Fasting is a greater cure of our ills—both mentally and physically—than all of the drugs of the earth combined into one bottle or into a billion bottles. Allah (God) in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, has taught me that fasting and the right kind of food are the cures to our ills. He has told me there is no cure in drugs and medicine. And this, the world is now learning. We can take medicine all of our lives until it kills us, but we are still ailing with the same old diseases.

The bad food and drinks we are putting into our bodies keep us a victim to illness. There are not too many nice doctors who will tell you that drugs are not good for you, because they paid for their learning and want to keep practicing.

But “How to Eat to Live” is what we want to know, and have wanted to know all of our lives. Every man or woman wants to know how he (or she) can prolong his (or her) life.

Nature teaches us to stay here in this life as long as we can. Nature has never taught anyone that he should leave this life and find another one somewhere else, because we only have one life. If this life is destroyed, we would have a hard time trying to get more life; it is impossible. So, try to keep this life you have as long as possible. Go when you cannot stay here any longer.

ALLAH TAUGHT ME that one meal a day would keep us here for a long time; we would live over 100 years. And eating one meal every two days would lengthen our lives just that much longer. He told me you would never be sick, eating one meal every three days. The fact that fasting is the cure to 90 percent of our ills is known by the medical scientists. But, they do not teach you that.

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They know that tobacco, hard whiskey and alcohol are not good for you and will shorten your life and kill you. But most of them are too weak themselves to stop drinking or smoking or chewing tobacco. So they do not teach you that tobacco and alcoholic drinks—made into what is known as whiskey, beer and wine—are not good for you, although they know it to be true.

They will say, “Yes, it is good for you if you are temperate.” But, they know that once you get started on that stuff, it is such an enemy that it just takes you into its power, and it is almost like trying to break an iron chain to get away from the habit. So do not use tobacco in any form and you will live a few years longer.

Fast once a month for three days or four days—or for whatever length of time you are able to go without food without harming yourself—and you will feel good. Did you not know that if you would stop eating pig and the food that you should not eat; stop eating three and four times a day and stop drinking whiskey, beer and wine, you would save much in the way of money?

In prolonging your life by abstaining from the pig, alcoholic drinks and tobacco, you, also, will be adding money to your savings of hundreds and thousands of dollars. You will be depriving those pig raisers and tobacco growers and alcoholic distilleries of millions of dollars that they rob you of which hasten you to your grave.

YOU COULD STOP the tobacco growers from growing that stinking weed, by turning away from the use of it. And you could stop the pig raising by not eating the stinking hog. These things are death to your children in their early ages. And, they even affect the reproductive organs of people in the early ages, as well as affect the heart, the lungs, and your sharpness in thinking. And, after all of this, you die a victim of poison and commercialization. Learn to eat to live.

(Text from “How To Eat To Live,” Book Two, 1972.)