The Macrobiotic Way
I’ve recently become highly interested in Food Therapy. Right now I’ve been studying and practicing food combining techniques, macrobiotics, raw food consumption, and local organic market support.
My focus is to create a mental, emotional, and physical balance for myself by way of the food I consume daily. I want to be more connected to what I eat, more aware about where it comes from, and have a stronger sense of how it affects the local and global community.
Each area listed above agrees on certain subjects and conflicts on others. My goal is study each extensively and create a dietary lifestyle for myself.
I’m currently reading a book called “The Macrobiotic Way” by Michio Kushi. The macrobiotic diet consists of 50 - 60% Whole Grains, 10% beans and sea vegetables, 10% fruits and soups (usually miso or some fermented food), and 20 - 30 % vegetables. Macrobiotic followers believe that a diet rich in whole grains and local vegetables (from your temperate climatic zone) will bring harmony to your life and to the global environment. They discourage eating beef, poultry, and diary as these foods are off-balance for human nutrition (higher in fat and protein than we need, and much lower in the valuable vitamins, minerals and fiber that we truly require for health.) Also, animals for consumption is grossly inefficient… the vast acreage of land presently used to raise livestock could feed up to twenty times more people if planted with food crops instead. Not to mention the amount of wheat and/or corn it takes to feed one cow for it’s lifetime. In the US alone, by reducing meat consumption by just 10 percent annually would release enough grain to feed sixty million people.
I should have started this blog weeks ago, because I don’t even know where to begin to relate the benefits of the Macrobiotic diet. For instance, the mineral content in sea vegetables is exponential compare to garden veggies. Kelp has 150 times the iodine, and 8 times the magnesium. Dulse is 30 times richer in potassium than bananas and has 200 times the potency of beetroot whenit comes to iron content. Nori rivals carrots in Vitamin A and has twice the protein of some meats.
The Macrobiotic’s lack of focus on fruits stems from eating mostly what is locally available. if you live in a temperate climate, eating citrus or tropical fruits out of seasons may cause an imbalance in your body. Also, the macrobiotic diet discourages the use of spices (black pepper, cayenne, turmuric, cumin, mustard) not for health reasons (i believe) but because these strong spices overpower the delicately flavored macrobiotic meal.
A word about Yin and Yang: Yin is the name given to energy or movement that has a centrifugal or outward direction, and results in expansion (diffusion, dispersion, and seperation are all yin tendencies). Yang denotes energy or movement that has a centripetal or inward direction, and results in contraction (fusion, gathering, and organization are yang tendancies). As you can imagine, all movement, formation, change and interaction can be understood in terms of a basic yin and yang equation. In the world around us, the sun, daytime, heat and summer all display yang tendencies, while the moon, night, cold and winter reflect more yin qualities. Watery, cooling, yin plant foods grow in hot yang climates, while denser, hardier, more yang plant foods grow in temperate, more yin climates. To read more about yin and yang, check out this link: http://www.drlwilson.com/Articles/yin%20yang%20healing.htm
The Macrobiotic follower believes that all physical and mental imbalances can be explained as being caused by excessive yin, excessive yang, or a combination of excessive yin and yang in food choice, attitude, and lifestyle. An example of a symptom arising from excess yin is a headache caused when the cells and tissues of the brain expand due to an overindulence in alcohol and/or sugar. A headache caused by excess yang, on the other hand, arises when the cells and tissues of the brain contract and press against each other, causing pain.
Many factors are must be weighed by the trained macrobiotic counselor in determining a person’s overall condition and the best diet for that person. I highly recommend a more extensive look into ayruvedics for personal answers about yin and yang. I haven’t studied it much yet, but I’ve dabbled and intend to do much more research in ayruvedics. There is a book I want to get soon called The Modern Ayurvedic Cookbook by Amrita Sondhi.
