“How to Eat to Live” Book 1 and Book 2 are two books written by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Each page of both books is filled with life-changing and life-saving guidelines taught to Mr. Muhammad by Allah in Person, Master Fard Muhammad, the Great Mahdi. These guidelines and way of life if practiced will result in the reader experiencing optimum health while adding many years to their lives.
There are people who live in certain areas around the world who are living beyond 100 years of age and longer, and these areas have been classified as “blue zones.” Dan Buettner, blue zones founder, is a National Geographic Fellow, and he discovered five places in the world— Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Ikaria, Greece—where the people in these places are the healthiest, with almost nonexistent chronic diseases than those living outside these zones.
In “How to Eat to Live,” Book 2, page. 9, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad stated, “Many years could be added to our lives if we only knew how to protect our lives from their enemies. As He (meaning Master Fard Muhammad) said to me, food keeps us here; it is essential we eat foods which gives and maintains life. That same food destroys life. Therefore, to keep this food from destroying our lives, we must protect our lives as well as we possibly can from the destruction of food. If we eat the proper food, and eat at the proper time, the food will keep us living a long, long time.”
Mr. Buettner made note that blue zone residents do not eat a lot of meat, focusing instead on fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains. People in these zones eat very little if any processed food, added sugar, meat, and dairy.
Patrice Muhammad, PA-C (physician assistant-certified) and Ph.D., is the owner and operator of Health At Its Best. “In addition to the well-documented nutritional benefit of beans, the navy bean in particular, protects against radiation poisoning. This distinct property of the navy bean should enhance one’s goal to eat navy beans or navy bean soup daily,” she told The Final Call.
“On average a cup of navy beans is made up of 15 grams of protein, 47 grams of complex carbohydrates, 19 grams of fiber, and 1-2 grams of fat, and provides most of the vitamins and minerals needed in the daily diet,” she added.
“Patients who have presented to our office with newly diagnosed medical conditions, as well as, those with chronic medical conditions (hypertension, cardiovascular heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, arthritis, autoimmune disease, etc.), requiring multiple medications, have made significant progress. Those patients had either complete reversal of their medical condition(s) or had a notable reduction in prescribed medications or eventually weaned off of all ‘drugs’ due to diligent adherence to a whole food diet consisting mainly of plant-based foods,” she stated.
The blood pressure will return to normal, blood sugar and cholesterol levels will also return to normal range, joint aches and pains will diminish significantly or resolve completely, and other aggravating symptoms will improve as a result of healthier dietary choices. A vegetarian diet yields a wide range of health benefits and reduces all-cause mortality (death), ultimately leading to the improvement of the quality of life that one can enjoy,” added Dr. Patrice Muhammad.
Tariq Muhammad, a biomedical research scientist and the Mid-Atlantic Region point of contact for the Nation of Islam’s Ministry of Health and Human Services stated, “The navy bean contains all nine essential amino acids. This means that this particular food is essential to human life. We have to understand that it’s not only essential but it’s literally God telling you that this is all we need.”
“If we look at the instructions given in “How to Eat to Live,” it’s really an organic diet, and the nature of How to Eat to Live is vegetarian with some slight modifications to make sure we’re not eating the wrong fruits and vegetables. One reason why the blue zone diet is interesting is because the environments are in areas where people have access to fruits and vegetables on a consistent basis. That access helps to eliminate the onset of diseases, it’s putting the control into the hands of the person rather than in the hands of our open enemy,” noted Tariq Muhammad.
Dr. Akili Muhammad, is a holistic family physician. He told The Final Call that he grew up in Riverside, California so was minutes away from Loma Linda, one of the blue zone areas.
“The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching us the best of foods, where he mentions them multiple times in ‘How to Eat to Live.’ From my personal experience of being among the people in Loma Linda and researching the blue zone diet, they try to stay away from the commercialized food. They grow their own food, small farms, people growing food in their backyard, where they would sell produce from their backyard,” explained Dr. Akili Muhammad.
“For those of us in the Nation of Islam, we should not be impressed by the people in blue zones. They live up to the 120s. However, in ‘How to Eat to Live,’ we’re taught that our babies can live up to 240 years old if started on navy beans as a baby. We can live to 140 years old by eating milk, bread, and navy beans, according to ‘How to Eat to Live,’” Dr. Akili said.
(Shawntell Muhammad can be contacted at [email protected].)
