again into it you have sortof gone back to stage 1 so you are mixing things in stage 1 and stage 3.
..
Yup I just made that up..

cire perdue

I made hot tea and had ice cream, and a Persian Baha'i said Abdul'baha said do not mix extreme hot and cold in the mouth, it would damage the teeth. I guess there is a lot of Persian sayings that The Master said,"......"