EATING HABITS: FORMAT OF MEALS
Take Time for Your Meals Every Day
Sit down to eat your meals or snacks without reading, watching TV, or working.
“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
—Luciano Pavarotti
This is the first step toward good health and will help you feel more satisfied. Sitting down to eat is an expression of our appreciation and respect for our food. Sitting down enables us to create order in our daily eating habits and it makes us more conscious of what we eat. The tendency is not to count the food we eat while standing. It just doesn’t enter our consciousness. In fact, we usually stand when eating the foods we really don’t want to eat or shouldn’t be eating. If you tend to snack throughout the day, you will have trouble regulating your meals and perhaps have some difficulty with weight control. Generally, we don’t realize how much food we ingest when we are eating constantly. Remember that many people eat not because they are hungry but out of a desire to soothe their nerves or lessen their frustration. For them, food acts as a tranquilizer. If this is true in your case, you will become more aware of it if you sit down whenever you snack. You may even decide you don’t really want to eat at that time.
Chinese medicine says that food has both physical aspects and chi (or energetic) aspects. If you want to absorb the energetic aspects of your food, your stomach must be in the bent position it takes when you are seated, not in the elongated position it assumes when you stand. As I see it, different positions are for different activities. Standing is for being active and productive; reclining, which is a receptive position, is for sleep, sex, and rest; and sitting is a transitional position between the two postures. We eat during the day so that we have the energy to be active. We sleep at night so that the body, using the food consumed during the day, can repair and maintain itself.
SITTING, STANDING, AND LYING DOWN
Sitting is the link between standing and lying down. Think about how the seated position aligns with eating. The seated position is the one in which the change between the external and internal environments, between giving out and taking in, occurs. Sitting is the position for receiving nourishment, for strengthening the ability to absorb, digest, and assimilate food. It is also the position most congenial to the process of thinking. Try reading while standing up or lying down. Ideas are not as easily understood in these positions. Whether we are talking about absorbing, digesting, and assimilating food or ideas, sitting is unique.
If you eat while standing up, your stomach cannot accept the food properly. Standing interferes with the digestive process. When you sit down to eat, you will be more conscious of what you are eating and also how much you are eating. Since sitting is a more relaxed position than standing, you will probably eat less food because you will be digesting what you have eaten more thoroughly and will be satisfied with smaller amounts. When you are seated and you overeat, often you don’t know it until you get up from the table. Then you think—oh-oh, I ate too much. In other words, what you are experiencing at that moment of awareness is a natural sensation of fullness. This gives you a gauge by which to measure how much is too much. On the other hand, if you eat standing up, you never know when you’ve had enough. You lose your natural sense of how much food it takes to satisfy you.
EASTERN AND WESTERN MEDICINE
In the early stages of medicine, during the era of Hippocrates, Eastern and Western medicine were very similar. Both were grounded in practical knowledge and common sense. Both taught the importance of diet and lifestyle in creating good health. In those days, health advice included instructions for properly handling all aspects of life. People were taught to sit up straight when eating and to chew their food thoroughly. These guidelines were considered rudimentary. Then as the East moved toward a more spiritual way of life and the West gravitated toward science and analysis, their commonly held ideas became increasingly divergent. However, certain of these ideas—like sitting down to eat and chewing properly—were passed on from one generation to the next in both the East and the West.
“Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.”
—Hippocrates
NOURISHMENT AND BALANCE
Ideally, a meal is a time for nourishing and balancing oneself. A meal is a time to be relaxed, open, and receptive to nourishment, and these attributes don’t mix well with activity. Eating while doing other things such as reading, working, watching TV, talking on the phone, or driving interferes with your ability to receive nourishment. Light, quiet conversation is fine because it makes you more open and receptive. (Heavy, loud conversation tightens you up and closes you down.) My analogy is this: if we’re talking and in the middle of our conversation I pick up a book, I close off to you. If you’re eating, trying to receive nourishment from your food, and you do something else at the same time, you close off to your food. It’s that simple. You aren’t being fully nourished. Each of us takes different nourishment from the same food. Our ability to receive nourishment depends on how we eat and on our approach to eating.
Many of us don’t like to sit down and eat without doing other things, especially when we are alone. When we eat alone, what happens? Thoughts and feelings come up, memories come up. Often we don’t like what comes up, but if we learn to think of this as part of a cleansing process, of getting things out that don’t belong inside us, it should be easier to eat without distractions. And if we can be patient and allow the unhappy thoughts and feelings to come up, they will be followed by happier ones. In the beginning, just try to let go of your thoughts as you would in meditation. Acknowledge each thought as it comes and then let it pass away.
Food is our strongest desire in life. Food also has the capacity to give us an incredibly deep sense of satisfaction. If we eat quietly and without distraction, we will feel deeply satisfied and fulfilled. However, many people don’t allow this to happen. As soon as unhappy feelings come up, they automatically feel the need to do something, to jump up, to read something, to turn on the TV. It’s very important to get past this. Let’s say that when you begin to practice macrobiotics, you abruptly stop drinking coffee. A headache follows. You can either allow the headache to pass (and the pain might be very intense for a few days) or you can drink a cup of coffee and end it. You might not think so, but this situation is analogous to eating without doing other things. Eating while you distract yourself with something else is the same as taking the very thing (coffee) that was the cause of your problem (headache) in the first place. The cause is also the cure—albeit a very temporary one.
Of all my recommendations, I think sitting down to eat without doing other things is the most difficult one for my clients to practice. At the same time, it’s the most important of all the steps. It’s the one that sets our direction toward health or toward sickness.
Key Points:
• Sitting down to eat your meals and snacks without doing other things is the first step toward good health.
• When you eat without distraction, you absorb the most nutrition.
• You need to concentrate when you read a book or see a movie to get the most out of the experience. You need to participate fully in a conversation to be completely satisfied. This principle applies to your meals as well.
• Sitting down to eat without doing other things allows you to be more aware of what you are eating and to stop when you have had enough.
• You eat less and feel more satisfied.
• This is one of the most difficult steps. Try to always be conscious of it.
Allow Adequate Time for Your Meals.
The minimum time required to consume a meal is twenty minutes. Now, you might think that that’s an arbitrary number, but it isn’t. Let me explain. According to Eastern thinking, everything in the universe is energy, some of it materialized energy (us, for example) and some not (wind, for example). Energy is manifested in vibrations. And we know that vibrations have a natural tendency to align with each other—that’s physics. I first realized this when I was in Switzerland, in a shop that sold cuckoo clocks. All the pendulums were exactly aligned. (I was so pleased with my discovery that I made the mistake of buying one of these clocks. It drove me crazy once I was home.) Or, take the example of women’s menstruation. It’s well known that after a short while women who share living quarters begin to menstruate at the same time. Therefore, it should not surprise you to learn that after twenty minutes in the same room, the rate of heartbeat, blood pressure, and breathing of those present tends to align. By the same token, if someone should enter the room whose rate of heartbeat, blood pressure, or breathing is very different from that of the group’s—too different for alignment to occur—everyone will feel some discomfort, no one will be able to relax completely. Understandably, the person who entered the room will feel too uncomfortable to stay very long.
FIFTY CYCLES OF ENERGY EVERY DAY
Why does the process of alignment take roughly twenty minutes? Here is the reasoning: fifty cycles of energy (ki, the Japanese word for energy) flow through the body each day. This means that ki circulates through the entire body fifty times a day. One cycle takes just under thirty minutes. It takes 70 percent of the thirty-minute cycle, or about twenty minutes, for alignment to become significant. You can check on this yourself. When you go somewhere new, how long does it take until you really feel comfortable? How long does it take to settle into a serious conversation? It takes about twenty minutes. Still, many people sit down to eat a meal assuming that five to ten minutes is an adequate amount of time. It certainly isn’t. If a friend says he has something really important to talk over with you and you say—great, I can give you five minutes—it’s likely he or she will feel insulted.
You can’t have a serious conversation in five minutes. You can introduce a subject, but you can’t delve into it. In the same way, you can have an appetizer or a snack in five minutes but not an entire meal.
Breakfast is the most forgiving meal because we’re active for a full day afterward. Dinner is the least forgiving. In other words, if you have a fifteen-minute breakfast, it’s not the end of the world. But in a manner of speaking, a fifteen-minute dinner is. It doesn’t count as a meal. I’m not talking about solid eating time. I’m talking about the time it takes to complete your meal—from the moment you sit down until the moment you get up from the table.
