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Understanding The Macrobiotic Diet

  • Spence Cooper
  • January 26, 2010
Understanding The Macrobiotic Diet

Macrobiotics is derived from the Greek “macro” — large, long — and “bios” meaning life. In the simplest of terms, a macrobiotic diet is essentially a vegetarian diet supplemented with fish, with an emphasis on the reduction of stress to the digestive system achieved by slowly chewing food thoroughly, and eliminating highly refined processed foods and animal fat from the diet.

While the macrobiotics philosophy can be traced back to the writings of Hippocrates, a medical practitioner regarded as the father of medicine and author of the Hippocratic oath, George Ohsawa, a Japanese philosopher, popularized macrobiotic teachings in North America in the late 1950s. In 1978, Michio Kushi expanded Ohsawa’s theory and opened the Kushi Institute in Boston.

Ohsawa and his many followers believed that the quality of food has a powerful effect on health, well-being, and happiness, and incorporated the Eastern philosophy of yin and yang as it relates to the balance of food and food characteristics. The idea in a macrobiotic diet is to balance the forces in yin and yang foods. Balanced foods used in a macrobiotic way of eating are whole grains, vegetables, beans, sea vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds.

Yin foods are characterized as light, sweet, and passive, while yang foods are hot, dense, salty, and aggressive. Yin foods, according to macrobiotic philosophy, overstimulate and tax the body and mind, and consist of sugar, alcohol, honey, coffee, chocolate, refined flour, hot spices, chemicals, preservatives, milk, yogurt and cheese. Yan foods like meat, eggs, poultry, and refined salt are characterized as concentrated, heavy, dense, and stagnate.

Most macrobiotic practitioners emphasize eating raw or steamed cooked organically grown foods broken down into categories in the following percentages (which vary): whole grains, especially brown rice 25-60 percent; vegetables 25″40 percent; beans and legumes 5″10 percent; fish, nuts, seeds, fruits, miso soup 5-20 percent; and sea vegetables 5 percent.

Macrobiotic diets permit naturally sweet foods like apples, dried fruit, rice syrup, barley malt, and amazake, and seasonings such as natural sea salt, brown rice vinegar, grated ginger root, fermented pickles, roasted sesame seeds, roasted seaweed, and sliced scallions.

Macrobiotics diets are high in omega-3 fatty acids which researchers conclude may slow biological aging in heart disease patients, and according to well-known vegan advocate John Robbins, the longest-living cultures around the world subsist on diets high in whole plant foods.

Among alternative health advocates, there has been a long standing association with macrobiotic diets and the prevention of and/or cure for cancer. These claims have been met with skepticism by many main stream medical practitioners — the same practitioners who during their entire education in medical school receive little to no training in the formal study of nutrition, and its effect on the body.

Yet in study after study, diets low in saturated fat and high in natural, unprocessed foods which are purchased using coupons are time and again linked to either the prevention or reduction in the risk of cancer, as well as a host of other illnesses.

Surly any conclusive claims of a direct link to cancer cures and macrobiotic diets are not yet satisfactorily verified, but considering how so many of the chemical additives found in high processed modern Western diets have been linked to numerous diseases, it only stands to reason that a diet even loosely based on the macrobiotic principles will contribute greatly to good health, and enhance the body’s natural healing ability.

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