I am honored to be invited to write a foreword to Denny and Susan Waxman’s book on macrobiotics for health, longevity, and lifestyle. Denny has followed and taught this macrobiotic lifestyle since the 1970s and now has produced this second edition of his groundbreaking book.
The macrobiotic lifestyle was brought to this country from Japan by Michio and Aveline Kushi after World War II. The Kushi’s, who were students of George Ohsawa, followed a dietary lifestyle with origins in the Zen tradition.
In 1999, Michio Kushi invited me to present a lecture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., when his contribution and many of his papers were enshrined in a collection honoring his work. Kushi, with his wife Aveline, had been for many years vigorously promoting this dietary lifestyle in lectures throughout the world. I was awed and inspired by Kushi’s motivation to embrace macrobiotics after his profound experience living at ground zero in the aftermath of the detonation of the Nagasaki atomic bomb. This intense experience, Kushi said, made him determined to dedicate his life to the promotion of food as a means to create a more peaceful world, and a life of health, peace, and longevity for all members of the human race. Denny Waxman, as a student and disciple of Kushi, embraced this same commitment to counsel and teach macrobiotics as a lifestyle and to heal ailments of the human body.
My personal interest in diet and health began in the 1950s at Cornell University, and was derived from my own experimental research significantly funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My findings led me to develop, in the 1980s, a similar dietary lifestyle approach based upon whole plant food—like macrobiotics, similarly focused on the broad health improvement value of a diet composed of vegetables, whole grains, and fruits. I was then invited to present to the Kushi Institute in Becket, Massachusetts, and reciprocated by inviting Michio Kushi to present to my class on plant-based nutrition at Cornell University. Since then, I lectured to the Kushi program in Amsterdam, Holland, and for the last seven years to the Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise in the Caribbean. As chair of a national committee on public nutrition information established by my professional research society, the American Institute of Nutrition, I learned of the efficacy of the macrobiotic diet from an unpublished collection of data assembled by Kushi health practitioners showing a rather remarkable benefit of this diet on cancer patients. Unfortunately, this information was never published, thus was mostly ignored by the traditional cancer research community. Ironic, in light of the clear historical record of ancient and developed cultures embracing natural foods as medicine and the healing potentialities of organic whole plant-based foods.
Now, thankfully, Denny Waxman, who is also the founder of the Strengthening Health Institute (SHI), is carrying on this incredible nutritional and lifestyle legacy by publishing this book with his wife Susan, who serves as the codirector of SHI. After many years of promoting, teaching, and documenting the health benefits that may be achieved, Denny and Susan have updated and incorporated new material in this magnificent book and the best material from their previous best seller, The Complete Macrobiotic Diet. In my opinion, Denny and Susan now carry the torches of Ohsawa and Kushi into the new millennium as the leaders of the macrobiotic movement.
I highly recommend this book both for its practical usefulness, historical significance, and reference by future generations, and for its continuing contribution to the science, lifestyle, and benefits of the macrobiotic movement.
The Waxmans’ new book deserves a high place on the book shelves of all who work in this amazing field of plant-based nutrition and those who choose to live or seek a healthy lifestyle and whose goal is to strengthen their health.
—T. Colin Campbell, PhD,
Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of
Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University,
coauthor of the best-selling books
The China Diet (2005) and Whole (2013)