Let’s say you’re standing next to someone at a bar. Even if you don’t say a word to that person, after twenty minutes your energy will be aligned. If you smile at that person, the alignment happens more quickly. If you talk together it happens more quickly still, and the alignment becomes stronger. I hope you can see now that quiet conversation during mealtimes, talking and eating together, fosters a strong and deep alignment. If you eat quietly without talking, you become more independent, but not as strongly connected to one another. Whether you eat alone or with others, the minimum time for a meal is twenty minutes.
Key Points:
• The minimum time for a meal is twenty minutes.
• Time yourself from the beginning to the end of the meal, not just while you are eating.
• Breakfast is the most forgiving meal in terms of time.
• It takes time for your body to adjust from being active to receiving nourishment, just as it takes time to settle into a good conversation.
Eat Slowly and Chew Well.
It’s only common sense that in order to eat slowly you must be seated. You must also allow time in your mind for the meal. If you don’t do this you won’t be able to slow down. If, when you sit down, you are thinking that you’re running late, that you don’t have time for this meal, you won’t be able to eat slowly. Once you pick up your fork, the pace is set and it’s very hard to change it. In other words, eating slowly and chewing well require some preparation.
“Chew your drink, and drink your food.”
—Mahatma Gandhi
CHEWING AND POSTURE
In order to chew well, we have to assume the correct posture. The posture for chewing and the posture for reading are exactly the same. If you have something to read that is important to you and requires deep understanding, then you had better sit up straight and tilt your head forward slightly. It is in this position that we can best absorb, comprehend, and retain. I think we can agree that if you sit up straight but tilt your chin up slightly, reading becomes more difficult. In order to chew, digest, and absorb information completely, we must sit up straight, head tilted slightly forward so the head spiral is pointing upward. The same holds true if our aim is to circulate, digest, and absorb what we eat.
In this position, sitting up straight with your head spiral facing upward, the food remains in your mouth as you chew—it doesn’t slip down your throat—and you can circulate (chew) the food as many times as you wish—fifty times, a hundred times, five hundred times. In order to chew thoroughly and well, it’s best to put down your utensils between each mouthful and place your hands in your lap. This increases your concentration and encourages thorough chewing.
Why do I place so much emphasis on chewing? Chewing strengthens digestion. If you chew your food well, you will develop your physical ability to digest and assimilate food.
CHEWING AND CIRCULATION
Chewing is a pump. It circulates all our body’s energy and fluids, all blood, lymph, digestive, hormonal and cellular fluids. Each chew is like a pump circulating all our energy. Each chew is renewing our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. To digest food properly, the minimum count is twenty-five. To quiet the mind and develop thinking, the minimum is fifty. To refine ki (energy), the minimum is one hundred.
In Eastern philosophy, the body is made up of different systems working together and complementing each other. The digestive system and the brain form one of these systems. The digestive system is designed to digest solid and liquid food, the brain to digest vibrational food—food that takes the form of thoughts and images.
CHEWING FOOD—CHEWING IDEAS
Once, while I was living in Japan, I was invited to a restaurant that specialized in fugu, a treasured Japanese delicacy. Fugu is very expensive. It has a delicious and delicate taste, but it is also highly poisonous. In fact, if it has not been properly prepared, it is usually fatal. Two days before I was scheduled to eat at this restaurant, a famous sumo wrestler died of fugu poisoning, a fact that only served to increase my nervousness. But it would have been a terrible loss of face to turn down such an honored invitation, so I went. I drank sake and ate fugu with my Japanese friends. None of them seemed unsettled by what had happened to the sumo wrestler, but I wondered if this was to be my last meal. I tried to behave naturally even though I was frightened, and eventually I managed to relax a bit. The fugu was delicious. To this day, I don’t know whether it was the taste and texture or the danger it posed that made it so interesting to eat.
Later, I told this story to a well-known Japanese macrobiotic teacher, Herman Aihara. He had a good laugh and then said, “A macrobiotic person can’t be poisoned. His body won’t accept the poison. It will immediately be thrown out of his body. You didn’t have to worry.”
Maybe, maybe not. But what I do believe is that we can be poisoned by ideas as readily as (or perhaps more readily than) by food. If Eastern thinking is correct about the connection between the brain and the digestive system, then strengthening the digestive system is the easiest way to strengthen thinking ability. In other words, chewing your food and chewing your ideas amount to the same thing. If you chew your food well, you strengthen your ability to digest and assimilate ideas and thoughts. The action of chewing actually improves your thinking ability and your memory. A healthy mind can accept all ideas, chew them over, and either absorb or dispel them. I call this conscious chewing. The concept is applicable to all forms of nourishment, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
CHEWING AND CONSCIOUSNESS
It’s important to be conscious of how you eat. Most people eat automatically. They give little or no thought to eating mindfully. Being relaxed before sitting down to eat will help you take the time to chew properly. Doing some stretching, a few yoga postures, or even some deep slow breathing before you start may help you to unwind.
A five- to ten-minute break between cooking and eating can make a big difference in your ability to enjoy your meal and to concentrate on chewing well. Cooking tends to be tightening and that may contribute to overeating and under-chewing.
You’ve probably not thought much about chewing. The fact is that most people chew very little. Changing old habits is tough, so before you begin your new program of proper chewing, observe the way you and other people chew. You’ll be surprised at what you see and, with a bit of reflection, you’ll soon realize that your body deserves better treatment.
Solid food should be chewed until it turns to liquid. Aim to chew each mouthful of food fifty times. Start slowly. For the first two weeks chew each mouthful twenty-five times. Work your way gradually to fifty or, if you have the will and the patience, to a hundred. Once you become accustomed to well-chewed food, you will feel uncomfortable if you eat too quickly.
The more you chew, the more aware you become of your own needs. People today tend to be constantly on the run with little or no time to reflect on what is important to them in their lives. Chewing well will help you break that pattern. It leads naturally to a calmer and more orderly life. By thinking about what’s appropriate for you to do next, you will begin to use your time more efficiently; and that, in turn, will help you accomplish more than you ever thought possible.
Everything in Nature occurs in an alternating pattern—movement followed by rest—action followed by inaction. Ideally our lives should reflect this process. We might think we are wasting time if we stop to take care of ourselves and chew our food but, in reality, valuing our quiet time will make our active time more productive.
If you can take at least one or two of your three daily meals alone, you will have the ideal opportunity to concentrate on chewing well. Even if you can chew well at only one meal, you will notice an improvement in how you feel and think. If you can form the habit of chewing well at every meal, your health and your outlook on life will improve dramatically. You can chew well even when dining with others. Take advantage of those times when your companion is talking to do your chewing.
CHEWING AND DIGESTION
Chewing well also releases the full power of saliva. Ideally, saliva has a pH factor of 7.2, which means it is slightly alkaline. Saliva digests complex carbohydrates by breaking them down from complex to simple sugars. (That’s why grains, beans, and vegetables get sweeter the longer you chew them.) Chewing any food well prepares it to pass more smoothly and completely through the digestive system. Saliva can also neutralize imbalances in your food. Even if your diet is not well balanced, thorough chewing helps compensate for the imbalances.
When you chew well, your saliva mixes with the food and makes the food more alkaline, which means the food is better able to absorb the highly acidic secretions that are released in your stomach. If your blood is more alkaline, you will enjoy better health, stronger immunity, and a greater resistance to illness.
Simple carbohydrates and refined foods are absorbed quickly into the bloodstream, creating more acidic blood. Sugar and alcohol are simple carbohydrates. Many foods contain hidden sugar, and sugar can be disguised in various ways on food labels. Most cakes, pastries, cookies, and crackers contain sugar. Fruit is also a simple carbohydrate. Concentrated fruit juices are commonly used as sweeteners in many commercial and health food–related products. These are all absorbed quickly and they all create acidic blood. Fructose, or fruit sugar, which is found in fruit and honey, can also raise blood cholesterol.
Other foods that are absorbed quickly include white rice, white bread, white pasta, and potatoes. You can help neutralize their acidity by chewing thoroughly, but it’s best to avoid these foods altogether once your cravings are minimized.
The problem with these foods is that by the time they reach the stomach, they will have been absorbed in the mucous membranes and therefore will not pass through the duodenum. Foods that are absorbed before passing through the duodenum create more acidic blood. The duodenum has strong alkaline secretions that increase the alkalinity of our food before it passes into the small intestine for final digestion and absorption.
Opposites attract. Chewing alkalizes food. Then the alkaline food attracts stomach acids and the protein content is digested. Food turns alkaline again as it passes through the duodenum where fats are broken down. Your food is then ready for the next stage—final digestion and absorption in the small intestine. Only food that is absorbed through the small intestine creates healthy, alkaline blood. The final stage is water absorption and bowel formation in the colon or large intestine, where the waste products are then excreted.
