[Editor’s note: The following contains an excerpt from A Torchlight for America, pages 133 -138.]
Food addiction and the eating of improper foods has one-quarter of Americans overweight. Black women are in the worst condition as nearly half of them are overweight. Our weight problem is the result of eating too much food and eating the wrong foods.
Uninformed eating habits has us buying and living off unhealthy, high-fat, high-cholesterol, and low-fiber diets that completely destroy our appearance.
Thirty percent [now almost 40 percent] of the population has high cholesterol, which leads to heart disease and cancer, especially colon and rectal cancer. Half of what we eat is eaten out, predominantly at fast food chains that advertise heavily to drive the purchase of overly processed foods.
Advertisers often use our most gifted athletes to get us to buy death burgers, with their additives, pork, bleached bread, hormones and preservatives.
And we buy it and eat it and get fatter and sicker and poorer each day from doctor bills we can’t afford to pay, and from buying pills for acid indigestion and heartburn and headaches, all due to the toxins that get stored in our bodies from the overly processed and improper foods that we eat.
Fifty percent of the population has high blood pressure and hypertension, which are the leading causes of 500,000 strokes [now 795,000] each year and major contributors to heart attacks. High blood pressure and hypertension are again the result of, eating fried, salty, sugary foods, and a lack of exercise.
What we are witnessing is that fast food equals fast death. And a sedentary lifestyle, meaning a lifestyle where you just sit as a couch potato observing the television, or work in a stationary position, getting no form of exercise, gets you an early seat in the grave.
Now I don’t know about you, but I would certainly like to stay out of the grave since we’re going to be in the grave for such a long time. Wouldn’t you like to prolong your life? Then someone has to inspire you to change your way of living.
Did you know that the simple, cost-you-nothing things like prayer, proper rest, proper diet and fasting can help heal whatever ails you?
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that 90% of our illnesses could be cured by just fasting. Proper rest, proper diet and fasting can help the body heal itself of toxins, especially those caused by stress.
But do we rest properly? Do we fast? Do we have a proper diet? Do we maintain a connection with the Divine Being through prayer?
No. Instead we engage in riotous behavior and we have moved away from God in a very extreme way, leading us many steps closer to the grave.
THE MERCHANTS OF DEATH
There’s tremendous profit in promoting the death-dealing lifestyles that many of us lead. You may not believe it but the leading promoters of our destructive lifestyles are the United States government, the food and drug industries and the medical community.
