“We are one and inseparable from Nature and the environment.”
—a rough translation of Shindo Fuji,
which George Ohsawa used to formulate the
macrobiotic philosophy and lifestyle
GIVING THANKS FOR OUR FOOD
“The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it?”
—Benjamin Franklin
The orderly cycles of Nature guide this book and my macrobiotic practice. Through aligning with these orderly cycles, we reconnect with all aspects of Nature. For life on this planet, we observe this orderliness through days, seasons, years, and growth cycles. Food is our connection to Nature. When eating plants directly from Nature, we create a direct connection, which fosters a care and love of self and planet. When we eat plants that have already been processed by animals, we create an indirect connection. All food has three types of nourishment: physical, energetic, and spiritual.
Physical nourishment is the basic constituent of food, the raw material that we digest and process. Physical nourishment gives us energy and becomes our blood, tissues, and organs. The principal categories of physical nourishment are minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and enzymes.
Energetic nourishment is the nourishment we derive from the food as a result of its life cycle—from growth to our plates. For plants, energetic nourishment begins with the quality of both the seed and the soil within which they grow. The process continues and includes the harvest, how the plants grow, how we process, store, distribute, and finally prepare them for consumption. Energetic nourishment is the food quality.
Modern agriculture has lost touch with the common sense of our ancestral agriculture. We have a worldwide history of small, local farms producing nourishing food on a community basis. There is a clear connection between healthy soil, healthy plants, and healthy people. How can we expect to have healthy people without healthy food?
Spiritual nourishment is the nourishment derived from the health and intention of the person or people preparing the food. Our care and love transforms the physical and energetic properties of the food into the most nourishing food. This type of food gives us the most satisfaction and inspires in us a profound sense of gratitude. Everyone knows how wonderful holiday meals are and the way they can stand out in our memory.
Food is our life. Without food, there is no life. When we start with food that is naturally grown and processed and prepared with care and love, we have something that is unfortunately rare in today’s society. Food prepared with care and love, even without using the highest quality ingredients, is still satisfying and nourishing. Most people will agree that the spiritual aspect of nourishment is the most satisfying, followed by the energetic. The energetic aspect is enhanced when the food grows naturally and originates close to where we live. Food from your garden always tastes the best.
“When eating fruit, remember who planted the tree; when drinking water, remember who dug the well.”
—Vietnamese Proverb
Giving thanks before and after a meal literally wakes up the goodness in the food. We become aware by appreciating and acknowledging the entire process of our food. We give thanks for the whole network that connects us to that food, which in turn allows us to be nourished and satisfied at a much deeper level. Our gratitude for food opens us to health, to life, and all of its possibilities.
HEALTH CRAVES HEALTH
“Preserve and treat your food as you would your body, remembering that in time food will be your body.”
—B. W. Richardson
Everything is interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent. After we make the decision to be healthy, we need to consider all aspects of our life, including our daily habits, activities, environment, and relationships.
Health is our natural state and inheritance as humans and creatures of this planet. Health is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Your body is always trying to maintain and move toward health. It really comes down to the basics of learning about and experiencing good food, healthy eating habits, natural activity, and having or cultivating a good attitude. As we continue with these practices and habits, we build stronger and stronger confidence in our innate ability to regain and maintain our health.
We know this because if we develop a serious health problem, it takes far less time to return to health than it did to become sick in the first place. It often takes many years to spoil our health, yet most people could turn their health around in six months to a year. If we allow it, our body is always trying to maintain or return to health. Most people think that being healthy seems to require a lot of discipline. The focus is on taking away rather than adding.
My experience is the opposite. Adding is more important than taking away. Giving things up does not lead to lasting health. When I started to add healthful foods to my diet, I realized that I had started to crave more foods that supported my health all of the time. It became apparent that it wasn’t only food. My desires started to extend to other areas of life. At the same time, I started to lose interest in things and even people that weren’t supportive of my health and life. I believe this pattern is common for everyone. The opposite is also true. Once we start to eat unhealthful foods, we surround ourselves with more destructive food, habits, and tendencies. This is why fast foods and junk foods have been able to take over so strongly.