When your blood is acidic, valuable minerals, especially calcium, are lost from bones, teeth, or muscles. These stored minerals are needed to create the buffer action that breaks down strong acid and turns it into weak acid on its way to being converted to carbon dioxide and water. Mineral loss dilutes the blood and weakens resistance to illness. It weakens the bones as well.
Acid blood weakens the kidneys, heart, and lungs, all organs affected by excessive liquids. The kidneys must work harder to filter more blood and discharge more fluid, which leads to a loss of valuable nutrients (minerals, B vitamins, and vitamin C). The heart has to work harder to pump the increased blood volume. And the lungs must work harder also, in order to discharge the excess carbon dioxide and fluid. Think of the steam that emanates from our mouths when we exhale on a cold day. Think of how much more difficult it is to breathe easily when the weather is humid. Experiment. Try drinking a lot of fruit juice, beer, or soda before exercising. Check your heart and breathing rates and compare the readings with those taken when you drink fewer liquids.
As you can imagine, your health will be adversely affected by a loss of minerals. If you eat a steady diet of refined foods and white sugar, you will weaken your entire system and create a climate for the development of illness.
On the other hand, if you eat foods with healthful, nourishing complex carbohydrates and chew them well, you will enjoy the natural sweetness of good food that can be digested properly. Chewing regulates peristalsis, the automatic expansion and contraction of the muscles of the entire digestive system. Peristaltic movement is wavelike and forms a continuous pattern. Chewing stimulates peristalsis. The more you chew the more frequently the wavelike movement occurs and the more rapidly you move toward a state of balance.
The result is that elimination will return to normal and toxic conditions in the colon, conditions that could cause discomfort and disease, will be warded off. You will have reached the point at which the rhythm of your entire system flows in harmony with the rhythm of Nature and the universe.
Thorough chewing makes the salivary glands produce enzymes that stimulate the release of parotid hormones. These hormones help the thymus gland create T cells, which bolster the immune system.
As I said earlier, chewing also acts as a pump that circulates the body’s fluids and energy. Chewing actually activates the blood and other fluid circulation in the body as well as regulating energy flow. If you are feeling physically or emotionally blocked, chewing will help to disperse the stagnation that is causing those conditions.
It activates the whole system and dispels negative energy.
BRIGHTEN UP YOUR DAY
After you have chewed thoroughly for a few days or longer, you will notice that you feel brighter and that you are thinking more clearly. This is also easy to test. Try chewing every mouthful of food, even soup and liquids, at least fifty times for four days. Notice the difference. Are you calmer? Is your thinking clearer? Is your energy brighter? If you feel adventurous, try another four days of chewing each mouthful of food at least a hundred times.
To make this a more useful test, it’s best to count the number of chews per mouthful over the four-day period. Better chewing alone will strengthen your health but, as I said earlier, make sure that you are seated when you eat and not doing other things—not driving, watching TV, or reading.
RELIEVING STRESS
Most people think they are wasting time when they take time for their meals. The busier and more stressed they are, the more they think they’re wasting time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consider this: the more you rush your meal, the more stressed you become. It’s really quite simple. Traditionally there were three times during the day when we stopped what we were doing in order to return to balance, to re-nourish ourselves and readjust our direction. They were called meals—not lunch or dinner breaks—three times a day when we could stop and think, what am I doing, where am I going, what do I want to be doing? If we don’t take time for meals, we never develop the ability to ask or answer these questions, and the result is that we lose our direction in life, we lose control over our lives. This is what we see happening today. People are more confused and disoriented than ever before. They never take the time to stop and think about the important things. Meals are purposeful in that they give us the opportunity for this kind of self-reflection. Meals are great stress relievers, provided they are at least twenty minutes long. You will gain time, not lose it, when you take time for your meals.
Key Points:
• Start by chewing each mouthful twenty to thirty times and gradually increase to fifty.
• To improve your health and calm your mind more quickly, chew each mouthful of food at least fifty times.
• Thorough chewing also helps you eat less and feel more satisfied.
• Chewing circulates your body’s energy and all its fluids (blood, lymph, hormones, digestive, etc.).
• Put your utensils down after each mouthful. This will help you chew more thoroughly.
Stop Eating Three Hours Before Bedtime.
“Dine with little, sup with less: Do better still; sleep supperless.”
—Benjamin Franklin
Your body cleans and repairs itself while you sleep. Your stomach needs to be empty for this process to be efficient. It takes, on average, about three hours for food to leave the stomach. Therefore, it’s best to refrain from eating for three hours before retiring. My analogy is this: it’s impossible to clean a room packed with people. If you want to clean a room thoroughly and efficiently, you have to empty it of people. If you want to clean your body, you have to empty it of food.
During the day while we’re up and about, we receive the benefits of the sun’s energy. Just the opposite occurs at night when we are nourished by celestial energy from the moon, stars, constellations, and galaxy. Daytime is for activity, productivity, and the spending of energy; nighttime is for rest, rejuvenation, and the receiving of energy.
The body cannot perform the miraculous nocturnal task of rejuvenation unless the stomach is empty. Nor can we receive celestial energy at night unless we are empty inside. Food is condensed energy. When you eat, most of your food turns into energy in your body. If you go to sleep too soon after eating, your body will be too full of energy to do its nighttime work. Imagine a roomful of people and then imagine trying to clean, organize, and rearrange that room. Difficult, wouldn’t you say? But once the room is empty, it’s simple. Can you see from my analogy that your body is in a similar fix if it’s not empty? When your stomach is too full, the body is so busy dealing with digestion it can’t properly do its normal nighttime job. It’s all too easy for the body to fall behind schedule when it can’t discharge the toxins that accumulate in our cells and organs each day—which is exactly what happens when it’s not allowed to repair itself each night.
HYPOGLYCEMIA
Here’s another important point: when we eat, we secrete insulin in order to digest our food. If we eat before sleep, we go to sleep with too much insulin circulating in our bloodstream so that when morning comes, we feel tired and sluggish and have a hard time getting up. This is one of the symptoms of hypoglycemia.
Let me tell you a little bit about hypoglycemia. The food we take before going to sleep is food that the body can’t metabolize because it is in a prone position. This food goes to the liver for storage. The liver takes care of fat metabolism, but it also has another important role. The liver neutralizes acidity and therefore helps keep our blood alkaline. When we eat before sleeping, we experience an increased buildup of fat and cholesterol in our bloodstream which, in turn, promotes acidity. And acidic blood is a chief contributor to feelings of fatigue and stress. The excess, undigested food actually exhausts the body, which is unable to process and digest in a reclining position.
Among our vital organs, the liver, pancreas, kidneys, and intestines are particularly overworked. Of course, many people feel they have to eat just in order to sleep. This is a symptom of hypoglycemia. What it means is that your blood sugar has fallen too low for you to fall asleep. Then the body demands that you eat in order to raise your blood sugar level, knowing that it will fall further while you sleep.
Even if what you eat at nine or ten at night is of good quality and healthful, you won’t receive the best value from it. It may satisfy your appetite, but without time to digest it properly, you are effectively losing some of its benefits. Foods that are high in fiber and low in fat (e.g., complex carbohydrates) are digested more quickly and easily than animal and dairy foods. They contain less condensed energy and are easier for your body to process and, if you are up and about and active, their energy will disperse more quickly. But even the smallest amount of meat is so laden with condensed energy that it creates an even bigger burden on your body, so much of one that you probably would need more than a three-hour wait before going to sleep.
“A full belly makes a dull brain.”
—Benjamin Franklin
CLEANING YOUR BODY AND BETTER SEX
If you are recovering from an illness, you will benefit from allowing three to four hours of not eating before bedtime. Eating has a nourishing, expansive effect on the body. Cleaning or detoxifying is a process of taking out rather than taking in. Waiting more than three hours before bedtime enhances the body’s ability to clean and repair itself during sleep. Experiment with the number of hours you allow yourself between the completion of your meal and your bedtime. When you allow more time, I am sure you will feel the difference the next day. For the record, the suggestion to stop eating three hours before bedtime means you should stop eating three hours before getting into bed or stretching out in a chair with your feet up to watch TV or to read. If your body is horizontal, you haven’t complied with the suggestion. You will need to wait an additional three hours if you want to have the best digestion and the best sleep. If you reserve the bed exclusively for sleeping and sex, I’m sure you’ll find both activities more rewarding.
