In the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Common mistakes in the science of nutrition:
In fact, there are certain serious turning points in the history of nutritional sciences. The first turning point is the discovery of bacteria, which contaminate food and cause a lot of diseases and illnesses. The second turning point is the discovery of some risks resulting from extravagance in eating some kinds of foods. It is another turning point in the history of health and food; and there are also lots of diseases caused by lack of nutritional elements.
However, the serious thing that has been recently discovered and that characterizes our modern age is lack of fibers in the food that we eat. In other words, all kinds of foods that our modern cuisine offers are refined and purified:
sugar is refined and made fine, flour is made white and pure, fruits are made into juices, and all of the foodstuff that we eat lack fibers, which have been created by Allah, Most Gracious.
It has not occurred to anyone that these fibers, which constitute a major part of fruits, these skins that surround grains of wheat, or these fibers that exist in some sugary substances, have a lot of benefits. People usually cast such fibers and skins away because they think they are useless.
We drink pure fruit juice, and we eat white bread and purified sugar. These kinds of refined and purified foods, which characterize our modern age, stand behind a lot of serious diseases and illnesses.
Scientists used to think that these fibers are useless and needless and that they have nothing to do with digestion. Therefore, according to their knowledge, they defined them as, “parts of the food that goes through the digestive canal without being digested”. They even thought that such fibers are a burden on the digestive apparatus. Therefore, they refined food from them and offered the so-called “pure foods”.
Dangers of not taking fibers:
The first danger of these pure foods is constipation, because these fibers make the work of the intestines easier, and because when the intestines move in order to digest food, they need a mass of fibers that inauthor their internal walls. If food is purified or refined and, hence, lacks these useful fibers, it causes constipation, which is the first danger of purified food.
Another thing:
Scientists said:
These fibers, which are made of cellulose, absorb and keep water, which makes digestion easier. In other words, they are like laxatives.
A third thing:
These cellulose fibers absorb cholesterol, which is very dangerous because it causes one of the most serious diseases of our modern age, namely angina, and arterial stenosis, which is also one of the most serious diseases of our age. By the way, doctors say that one’s life is determined by the life of one’s arteries.
When fats precipitate in arteries and make them narrower, the heart gets tired. And these fibers, which we usually cast away as fodder for our animals, are very necessary because they absorb fats and regulate the amounts of fats in the blood.
A fourth thing:
constant excretion of some juices, like bile, for example, with the absence of these fibers, causes some malignant diseases in the colon, because these fibers absorb fats and some excretions of glands and make movement of the intestines easy. It is also said that the formation of stones, the rise of cholesterol in the blood and its precipitation on the walls of arteries, colon cancer, some cardiac and arterial diseases, some cases of varicose veins, some diseases of diaphragm, and appendicitis are caused by the lack of fibers in our foods.
What should man do?
Therefore, we have to eat such fibers, which Allah, Most Gracious, has created for our own benefit. We should eat food just as Allah has created it. We should not follow the modern methods of refining or purifying natural food. We should eat it just as it is. We should not neglect or underestimate any part of our natural foodstuff.
In fact, scientists consider this discovery as another very important turning point in the field of health and food. Eat your natural food as it is. Do not refine or purify it. Do not cast away fibers from it. They are very useful. They are not useless or indigestible as people used to believe.
In short, we really need to understand our Lord’s Divine Wisdom in all of the things that He, Glory to Him, creates. We should not change Allah’s Creation or make any amendments thereon.
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of Creations