Health is simple. I find it interesting that many people think that health is not attainable for two main reasons.
One, people think that becoming healthy requires too much effort.
The second main reason is they think that genetic and/or environmental factors undermine our daily efforts. It is easy to assume that sickness is inevitable no matter what we do. It has recently been discovered that there are factors that have more influence than genetics alone. Epigenetics offers scientific support that daily choices are responsible for the activation and expression of genes that regulate the disease process, including cancer genes. Diet and lifestyle factors have the ability to turn gene markers on or off. In my experience, daily things, not special things, create health. Good food, natural activity, and a healthy attitude are the most important factors to create lasting health.
Lasting health is our ability to grow and nourish our health on all levels throughout our life. There is no limit to our vitality, memory, sense of joy, or appreciation of life. The keynote of spiritual health is gratitude and appreciation, which leads to mental and emotional health, which in turn produces physical health. It does not work in the opposite direction. At base, health is a spiritual condition, secondly mental and emotional, and lastly physical. Health is a spiritual condition, that is a sort of reawakening.
Gratitude and appreciation open us to life and all of its possibilities. Even if we are not raised with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude, we still have the ability to achieve this spiritual quality. Life’s challenges offer us the opportunity to develop this appreciation. Often enough, people with a deep sense of appreciation have the greatest ability to overcome life’s challenges.
As the world changes, we must learn to adapt to faster paces, greater demands, and what seems like less time to smell the roses. It becomes important to learn about what leads to lasting health and how to incorporate healthy diet and lifestyle habits at your own pace.
As busy as we may be, we all have to eat. Within our individual framework, we can learn to make the healthiest choices possible, given our options, circumstances, and goals. There is an endless ability to be creative and flexible when moving in the direction of health.
Health craves health. We start with good eating habits. Then we add healthful foods and cooking styles into our way of eating. We further the process with natural activities and try to create a healthy home environment. These things work together to move us in the direction of health. This process becomes self-sustaining: that is, it does not require discipline.
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”
—Mahatma Gandhi
Personal health and planetary health are the same. Healthy people want to live in a healthy home environment, and the desire extends to a healthy natural environment. As we take better care of our own health, all of our choices begin to support our community and environment. As we become more calm, more peaceful, and more positive, we begin to spread these things around us. When we eat naturally grown and processed foods, we don’t spoil the environment. When we eat grains and beans directly, as opposed to feeding them to animals, we make enough food available for everyone. We are also, in turn, naturally much kinder to animals. We also no longer need to clear-cut forests to raise animals. The desire to seek health is an open-ended cycle.
Health is contagious. Healthy people naturally want community-supported agriculture organizations (CSAs), farmers’ markets, and other practices that promote a healthier environment; it is not a matter of discipline, but desire. The proliferation of CSAs, farmers’ markets, seed exchanges, and artisanal food products reflects the growing number of people who are experiencing the life-changing effects of craving health.
One Thing Leads to Another—Health Is an Open-Ended Process
Going for a walk stimulates your appetite for healthy foods. Having plants in your home cleans the air. Choosing products that don’t outgas electrical or air pollution can lead to finding products that you enjoy having. Healthy foods stimulate your desire for healthy activity.
LASTING HEALTH, A SPIRITUAL QUALITY
Illness surrounds us; heart disease, cancer, dementia, and diabetes have reached epidemic levels. From this, it is natural to assume that we are likely to die from at least one degenerative illness. However, there are cultures and communities around the world whose older members are just as vital and bright as those much younger. Take Okinawa, where they have the highest life expectancy. Their diet and lifestyle practices produce more centenarians than anywhere else in the world. Many people there have been able to delay, or even avoid, the “diseases of aging.”
“The belly rules the mind.”
—Spanish Proverb
George Ohsawa, the founding father of modern-day macrobiotics, created a unique definition of health. Michio Kushi further refined, adapted, and developed his definition. They divided health into three main areas: physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual health. Conditions of physical health are a strong physical and mental vitality, a good appetite for healthy food, and deep and refreshing sleep. You can achieve five points for each condition. Ideal physical health amounts to fifteen points. Mental/emotional conditions of health include good memory, being calm and patient, and being joyous and alert. Mental/emotional conditions of health receive ten points and amount to thirty in total. The condition of spiritual health is the endless appreciation for all of life, and the spiritual total is fifty-five points. You need this condition to be a healthy person, as it accounts for more than half of all the points. This definition is unique because it shows that we have the ability to grow and create our health throughout our life. This point system allows us to check our health on a regular basis, but it is most important on a seasonal or yearly basis.