Eating before sleep is a hard habit to break. At the same time, you need to realize that you can’t have really good health unless you do break it. If you can’t go to sleep without eating for three hours beforehand, the most likely cause is that you’re not satisfied with the meals you took during the day. The only way to overcome this habit is to make the day’s meals more satisfying. Pay particular attention to breakfast, followed by lunch. People who like to be very active and busy don’t often sit down for a complete meal during the course of the day. They can’t spare the time and they don’t want to be slowed down by food. Often they will eat dinner at a very late hour. Whether they eat early or late, this type of person usually feels more relaxed after dinner, and it is this overdue relaxation that stimulates late-night hunger. Not eating before sleep sounds easy, but it’s not. It may require some lifestyle changes.
Key Points:
• To promote the best health, finish your evening meal by eight p.m. Let a full three hours pass before lying down. Stretching out in bed or even on a chaise longue does not allow for good digestion.
• It takes about three hours for your stomach to empty after you finish eating.
• Your stomach must be empty for your body to clean, repair, and recharge itself efficiently while you sleep.
• You will sleep more deeply, need fewer hours, and awake more refreshed.
• Anything you eat before going to sleep—good food or bad—goes to the liver for storage and prevents your liver from getting a rest and repairing itself.
Eat in an Orderly Manner.
Balance has a certain kind of order. You may think what I am about to propose is a very rigid way to eat. A number of older macrobiotic friends have told me just that. My answer is that I’m still here actively counseling and teaching macrobiotics, and they aren’t. So I’ll stick with my way. What is my way? Let’s take dinner: you can start your meal with soup, followed by a grain and a few different side dishes, and end it with dessert and/or a beverage, if you choose.
TWO TYPES OF SOUP
There are two main types of soup: savory and sweet. Savory soups are well seasoned and mildly salty. Their purpose is to stimulate and activate digestion. Vegetable soup, shoyu soup, and miso soup (vegetable soup seasoned with miso) are savory. Among the three, miso soup has the most ability to promote good digestion.
Sweet vegetable soups are puréed and have a mild, pleasantly sweet and creamy taste—squash soup, onion, cabbage, and leek soup, and carrot soup are some examples. The purpose of sweet vegetable soup is to harmonize, balance, and relax the digestive system.
Savory soup should be started at the beginning of the meal. Whether you finish it before going onto the rest of your meal or continue to consume it throughout the meal, as if it were a side dish, is up to you. There is actually more benefit in taking this type of soup throughout the meal. Sweet vegetable soup doesn’t have the same ability to activate digestion but there’s no harm in starting your meal with it. Since it lightens, relaxes, and opens up the digestive system, we can enjoy it throughout the meal as well.
Miso soup is a wonderful way to start the day; however, some people who take miso soup for breakfast can’t stop eating all day! It makes them excessively hungry. In those cases, I recommend against it. It’s better to take it at lunch or dinnertime. But if you’re comfortable with it in the morning and it doesn’t cause you to overeat, just keep on with it.
GRAIN FROM BEGINNING TO END
Grain is eaten throughout the meal from beginning to end. Now let’s talk about vegetable dishes that are interspersed with the grain. As I said earlier, balance has a certain kind of order. To achieve balance, it’s best to follow that order. Take some grain, chew it thoroughly, then move on to the vegetable side dishes. Start with the heavier, long-cooked dishes and finish with the lighter, more quickly cooked ones.
Let’s go through the order of a meal together. Start the meal with soup. Then take a mouthful of grain, chew it, and swallow it. If you’re having a bean (or bean product such as tofu or tempeh), take that next, followed by another mouthful of grain. Then move on to a sea vegetable, such as hijiki or arame, if you’re having one. Take a mouthful, chew that, and swallow it. If you’re not quite satisfied by one mouthful of sea vegetable, have another, have two or three if you wish. Take some grain, and then go on to whatever other long-cooked vegetable you may be having. Take another mouthful of grain, and then return to the beans, followed by the long-cooked vegetable, then the grain, and then move on to the more quickly cooked vegetable dishes, those that have been sautéed, steamed, or blanched, for instance. My definition of a lightly or quickly cooked vegetable is this: the crunching sound you make while chewing a lightly cooked vegetable should be audible to the person sitting next to you. No crunch means the vegetable is overcooked. Remember to intersperse the grain with the other dishes. Grain is taken consistently throughout the meal. The salad (pressed salad before raw salad) is taken at the end of the meal. Dessert, if you choose to have one, and tea complete the meal.
A meal eaten in this manner has a wavelike pattern. Think of yourself sitting on the beach, watching the tide go out. The tide doesn’t go out all at once, does it? No, it waves out. In other words, it goes out but comes back in a bit, out again but back in a bit, and so on. My point is that although the tide continues to come in, overall it’s gradually moving out. In the same way, although grain is taken consistently from the beginning to the end of the meal, overall the meal is moving in a certain direction.
Just to avoid confusion, let me say the following: adults generally don’t finish one dish before going on to the next, but you can if that is your preference. Generally, most children eat through one dish at a time. They like everything to be as simple as possible. Often, they don’t like it if the different foods on their plates are even touching. If you wish to develop direct, simple, childlike thinking, you can eat this way. If, however, you want to think more elaborately, then you should move back and forth, in a wavelike pattern. So you are constantly coming back while moving further and further out—like the tide.
Key Points:
• Orderly eating aids digestion and promotes clear thinking. It will leave you feeling more satisfied.
• If you are having soup, start the meal with it. You may finish your soup before going on to the rest of the meal, or you may eat it throughout the meal.
• Eat grains from the beginning to the end of the meal.
• Gradually move from the heavier, well cooked dishes to the lighter, more quickly cooked or raw dishes. Salads come last and are followed by dessert and tea.
• It is not necessary to finish one dish before moving on to the next. The pattern is a wave-like motion that resembles the tide as it goes out.
• Orderly eating leads to orderly thinking.
Avoid Mixing Foods in the Same Mouthful.
Keep the foods on your plate distinct and separate, not touching. Imitate the child in this respect. To accomplish this, you either have to take smaller portions or put the different foods in small individual dishes as the Japanese do. I don’t like to put everything on my plate at once, so I only take a couple of dishes at a time and then go back for the others. It often happens that my children finish the foods I like before I’m ready to refill my plate. It’s no different when I’m at the Strengthening Health Institute’s residential programs. The Strengthening Health Institute (SHI) is our nonprofit that offers online and on-site personal and professional training programs in the macrobiotic lifestyle. The outcome is that I’m prevented from overeating! Everything is as it should be.
Why do I stress keeping the food on our plates from touching? Digestion is a mechanical process. For instance, if you mix two foods together in the same mouthful, digestive enzymes are going to attach to one food more than to the other. That’s their nature. The process works like this: the mouth secretes saliva. Saliva is alkaline. Whichever food becomes more alkalized by the saliva will attract more stomach acid, which, in turn, will attract more alkaline secretions in the duodenum when it arrives there. That food will be well absorbed in the small intestine, and equally so in the large intestine. But the other food will miss out completely. Different foods are digested differently.
If you cook two foods together, such as pressure-cooked rice and beans or stir-fried grain and vegetables, they can be eaten together. They have blended in the cooking process. They are no longer two distinct foods. But if you cook rice and beans separately, eat them separately. Don’t put the beans on your rice. There are exceptions. If you cook two dishes separately but mix them together while they’re still hot, the residual heat will cause them to blend. In effect, they become one dish. If you want to make a grain and vegetable salad using leftover rice, reheat the rice, then add the vegetables, whether they are raw or previously cooked or freshly cooked. The heat from the rice will allow the ingredients to blend and become digestible. You can let the dish cool down to room temperature before eating it if that is your preference. It is still one dish. Energetically, this is entirely different from mixing distinct foods together on your plate or in your mouth. It’s crucial not to mix different foods in the same mouthful. Foods cooked separately should be chewed separately.
As I’ve already mentioned, children don’t like different foods to touch on their plates and, in general, they like simple dishes. But, under some circumstances they do mix everything together. When? When they don’t like what they are eating and just want to get it down. When are adults most likely to mix foods together, when they have a healthy appetite and are full of energy, or when their appetite is sluggish and they feel tired?
Here’s another question. What stimulates your mind more, eating distinct dishes or eating those that have been mixed together on the plate? The answer, of course, is eating each dish individually. If you eat this way, you will see an improvement in both your digestion and your ability to think.
RISE EARLY AND SLEEP BEFORE MIDNIGHT
Rise early to be more active and discharge more toxins. The time at which you get out of bed in the morning—not your waking time—is what sets the tone for your day. If you want to be more active and productive, get out of bed by seven a.m. at the latest. If you leave your bed at nine, or even worse, at eleven a.m., there’s a sense in which you might as well not bother to leave it at all.
