The Benefits of a Low Calorie Diet

Not all the temperate zones:

• are abundant with food, nor
• have inhabitants with a comfortable life

In some parts, the people enjoy an abundance of grain, seasonings, wheat, and fruits, because:

• the soil is well balanced and good for plants
• there is an abundant civilization.

In other parts, the land is strewn with rocks, and no seeds or herbs grow at all. There, the people have a very hard time.

Examples are those of:

• the Hijaz and Yemen
• the Veiled Sinhajah who live in the desert of the Maghrib on the fringes between the Berbers and the Sudanese Negroes.

All of them lack all grain and seasonings.

Their nourishment and food is milk and meat.

Another such people is the Arabs who roam the waste regions. They may get grain and seasonings from the hills only at certain times under the eyes of the militia which protects the hill country.

Whatever they get is little, because they have little money. They obtain no more than the bare necessity, and sometimes less.

They are mostly found restricted to milk, which is for them a very good substitute for wheat.

Despite this, the desert people who lack grain and season body and better in character than the hill people who have plenty of everything.

Their complexions are clearer, their bodies cleaner, their figures more perfect and better, their characters less intemperate, and their minds keener as far as knowledge and perception are concerned.

This is attested by experience in all these groups.

There is a great difference in this respect between:

• the Arabs and Berbers and
• the Veiled Berbers and the people of the hills

This is because a lot of food and the moisture it contains generate pernicious superfluous matters in the body. These produce:

• a disproportionate widening of the body
• many corrupt, putrid humors.

The result is a pale complexion and an ugly figure, because the person has too much flesh.

When the moisture with its evil vapors ascends to the brain, the mind and the ability to think are dulled.

The result is stupidity, carelessness, and a general intemperance.

This is seen by comparing the animals of waste and barren regions, such as gazelles, wild cows (maha), ostriches, giraffes, onagers, and wild buffaloes (cows, bagar), with their counterparts which live in hills, coastal plains, and fertile pastures.

There is a big difference between them with regard to:

• the glossiness of their coat
• their shape and appearance
• the proportions of their limbs
• their sharpness of perception.

The gazelle is the counterpart of the goat. The giraffe that of the camel, The onagers and (wild) buffaloes (cows) are identical with (domestic) donkeys and oxen (and cows). There is a wide difference between them.

The abundance of food in the hills produces pernicious superfluous matters and corrupt humors in the bodies of the domestic animals.

Hunger, on the other hand, may greatly improve the physique and shape of the animals of the waste regions.

The same applies to human beings. The inhabitants of fertile zones are described as stupid in mind and coarse in body. This is the case with:

• those Berbers who have plenty of seasonings and wheat
• in general to the inhabitants of the Maghrib who have plenty of seasonings and fine wheat

Those who lead a frugal life and are restricted to barley or durra are superior both intellectually and physically. Examples are:

• the Masmudah Berbers
• the inhabitants of as-Sus and the Ghumarah.
• the inhabitants of Spain

In Spain, butter is totally lacking. Their principal food is durra. The Spaniards have:

• a sharpness of intellect
• a nimbleness of body
• a receptivity for instruction such as no one else has.

The same also applies to the inhabitants of rural regions of the Maghrib as compared with the inhabitants of settled areas and cities.

Both use many seasonings and live in abundance. But the town dwellers only use them after they have been prepared and cooked and softened by admixtures.

They thus lose their heaviness and become less substantial. Principal foods are the meat of sheep and chickens. They do not use butter because of its tastelessness.

Therefore, the moisture in their food is small. It brings only a few pernicious superfluous matters into their bodies.

Consequently, the bodies of the urban population are more delicate than those of desert people who live a hard life.

Likewise, those desert people who are used to hunger do not have superfluous matters in their bodies.