[Editor’s note: The following article was first published in The Final Call newspaper, Vol. 10, No. 18, September 9, 199, as the fourth installation of a special five-part series on health penned by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. This is the first excerpt from that article.]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
A good diet and daily exercise must be accompanied with the right thoughts in order to work for the long life of the individual. Thinking properly is the most difficult part of the health equation to achieve, so we are asking the Black Nation to attack that which appears most difficult, which is to develop the Will to be completely wholesome in mind, body and spirit.
Why do I say that development of the Will “appears” to be the most difficult thing to do in achieving complete health? We live in a world where scientists have developed all manner of artificial methods to eliminate the effects of wrong habits: pills to stop smoking;
Pills to curtail the appetite; surgery to staple the stomach, forcing a reduction in the intake of food; plastic surgery to mask the effects of living in rebellion against Divine Law.
In a society such as this, where pill pushers advertise that we can “eat all you want and still lose weight,” development of the Will of the individual to overcome all impediments to good eating habits “appears” to be the most difficult approach, but in the long run, it is actually the easiest and most simple path to follow.
To develop the Will of the American people (Black people in particular) to live good, wholesome lives, is to make it easier to change behavioral patterns that have led or are leading to the general destruction of the health and well-being of the overall population.
The approach of government and scientists—spending inordinate sums of money on health problems—has not worked. We, the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, are proving, with very little money, that we have the ability to change the destructive behavioral patterns of our people, not only as individuals but as a society.
The stigma of hate, bigotry, intolerance, anti-Semitism and violence that the United States government, its agencies and others have deliberately attached to the Nation of Islam is causing the cure for America’s social ills to be obscured while the effects of these ills multiply in diametric proportion to America’s own efforts to suppress the Truth.
If President Bush and the United States government would see (as Pharaoh in the time of Joseph saw) the value of a Divinely guided group of people in her midst, then steps could be taken to take the Revealed Message of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and solve 100 percent of America’s social, spiritual and health problems.
I am trying with the Help of Allah (God) and the few persons working with me, to produce a healthy community of strong, able-bodied men, women and children who are willing to shoulder the responsibility of self-reliance, self-determination and self-independence.
The American food industry has gone a long way in destroying the health and well-being of the American people by its misuse of the knowledge of chemistry.
The addition of coloring to change the appearance of food; preservatives to lengthen shelf life; injection of hormones into livestock to produce speedy growth and a fatter animal—the sum of these profit-seeking actions brings in its wake an unprecedented growth of cancer and heart disease, both of which have increased more than 250 percent since the beginning of the century and are now the leading causes of death in this country.
The American Cancer Society reports that more than 35 percent of all cancers directly result from “bad diet,” defining a “bad diet” as one that is high in fat and low in fiber.
The American Heart Association also points to “bad diet” as the “greatest single factor in heart disease” and blames poor eating habits for at least 50 percent of all cases of heart ailments that plague an estimated 60 million Americans.
There are safer and better ways to grow food and raise livestock. These methods may be slower and less profitable, but “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul (the health and well-being of a Nation)?”