Think about this. The sun rises. It rises with a burst of energy that cleans and refreshes everything on earth. When you get out of bed around the time of sunrise, you can take full advantage of this burst of energy. It is at this time that your body has the greatest capacity to discharge excess, to clean and refresh itself. Within an hour or two after sunrise, the sun’s movement starts to slow down. By nine a.m., it has slowed down considerably. Let’s take a look at exactly what happens when you get up late, as many people do on Sundays. You have a late breakfast—referred to as brunch—usually sometime between ten and noon, a time when we’re meant to be active. Now if we eat when we’re meant to be active, we get very sluggish. We lie around for the rest of the day, reading the paper, dragging from one thing to another. The effect on us is the same as if we had overeaten, isn’t it? Why should this be the case? The answer is that we don’t have the ability to digest or process the sun’s energy when we’re in a horizontal position. The sun’s energy is very coarse. We absorb it through the head spiral located toward the back part of the top of the head, and for this to occur we have to be upright.
If you eat a big meal during the day, afterward you feel sluggish, you can’t think clearly. Even if you take an afternoon nap in a darkened room, you still feel sluggish when you awake. You don’t have to be directly exposed to the sun’s rays for this to happen. If we are horizontal when the sun is up, we don’t have the ability to process the sun’s energy. The immune system is effectively deactivated, and the overall effect on us is the same as that of overeating.
It’s just as important for our health to be asleep before midnight as it is to rise with the sun. During the night, we receive very subtle energy from the celestial world, the moon, stars, and planets. As we sleep, we are nourished by this celestial influence. We have to be horizontal for this energy to be most effectively absorbed. Our deepest sleep occurs between one a.m. and three a.m. Celestial vibrations are strongest between midnight and four a.m., at the time when the most stars are visible in the sky, the greatest number being visible at about two a.m. It takes an hour or two to fall into the deepest sleep, so we need to be asleep by eleven p.m. to receive the optimal celestial influence and, therefore, the best results for our health. If this is difficult, given the demands of modern society, try to be in bed by midnight.
“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
—Benjamin Franklin
I have read that we need a certain number of hours of sleep and if we don’t get them, we have to “catch up.” If you think about this, it doesn’t make much sense. How well or poorly we sleep is determined by our diet and activity during the day. If we eat too much or too little, it’s hard to sleep. The same holds true for activity. If we sit around all day, we probably will not sleep well. When we work too hard and exhaust ourselves, sleep often does not come easily. The amount of sleep we need is determined by how long it takes our body to clean, repair, and recharge itself. The better our health, the less time we need for the cycle of cleaning, repairing, and recharging. Most people find that they need considerably less sleep within a couple of weeks of adopting the Strengthening Health recommendations. If our diet and activity are not in balance every day, we won’t sleep well at night, and if we don’t sleep well at night, our body won’t be able to clean, repair, and re-energize its organs and nervous system. On the other hand, if our diet and activity are in balance, the sleeping process becomes very efficient, takes less time to achieve, and gives us deeper sleep. The result is that we feel rested and refreshed with fewer hours of sleep. If we are in good health, either a rich, elaborate meal or a light, simple one will satisfy us and provide good energy.
The same principle applies to the subject of sleep. The average person in good health requires five to eight hours of sleep. If we get a little less than that, we will still feel fine and, if we choose to sleep a bit longer, perhaps on the weekend, we’ll also feel fine. The bottom line is that when we are in good health, we can be flexible about how much we eat and the amount of sleep we need.
Let’s consider the quality of sleep. Deep sleep, undisturbed by dreams, is the most refreshing. If you spend the night dreaming, the mind does not have the opportunity to relax and recharge. If you follow the Strengthening Health suggestions accurately, you will not experience confusing or disturbing dreams and you will awaken with the will and the energy to pursue what you want out of life—to pursue your real dreams.
Everyone is concerned with getting a good night’s sleep. If you live in proper rhythm with Nature, eat at regular scheduled intervals, chew your food well, and allow enough time before bed for digestion, you will have no problem with sleep.
Key Points:
• Your rising time regulates your energy and activity for the day. Aren’t you less productive if you get up late?
• Rise by seven a.m. to be more active and discharge more toxins. Your body has the greatest ability to discharge and release excess early in the morning.
• Be asleep before midnight to sleep more deeply, awake more refreshed, and be physically stronger.
• Your body can clean and repair itself more efficiently when you are asleep before midnight.
KEEP YOUR MEALTIMES REGULAR
Regular meals regulate all of your body’s cycles—physical, emotional, and mental. They make your energy and life more stable. It’s important to take your meals at approximately the same time every day. This adjustment alone will greatly improve your health. As easy as this step may sound, the reality is that it takes time and discipline to rethink this aspect of your life. As the world has gotten more complicated, the manner in which we take our most important nourishment is often ignored.
Think about your mealtimes during the past week. Were you able to sit down to your meals at approximately the same time each day? Did you even take the time to sit down when eating breakfast or lunch? If your answer is no, you aren’t alone. Most people don’t realize the importance of maintaining a regular meal schedule and don’t think they are undermining their health by not eating at regular times. But their health is surely suffering.
Even if you still eat meat and potatoes every day, just doing it at regular intervals will let you benefit from your food far more than if you eat these same foods in a disorderly manner. The body responds positively to a set schedule and is very grateful when it is allowed to align itself with Nature—so grateful that it will reward you abundantly with better mental and physical health. This is because the time at which we eat determines how well we digest our food.
When do we have the most active digestion? To answer this question, I have to ask another. Actually, it’s a trick question. Should we eat our meals when we’re hungry, or should we eat at regular specified times? The answer is that if we eat regular meals and if we don’t overeat, then we will be hungry at mealtimes. Why should this be so?
ALIGNING WITH NATURE
Mealtimes are not arbitrary. They are part of the natural cycle of life. Everything in life is governed by the sun’s movement, whether throughout the day or throughout the year. The sun has three extreme positions—sunrise, sunset, and the high point in the sky, noon. The extreme angles of the sun indicate what we call mealtimes. The time in between these angles is for activity. Most people are active in the morning and in the spring, less active in the middle of the night or in the dead of winter. Breathing is more active in the daytime and in the summer, and is quieter at night and in the winter.
What breakfast really encourages is rising and separating energy. In the morning, we rise and separate from our families and/or our homes; we all go off in different directions—we separate and enter the larger world. This is the energetic effect of sunrise. We get up, wash, brush our teeth, have breakfast or not, and then leave the house for work, for school, for errands, etc. The usual pattern is one of separating from family and home.
Lunch is a time for either activity or stagnation, depending on when and what we eat. Lunch can give us uplifting, active energy or sinking, stagnating energy. If we want to be active after lunch, we should eat early and the meal should be simple and complete. People who are physically active generally eat a light early lunch. In Spain, lunch is an elaborate meal that is served very late. Since no one can stay awake after such a large and late meal, lunch is quite naturally followed by a long siesta.
Dinner is a time for returning home, a time to gather and unify. Until recently, at least, families ate dinner together, perhaps talking, perhaps arguing, but in any event sharing the events and experiences of the day. Family members communicated, unified, and aligned as a family. This alignment and reunification also follows a natural pattern or tendency.
The nature of energy or of vibrations, as I’ve mentioned before, is such that vibrations try to align. In other words, they try to become similar in their quality, speed, and direction of movement. Think of a moving merry-go-round. If you want to step on smoothly, you have to be moving in the same direction and at the same speed as the merry-go-round itself. If you are moving faster or slower, your boarding will be jerky because the two different energies are not aligning properly. And, furthermore, should you approach a merry-go-round from the direction opposite to its movement, you will be thrown off even as you attempt to climb on.
Another example of the alignment of energy is this one: imagine a meeting room filled with vegans who have just finished dinner. Generally, vegans have more peaceful energy because they eat a grain- and vegetable-based diet without meat or dairy products. Let’s say they drink herbal tea at the end of their meal and as a result are even calmer and more peaceful than usual. In our scenario, these vegans are discussing various types of meditation when someone new enters the room, momentarily disrupting the conversation. Let’s say that the newcomer has just left the local sports bar, where he has eaten a dinner of fried chicken washed down with a few beers. The atmosphere in the bar was heated because the local hockey team was losing. You can appreciate that this person’s energy would be very strong, perhaps even jarring, compared with the energy of the vegans. The group would no doubt lose its focus and wonder who this guy was and why he was there. Do you see the problem? The newcomer’s energy is just too different for it to align quickly with the energy of the others. Either the newcomer or the vegans will feel uncomfortable. Only as time passes will their energy even start to align.
