We can shorten and destroy our lives by the way we prepare and cook the food we eat. Allah, in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to whom praises are due forever, taught me that all of our food (not including fruits) should be cooked, and cooked until thoroughly done. And it should be seasoned with salt, where necessary.
The food we eat should not be poisonous food, such as the flesh of swine and of wild animals, birds and beasts. We should not eat fish that weighs more than 50 pounds, water scavengers in the form of the fish family, and other water animals of that kind.
As we know, there is much animal life taken as food from water today that we should not eat. The believers of Islam should be aware and not eat such foods.
In cooking your food, be sure that you cook it thoroughly, but not to the point where it loses its taste. Safeguard your delicate stomach that has to digest all that you eat by not over-burdening it with trying to digest half-cooked food or raw food and the acid gases from such foods. This is what hastens the doctor to your bedside—and after that, the undertaker, and after that, the grave digger.
Remember, we kill ourselves by what we eat and how we eat it. Just as food is our source of life, it is also our source of death, as God has taught me. Food keeps us here and it takes us away. For long life, take long intervals between your meals, and do not eat over one meal a day.
(Reprinted from “How To Eat To Live,” Book One, 1967.)