Macrobiotics is a lifestyle through which we can grow spiritually and also develop our mental, emotional, and physical health, which allows us to lead the most exciting and fulfilling life. Lasting health is our ability to grow and nourish our health on all levels throughout our life. There is no limit to our vitality, memory, sense of joy, or appreciation of life.
Gratitude and appreciation open us to life and all of its possibilities. Even if we are not raised with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude, we still have the ability to achieve this spiritual quality. Life’s challenges offer us the opportunity to develop this appreciation. It is my long observation that people with a deep appreciation have the greatest ability to overcome life’s challenges. Many of my clients have attributed their recovery to their sense of appreciation of life.
INDIGENOUS AND LOCAL FOODS
Indigenous Food: The Soil Principle
Indigenous foods are foods that are native to a growing region; they have evolved and adapted over long periods of time to particular, unique climates and ecosystems. Food grows in perfect balance with local conditions, in accordance with soil and water quality, temperature, humidity, patterns of sunlight, etc. To eat indigenous food is to eat foods that have adapted to the locality. Where a food was originally cultivated in relation to our own regions matters far more than whether or not the food is local.
When we eat food that is native or climatically similar to our own region, it is easier to digest, absorb its nutrition, and eliminate excess. Indigenous foods align us to our locality so we can connect more easily to what we eat and the natural conditions where we live. When we eat foods that are native to our climatic region, the food harmonizes our metabolism to that region. The pace of life is more active in the temperate climatic regions than in the tropics and subtropics.
When we eat food from the tropics and subtropics in a temperate zone, the food regulates our metabolism to the tropics and we disconnect from the natural pace of our own environment. From my experience, many foods from subtropical and tropical climates introduced to a temperate-climatic diet cause the blood to become more acidic than any other plant-based foods.
We lose minerals and other nutrients trying to neutralize the acidity. When we have acidic conditions, we become more susceptible to infectious, inflammatory, and degenerative illnesses. When our blood is more acidic, the hemoglobin loses its ability to bind with and transport oxygen throughout our body. Our ability to absorb nutrients also becomes compromised. Two types of foods that evolved in the tropics and subtropics are the thick-skinned tropical fruits and the nightshades.
I find it very interesting that five tropical foods have become so deeply ingrained in our diet, even though they all negatively affect our health: potatoes, tomatoes, sugar, bananas, and, more recently, coconuts. Out of these, cooked or sundried tomatoes that are ripe, are the least harmful and actually have beneficial qualities for people who have consumed a lot of animal foods in the past. They are all tropical and highly acidifying to our blood. We know that nightshades have a strongly acidifying effect. Those with arthritis are usually affected by eating these foods. The perception of these foods as healthful in a temperate region does not consider the role that local and indigenous foods play with our health.
From my observation, people with a healthy metabolism never have to think about their weight. Many of my clients who come for a variety of health problems naturally lose weight as they improve their health in other areas. When the body begins to function naturally again, it actively releases toxins and other forms of excess. Could it be that all these tropical foods are interfering with our ability to eliminate excess, as well as exacerbating the obesity epidemic?
An indigenous food can be considered indigenous along a line of latitude, not longitude. Which means we can choose foods east and west of where we live around the world. For example, cherry blossoms are enjoyed in both Washington, D.C., and Kyoto, Japan. For those in the temperate climatic regions, there is not as much flexibility in choosing foods north and south as the climate changes dramatically. It is best to choose foods within the temperate zones rather than the subtropics or tropics.
The problem, though, is not the banana or the coconut, it is the proportions of consumption of tropical fruits and nightshades in relation to the indigenous foods we eat. It is best to use these foods with care and discretion. If you are unsure about which foods are indigenous to temperate climatic zones, you can consult the food list in the back of this book.