When members of a family come together on a daily basis, they build understanding and communication. So long as they do this, the family will function harmoniously. Each of us goes out every day and encounters many different influences and experiences. We eat different foods, talk to different people, engage in different activities, all of which alter our condition and thinking. We align with individuals outside the family through common or similar points and qualities. This is not a threat to the family, but an asset—as long as we continue to take our evening meal together. Understanding and communication develop as we talk and eat together. We can go out again after dinner, if we choose. As long as the unification process, the aligning process continues at the evening meal, the family’s stability and balance will develop and be maintained.
BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER
Now that we know that meals are meant to align us with Nature’s energy, let’s talk specifically about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. As I said earlier, breakfast should give us rising and separating energy so that we can be in harmony with the natural world. The sun rises, the dew evaporates, flowers open. Breakfast the world over has one ingredient in common, and that is liquid. When, for instance, we boil water for tea or coffee, the boiling water evaporates, creating rising and separating energy. Whether breakfast consists of cold cereal with milk, porridge (the difference between a macrobiotic person’s breakfast grain and dinner grain is simply the amount of liquid used), miso soup, orange juice, coffee, tea, or simply a glass of water, liquid is the common ingredient. It is what we need to rise and separate. A breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, and dry toast makes for a difficult day. The food is too dry to create active, separating energy. If we want to get moving, we would have to spread some jam on our toast and have a glass of juice or a cup of coffee. It’s the liquid that enables us to be active in the morning. If breakfast is too dry, we’re not able to align with Nature’s rising and separating energy. On the other hand, we can still function perfectly well if we take just liquid for breakfast.
Breakfast time is also the time to separate from home. If you work at home and don’t leave the house before you settle down, if you go from your bed to your office or your studio, perhaps by way of the bathroom and kitchen, I think you’ll find that after a while you lose your creativity and your drive. There is simply no polarity. If you work at home, my suggestion is that you go out and do something, then return. Have a cup of tea, buy a newspaper, or just take a walk around the block. Unless you have some degree of separation after breakfast, you’ll find that you become tired and stale as the morning wears on.
Dinner is a different matter. Dinner should be more substantial—longer-cooked and not too watery—too much liquid can interfere with sleep. If at dinner we drink too much beer, wine, apple juice, soda, coffee, or tea—the common point being liquid—we can’t sleep. (Sugar changes to water in the body, which means we have to watch our intake of simple carbohydrates also.) Dinner should give us settling down and gathering energy since it coincides with the setting of the sun. Dinner is the most suitable meal at which to have a protein.
Imagine your day if you swapped breakfast and dinner. You could no longer align with Nature’s energy. Mealtimes are not arbitrary, as I said earlier. The meal is our way of aligning with Nature’s energy no matter where we are—even if we live in the middle of Manhattan in a high-rise made of materials that carry an incredible electromagnetic charge, a place where we couldn’t be more isolated from Nature. If we have regular meals that consist of appropriate ingredients for the time of day, we will be able to align with Nature’s energy. By contrast, if we live in the most pristine setting and eat chaotically, we may be surrounded by Nature but we are not aligning with it. Meals create our connection to Nature. I think of the meal as an anchor that creates stability in our lives, no different from the anchor that keeps a ship from drifting into dangerous waters.
Lunch. Around lunchtime, the sun climbs to its highest point in the sky and appears to hang there motionless for a while before it begins its descent. There are two sorts of energy to choose from at lunchtime: one is active energy, the other is more stagnant. If you want to be active and productive in the afternoon, you would be wise to eat while the sun is still rising. If you wait to eat until it’s hanging out at its high point, your energy for the afternoon will be more stagnant.
If we want to be active in the afternoon, at what time should we begin lunch? To answer this question, let’s go back to the example I gave earlier. Think about the after-lunch siesta for which Spain is famous. When is lunch eaten in Spain? Usually, from two to four p.m. At twelve, should they even be open, the restaurants are empty. Portugal and Spain are next door to one another, but Portugal has no siesta. In Portugal, lunch is eaten either from twelve to one p.m., or from one to two p.m. During the tourist season, you can distinguish the Spanish from the Portuguese simply by the times they choose to eat. The Portuguese are leaving the restaurants as the Spaniards are entering. The different dining habits of these two cultures are emblematic of their different lifestyles. Nevertheless, in spite of the late hours at which they dine, Spaniards still rise with the sun and therefore enjoy long and productive mornings.
So, if you want to be active in the afternoon, finish lunch by two p.m. at the latest—one p.m. would be even better. The later you start lunch, the less you can accomplish afterward. It’s as simple as that. Remember that when you eat, you are aligning with the sun’s energy. Try this test. Eat similar lunch food every day for four weeks, but for the first two weeks start lunch at twelve p.m. For the following two weeks, start it at two p.m. You will certainly notice a difference. It’s common knowledge that the best way to ensure being useless in the afternoon is to eat a late, rich lunch.
Lunch should be simple yet complete and satisfying. Think of foods that allow you to remain physically and mentally active. The test is whether or not you can work, think, and be productive after eating them. Here are a few possibilities using grains or grain products and quickly cooked vegetables: vegetable sushi rolls (brown rice and vegetables wrapped in toasted nori seaweed), rice balls, fried rice, fried noodles or noodles in broth, and quick-steamed vegetables or vegetable sautés. What qualifies as a simple and complete meal in our part of the world? The sandwich does. Sandwiches are simple and quick and can be complete and healthful, depending on what’s in them. Tofu, hummus, or any vegetable-type spread served on steamed and un-yeasted sourdough bread is an example of a nourishing sandwich. You can complement the sandwich with a bowl of vegetable soup and a vegetable side dish, a salad, for instance. Not so long ago, a lunch consisting of a bowl of soup, a sandwich, and a pickle was a fairly typical meal.
MEALTIMES
Should the main meal of the day be served at midday, or at sunset? Well, there’s a good argument for both. Agrarian societies took their main meal at noon and ate lightly in the evening. The advent of the Industrial Age changed that, because a simple meal fit in better with the workday. Both will produce good health; choose what suits your lifestyle.
Try not to skip any meals. How much you eat is up to you; what is significant is the regularity. If you cannot make every meal regular, the most important one is your main meal of the day. Having a regular dinner, the gathering, unifying meal provides the most benefit. When I say a meal should be served at the same time every day, I mean it. A fifteen-minute variation in the schedule is acceptable. Thirty minutes is pushing it. Remember that mealtimes regulate all your body’s cycles, so the timing is important for your health.
Your blood-sugar level is one function that follows the sun’s movement, as do your activity and energy levels. Digestion, bowel movements, all of your physical and mental cycles—they, too, follow the sun’s movement. So if you want regular digestion, regular bowel movements, regular menstruation, regular blood-sugar levels, and more balanced emotions, sit down to regular meals.
When I lived in Portugal, I spent a lot of time in the company of old friends who had been living there for a number of years. We shared many meals together. In some ways, they were more careful about what they ate than I was. Yet that family—both parents and children—did not enjoy good health. I believe there was a single reason. Even though they ate good-quality food, they never sat down to regular meals. They ate when they were hungry, and often they ate standing up.
Nothing has a stronger effect on regulating the body’s cycles than regular meals. And nothing has a more disruptive effect than skipping meals, eating chaotically, or eating erratically. The starting times for our three regular meals are as follows: Breakfast, five a.m. to eight-thirty or even nine a.m. Lunch, eleven a.m. to one p.m. Dinner, five p.m. to seven or even seven-thirty p.m. The time at which we eat determines how well or poorly we digest our food. The above are the times at which we have the most active digestion, the times at which we can digest our food most thoroughly. The principle behind this applies to sleep as well. Let’s say you need six hours sleep a night. Which schedule will give you more energy: sleeping from eleven p.m. to five a.m., or sleeping from three to nine a.m.? Clearly you are much better off sleeping from eleven p.m. to five a.m., rising when the sun rises to take full advantage of the sun’s energy.
Key Points:
• Regular meals regulate all your body’s cycles, physical, emotional, and mental.
• You will have better energy and digestion, more regular moods, and clearer thinking.
• The time you start your meal regulates your metabolism. Start your meals earlier to be more active and productive. Breakfast: five to eight-thirty a.m. (nine a.m. at the latest). Lunch: eleven a.m. to one p.m. Dinner: five to seven p.m. (seven-thirty p.m. at the latest).
• Your health will improve more quickly and be more stable.
• Eat your meals at the same time every day.
• Lunch is the most important meal to keep consistent and on time.
Food nourishes us and is necessary to sustain life, but it is also much more than that. A meal is actually about taking the time to receive life. It is the counterbalance to work, exercise, and creative expression. When we take our meals, we realign with Nature and with each other. Most importantly, meals are a time for receiving rather than giving. We exchange ideas and share socially. This is how we return to balance.
How we look at and relate to food itself has changed dramatically over the last 12,000 years of recorded history. The changes have come largely due to the development of an agrarian civilization that eventually gave way to one dominated by science, technology, and industry. It has only been in recent centuries in the West, and now globally, that human beings have begun to feel entirely separate from each other and from Nature.
The word Macrobiotics was first used by German physician Christoph von Hufeland (1762–1836) in his book title translated in English as: Macrobiotics or the Art of Prolonging Human Life. Macrobiotics, as we know it today, developed during the 20th century in an effort to integrate the spirituality that developed in the East with the modern science and technology that was developing in the West. George Ohsawa, the founder of modern-day macrobiotics, synthesized these ideas from traditional understanding and chose the word macrobiotics to mean “life according to the largest view.” Michio and Aveline Kushi, along with others of George Ohsawa’s students, further developed and refined these ideas and then applied them to improving the health and way of life in modern society. Michio Kushi defined macrobiotics as “the universal way of health and longevity.”
Macrobiotics is neither a traditional way of eating, nor is it a Japanese diet. It is traditionally based; the modern macrobiotic diet and lifestyle practices developed out of and evolved from the diet and lifestyle practices of the peoples and cultures of the world’s long-standing civilizations. The macrobiotic diet incorporates the world’s most unique foods from these civilizations (such as rice and miso from Asia, and sourdough bread from Europe, sesame tahini from the Middle East, peanut butter from the West, etc.) and uses them often or daily. Macrobiotic principles are expressed in the traditional cuisines of Asia, India, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. My understanding and research has shown me that all the world’s long-standing civilizations were grain-, bean-, and vegetable-based, all of them had a very strong sense of place, culture, identity, and connection to family and Nature, and therefore were all, in fact, macrobiotic.
As the 21st century unfolds, we continue to increase our involvement in food production and systems. The lifestyle practices of macrobiotics are useful and spiritually fulfilling. They help us learn how to realign with Nature and with those parts of ourselves we feel we may have lost in the past century.
THE BRIEF HISTORY
~12,000 years ago—retreat of the last Ice Age in northern Europe.
Previously, food was scarce and modern agriculture was yet to be rediscovered. Around this time, two noteworthy developments occurred: significant developments in agriculture and strides in boat building occurred over the next few thousand years, which paved the way and made possible our modern society. People could now stay in one place and more easily interact with neighboring people.
~10,000 years ago—evidence of agricultural villages.
The cultivation of cereal grains and the advent of modern grains such as barley, millet, wheat, and rice coincided with the domestication of animals as well as the development of pottery and weaving. The agricultural revolution led to the development of villages. All the world’s long-standing civilizations cultivated grains as the principal food upon which every meal was based. Over time, people have become synonymous with and inseparable from their grains: rice in the Far East, bulgur, couscous, pita in the Middle East; chapati in India; bread in Europe; oats in Britain; corn in the Americas. For example, you cannot separate rice from Asia, bread from Europe, or corn from the Americas.
There is a format to a meal. Whereas the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food pyramid makes recommendations based on a total daily intake of certain foods, it is much more helpful to plan eating around individual meals. A basic macrobiotic meal includes a grain, and at least one separate vegetable dish. A bowl of soup may be taken at one meal each day. Beans are also included daily. Meals made primarily of grains, beans, vegetables, soup, and pickled and fermented foods remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.
Chiefly supplemental to grains, beans, vegetables, and soups were animal and dairy foods. Historically, in agricultural societies, these foods were eaten in surprisingly small quantities. Meat and dairy were supplemental, not principal foods. Meat was eaten primarily at holidays and celebrations, mainly in the form of roasts and stews. In Europe, before the Industrial Revolution the average meat consumption was 5 to 10 kg (11 to 22 pounds) per person per year. That means for most people only a couple ounces of meat were consumed on a weekly basis. In China, India, and Japan the average was 2kg (4.4 pounds) per person per year. In addition, Japan had no history of dairy consumption, probably due to their consumption of soy products and sea vegetables. In more extreme climates and mountainous regions, dairy products such as cheese and yogurt were often used in ways similar to the use of miso and shoyu (fermented soybean products) in Asia.
~2,000–3,000 years ago—Ancient Greece and Rome began introducing the foods, cuisines, sweets, and spices from their trades with and conquests of tropical and subtropical areas.
~500–600 years ago—age of exploration, trade, and expansion rapidly increased the availability and popularity of exotic foreign foods and vegetables, sugar and spices, plants, and cooking styles.
During the beginning of the age of Western exploration and expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries, foods that were once locally grown and indigenous to other parts of the world became more widely distributed. Tropical fruits and vegetables became more widely cultivated with their rise in popularity for customary table fare. For instance, the Spanish brought the potato (indigenous to Chile and the Andes) to Europe. Once in Europe, the potato gained wide acceptance over the next two hundred years. This starchy nightshade (related to tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants) began to replace the cereal grains in other cultures. Together with the tomato, these two foods “conquered” Europe more thoroughly than any other. With the age of exploration and Western expansion, many diets lost the important indigenous connection to food, which confused alignment with and created separation from Nature’s cycles.
~300–200 years ago—The Industrial Revolution.
Britain, Europe, and the United States began adapting from an agrarian to an industrial society.
~90–100 years ago—World War I.
Advances made in nutritional studies and food science for the war effort.
~80–70 years ago—World War II.
Food science proliferated. The USDA Basic 7 Food Groups recommended that animal and dairy foods comprise about one quarter of the American diet to keep us strong and healthy. Chemicals were introduced into agriculture and the food supply. Modern food preservation also proliferated.
The Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries had the greatest effect on changing the eating patterns that led to the modern diet. The industrialization of Britain, Europe, and the United States ushered in technological advances that enhanced the general quality of life as well as agricultural productivity. Industrialization created a demand for people to migrate to cities as well as implementing the widespread construction of factories. Transportation and communication were more mobile, but migration from rural to urban life affected people’s eating habits—including dietary proportions.
Daily life became further removed from the natural cycles of the sun, moon, and seasons, and instead began to conform to a business week and a weekend. Nutrition became more imbalanced. With the new pressures of modern, industrialized life, slowly, physical and mental degenerative diseases began to increase.
Refined foods, especially refined grains, became more available on a wider scale (flour, for example, now could be sifted, easily packaged and ready-to-use, whereas, previously, time was needed to prepare the flour at home by hand). Refined foods, however, cause a nutritional imbalance, and many refined foods also cause blood to become more acidic. Minerals create a buffer action to neutralize the acidity. Refined grains lack these minerals. The greatest stores of minerals in grains are in the bran, which is partially or completely removed in the refinement process. Nutrition itself is a fine balance, where one nutrient is needed to absorb and utilize another. Altering this natural balance easily creates an excess of certain nutrients and a deficiency of others.
The combination of the disruption of eating patterns and the addition of refined grains caused nutritional imbalances and deficiencies. Refined grains allowed for the increased use of animal and dairy foods. We crave to supplement the nutrition lost in the refinement process. Increased animal and dairy foods in turn increase our cravings for sweets. These changes largely contributed to the vicious cycle that is the trademark of the modern diet—a diet high in refined foods, animal and dairy fats, and sweets. The strain of modern degenerative diseases began around the beginning of the 20th century and increased following World War II.
In the early 20th century, food began to be broken down into its components: calories, vitamins, proteins, minerals, etc. Judging food based on its components not only perpetuated imbalance, it helped create it. To break down food into its components is to take Nature out of food. Between WWI and WWII, recommendations to increase the consumption of animal and dairy protein only added to the confusion.
WWII paved the way for more devastating changes to our food supply as well to our nutritional guidelines. Modern, commercial food preservation is a by-product of WWII when methods were developed to ensure that foods would last for an indefinite period of time for soldiers overseas. This form of preservation prevents oxidation, enzymes, or bacteria from changing the food in any way. Chemical preservatives take life out of the food, making “dead foods” that cannot sustain health.