Since food is our direct connection to the entire network of life, indigenous and local foods in combination are the foods that are most healthful for us, as they are best adapted to where we live.
Local Food: The Water Principle
The local food movement gains momentum day to day, week to week, farmers’ market to farmers’ market, season to season. Getting our food and exchanging with local growers increases our awareness of the life cycles of our food. It also gives us the opportunity to experience the changing seasons and connect with what grows in our area. We look forward to the first strawberry of mid-spring and for the first peach of the summer. We somehow understand that foods grown locally make more sense for the overall planet and ourselves, but apart from reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, local foods also help us to align with the rhythms of Nature.
Food becomes unique to a locality. The food grown in a specific area experiences the changes and patterns according to the conditions and quality of the weather, the water, the soil, and many other factors. Food local to our area has essentially had a similar experience to ours, except that food metabolizes the environment directly. We can feel this connection through our experience with spring fever. In plants, energy rises, sap begins to run, buds form, and we become excited to be out and experience the warmth and witness Nature coming back to life. When we eat local foods, we connect to the experience of the season and can receive better nourishment. Food absorbs minerals directly from the soil, and local foods allow us to absorb these minerals more efficiently.
Water is the most important thing to have locally, as it quickly loses its freshness. Since we use so much water for cooking and drinking, the quality of water is important. We recommend a water purification system such as Berkey (there may be other brands) over bottled water, reverse osmosis, or distilled water. Berkey removes contaminants, pathogens, fluoride, and arsenic. We have found this the most natural tasting water compared to natural spring water at the source.
Water from a spring does not taste the same, once we take it home, as it does while at the spring! Most leafy vegetables have a high water content; the higher the water content in a vegetable, the more important it becomes for the vegetable to be from a local source. Vegetables with high water content lose their nutritive value and freshness faster than vegetables that can be stored for a longer period of time. However, vegetables grown locally on good soil also store water better than others. If we get the vegetables locally, we maximize the nutritional benefit from the growth and harvest process as well as take in the available water in the plant.
The most important source of water is in food. We use water in food more efficiently than by just drinking alone. If we contrast this with the modern diet, we can see that almost all of the foods in the modern diet are dry foods, such as meat, poultry, cheese, eggs, and baked goods. These foods create an imbalance of thirst. People have perpetual thirst, but don’t seem satisfied, whereas eating food that has a high moisture content satisfies our need for liquids more deeply.
All cooked grains, beans, pastas, vegetables, and soups have high water content. The taste of these foods becomes sweeter and more thirst-quenching as we chew them. These healthful foods allow us to become more satisfied with drinks and beverages that we choose to enjoy. The water in food refreshes us, and we cherish foods that are considered refreshing (e.g., lettuce, cucumbers, and of course watermelon). Refreshing is a vital nutrient.
Locality is less important to consider for vegetables that can be stored. Storing vegetables (cabbages, onions, carrots, sweet potatoes, hard fruits, etc.) used to carry people through barren winters. Harder vegetables have more adaptability, that is, they can store in a variety of environments without rapidly decaying. Fruits that can be stored, such as apples and pears, become more nutritious and better tasting during cold storage as the flavors and nutrients settle down and concentrate.
Grains, beans, dried vegetables, and seaweeds store for much longer than other foods. Therefore, these foods can come from farther away, even anywhere in the country, or from the same hemisphere. Foods from opposite sides of the equator have an opposite magnetic charge and should be avoided. These foods interfere with our body’s functions as well as our connection to our locality. Finally, we cook our food using local, filtered water, which completes the cycle.
You can start to make a more local transition by using water content as the guide. Visit farmers’ markets first to get leafy vegetables and local, seasonal fruits, and follow this with more substantial vegetables. Enjoy your way through the seasons as they change.
“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and the romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
As we start to choose more indigenous and local foods, we start to make a deeper and more satisfying connection to where we live. This enhances our ability to make healthful choices for our own lives. We start to create a balance through indigenous and local foods that also helps us to become more deeply satisfied from the foods we do eat. This balance continues to perpetuate itself. The reality is that the most healthful food is the most enjoyable food.