The uniqueness of food is that it is always different. The same dish cannot be made twice. Living foods change. Traditional methods of preservation such as drying, smoking, pickling, fermenting, and cold storing maintain and improve the nutrition available in the food, while simultaneously enhancing the natural quality. For example, sun drying increases vitamin D in mushrooms the same way it does in our own skin. Natural pickling and fermentation produces digestive-aiding enzymes, unique and previously nonexistent nutrients, and vitamin B-12. Apples in cold storage increase in both taste and nutrition. Un-yeasted sourdough bread is another example of a traditional preparation that enhances nutrition and satisfaction. Eating naturally preserved foods also enhances our own ability to synthesize nutrients we need. These foods are still living and slowly undergo subtle changes.
Frozen fruits and vegetables also increased during the period after the war. Analytically, these foods may be similar to fresh produce, but our bodies cannot be fooled. Nutrition is more than what can be measured in a laboratory.
Last, but not least, chemicals found their way into agricultural production. The chemical industry developed to create munitions for the war effort. Prior to WWII, natural foods were still commercially available. Whole-grain breads, untreated, local vegetables, natural pickles, and animals raised without hormones and antibiotics were still largely available. However, following the war, the chemical products were immediately applied to agriculture. Petroleum-based fertilizers began their widespread use after WWII. Slowly, the soil changed from living matter, teeming with and supportive of life, to inert matter.
“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
The excessive use of these fertilizers has destroyed living matter across countless acres of soil and has transformed this soil into inert matter made up of petroleum and its by-products. This destruction causes further soil erosion and ultimately these chemicals seep into our water supplies. The soil on commercial farms is more closely related to plastic, chemically speaking, than soil. This type of soil can only produce lifeless foods. The loss of minerals, unique microorganisms, and other life produces weak crops that need the aid of weed and pest killers in order to live long enough to harvest. These additional chemicals further weaken the crops, and our immune systems along with them.
Note that crop losses have increased each passing year since the late 1940s. This loss is proportional to the increased use of chemicals in agriculture. The soil is not very different from our collective immune systems. Our immunity has further decreased with the excessive use of antibiotics.
We have truly entered the era of modern degenerative illness. We are now expected to die of a degenerative illness, especially heart disease, cancer, or diabetes if an accident does not claim us first. Modern giant food companies have made a science out of food so that it is now possible to create it in a laboratory. It was in the era of WWII that our perception of food as something whole and unique was altered, broken up and transformed into a series of nutrients that could be measured and given out. As a result, food in the modern age is 100 percent consistent, but that also leads to the conclusion that it is not food at all.
~1953 TV became more popular and Swanson introduced TV Dinners.
~1955 First McDonald’s opened.
~1956 The USDA modified nutritional recommendations to the Basic Four.
The Basic Four recommended animal and dairy foods to comprise as much as 50 percent of our diet, which changed the way the entire world eats.
The diet and food quality in the West further deteriorated after fast foods appeared in the 1950s. Complete meals could simply be heated at home in the oven for a few minutes. The original fast-food restaurants began their spread throughout the United States and Britain. By the 1970s, fast foods had taken over completely. This coincided with the break from the traditional values of the society. Seemingly hundreds and thousands of years of tradition disintegrated overnight.
Most people born since the end of WWII no longer remember what fruits and vegetables are; they have been largely forgotten. Grains were grouped together with potatoes and reduced to starches. The trademark of the modern diet became meat and potatoes. The mythology that complete chains of amino acids could only be found in animal and dairy foods persisted until the 1970s. Although Frances Moore Lappé in her book Diet for a Small Planet dispelled this mythology, she still allowed the idea that protein-based nutrition was important.
All food has protein. We do not need to emphasize protein in our diet. The combination of grain, beans, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and fruits gives us the ideal amount of protein to promote lasting health. But the most important thing is that the body runs on glucose, which comes from the complex carbohydrates in our diet. The most important complex carbohydrates are unrefined grains, beans, and land and sea vegetables. What you eat today becomes your blood plasma tomorrow. Our blood plasma renews itself every ten days. We don’t need to think of our food combining for complete proteins as long as we eat a variety of these complex carbohydrates within ten days.
“If man’s Soul is indeed a kind of Stomach, what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together?”
—Thomas Carlyle
Sadly, the family meal began to disappear with the new ease of getting quicker and seemingly more efficient meals. It fit in perfectly with the modern technological lifestyle. The family meal is the “glue” of a society. It provides a sense of belonging and stability in life. The dinner meal is very important because it gives everyone a chance to reunite and share the experience of food. Now that the family meal has dissolved, order has begun to change. Recent research has shown that one meal a day that includes talking with each other increases a child’s chance of going to college as well as their ability to avoid drugs and alcohol. Cooking with electricity saved time, and getting a meal on the table became even more convenient when the microwave oven was introduced. Both have lessened our sensitivity to food and to cooking.
This is the completion of a cycle. Food that was once natural and shared for proper physical, emotional, and spiritual nourishment and social enjoyment has deteriorated to an almost careless mechanical process or afterthought.
The modern meal as we know it does not fit into a busy schedule. The demands of today’s business world are so intense and so overwhelming that we cannot take the time to stop work and eat properly. We have lost touch with Nature and our ability to respond to the changing seasons. We are losing touch with our true human nature, and our feelings are confused. We can no longer enjoy and be guided by the natural rhythms of life.
~2008 The recession and banking collapse.
People are becoming more self-reliant, which includes taking responsibility for our own health.
~2009 to the present day—the continuing development of local food communities.
The 21st century presents us with many choices and opportunities to either continue along a path toward illness or move in the direction of health, both for ourselves and the planet. We are in a unique era when history and science have the opportunity to support each other to create a new medicine for humanity. We can start to move toward health when we reestablish connections to each other, to our communities, to Nature, and to the planet. Now more than ever, science confirms and validates parts of the human experience that have passed the test of time. A healthy future depends on both personal and planetary health.
The recession in 2008 was different from others. For all of my time involved with health, a recession characteristically causes people to spend more time and money on their health. Since 2008, people have been diverted from investing in their personal health. Due to environmental and societal pressures, getting through the day seems to be the main priority of many people. At the same time, there is a counterbalance to this.
“Though an old man I am but a young gardener.”
—Thomas Jefferson
We are experiencing a broader collective desire for, and a return to, a local slow-foods culture. Vegetables are in vogue. Farmers’ markets and CSAs are gaining momentum and spreading throughout the country. “Go Green” is a marketing and branding mantra. Artisanal and fermented foods are now becoming a lucrative entrepreneurial niche in some communities. Preserving biodiversity through collecting seeds on small farms and exchanging them with others is now once again an operating prerogative of the true organic agriculture in the country.
In some ways, we seem to have returned to some of the natural philosophies held by the founding fathers. Ben Franklin and our early presidents placed great value in preserving land, seed, and agricultural systems. They were aware of the importance of our connection with Nature and the land. They shared a vision of building a nation and wealth based on an agrarian society, that personal and environmental health were interrelated.
Four understandings are becoming more widely accepted than they have been for decades. The first is a direct relationship between diet and health. It is becoming more and more evident that what we eat is important and that diet can prevent and even reverse serious illness including diabetes, arthritis, cardiovascular disease and many cancers. This means our health is in our own hands. There is no consensus yet on the best way of eating but that will come in time. History and science are confirming that a grain-, bean-, and vegetable-based diet are ideal for personal and planetary health.
The second is that there is a direct relationship between our food choices and the environment, including climate change. These choices determine whether we will preserve or further squander soil, land, water, and air. Modern industrial animal agriculture (CAFO or concentrated animal feeding operations) uses the most water and pollutes the most, followed by chemical and GMO agriculture.
The third is concern for animal welfare. Pets and animals are a very important part of many people’s lives today. It is my experience that most people take better care of their pets than they take care of themselves. Many choose to avoid the use of animal testing for pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. There are more vegans today that take it as a moral principle to abstain from animal products than ever before.
And last, the earth is living and evolving. Therefore, it deserves the same care and respect as humans and animals. It does not deserve to be depleted, poisoned/polluted or ravaged through excessive industry, clear cutting, or drilling and mining.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that we are inseparable from each other, animals, and the planet. Now is the time to introduce sustainable and evolving practices that can strengthen and nourish personal and planetary health on all levels. At this point, it comes down to making a choice about how you will live your life. Your daily choices, actions, and attitudes will determine what we leave for our children and future generations. When enough of us embrace these ideals large-scale change will happen.
I see the practice of macrobiotics as a creative hub for the 21st century. A diet and lifestyle that helps to integrate our spiritual perceptions about the world around us, as well as the practical integration of a sustainable agriculture that promotes healthy people and a healthy planet. We all have a vital role in creating personal and planetary health through our daily choices. Step 3 demonstrates some practical applications to make this possible.