macrobiotica

The China Study T. Colin Campbell & Thomas M. Campbell

THE PUBLIC’S HUNGER for nutrition information never ceases to amaze me, even after devoting my entire working life to conducting experimental research into nutrition and health. Diet books are perennial best-sellers. Almost every popular magazine features nutrition advice, newspapers regularly run articles and TV and radio programs constantly discuss diet and health.
 Given the barrage of information, are you confident that you know what you should be doing to improve your health?
Should you buy food that is labeled organic to avoid pesticide exposure? Are environmental chemicals a primary cause of cancer? Or is your health “predetermined” by the genes you inherited when you were born? Do carbohydrates really make you fat? Should you be more concerned about the total amount of fat you eat, or just saturated fats and trans-fats? What vitamins, if any, should you be taking? Do you buy foods that are fortified with extra fiber? Should you eat fish, and, if so, how often? Will eating soy foods prevent heart disease?
 My guess is that you’re not really sure of the answers to these questions. If this is the case, then you aren’t alone. Even though information and opinions are plentiful, very few people truly know what they should be doing to improve their health.
 This isn’t because the research hasn’t been done. It has. We know an enormous amount about the links between nutrition and health. But the real science has been buried beneath a clutter of irrelevant or even harmful information—junk science, fad diets and food industry propaganda.
 I want to change that. I want to give you a new framework for understanding nutrition and health, a framework that eliminates confusion, prevents and treats disease and allows you to live a more fulfilling life.

china_study

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Plato from Timaeus

Now diseases… so, when you try to wipe them out with drugs before they have run their due course, the mild diseases are liable to get severe, and the occasional ones frequent. That is why you need to cater to all such diseases by taking care of yourself to the extent that you are free and have the time to do that. What you should not do [d] is aggravate a stubborn irritation with drugs.
Plato from Timaeus

Essential Ohsawa George Ohsawa

Culinary art is life’s art. Our health and consequently our happiness, our liberty, and even our judging ability are under the influence of this art. This is why only the best disciples are selected as cooks in the great schools or Buddhist convents. If you are not a good cook, you simply have to learn the culinary art.
 Culinary preparation is, indeed, fundamental in enabling man to attain self-realization through Far Eastern medicine.

To eat is to create a new life for tomorrow through the sacrifice of the vegetal realm and its products. If mistakes are made, this is, literally, the “original sin.” This is symbolized in the myth of the Garden of Eden.

  • Eat whole grains and local, seasonal vegetables, using a bit of salt, oil, and traditional condiments.
  • Chew each mouthful of food fifty times or more.
  • Drink only what is necessary.
  • Work hard physically.

True health is that which you yourself have created out of illness. Only if you have produced your own health can you know how wonderful it actually is. For this reason, many healthy people squander away their health; through ignorance, they spoil it without knowing its true value. He who knows the real worth of health spreads his joyous knowledge by telling others what he knows. If you are healthy but do not try to give to others of the happiness it brings, you are unaware that happiness is priceless.

True health can be established only by conquest over bad factors that are menacing your life, without using any violence; rather, by a good cooperative and complementary agreement, a universal solidarity, or a most intimate brotherhood established with all the evildoing factors. The fundamental ideas of symptomatic medicine, which tries only to destroy noxious factors, are childish, primitive, unmanageable, exclusive…

Sickness and weakness are necessary in this world. It is through our efforts to change them into health that we learn gratitude.

It is disease that leads us toward health. If one errs in the use of therapeutics, for instance by following symptomatic medicine, this is the starting point for the principles of health. This is the Order of the Universe.
 Illness is the very helpful guide that leads us toward an understanding of the constitution of the universe.

As man nourishes with foods, he should carefully develop his spirit. All great or happy people have absorbed much more food of the spirit than physical foods. Books are of this invisible nourishment. As one can find foods of various qualities, from the best to the worst, likewise there exist all sorts of spiritual nourishment. […] Therefore, if you have the intention of reading a good book, you should buy what was published at least twenty years ago. Books at least two hundred years old that one appreciates are certainly good. The book whose value has been recognized for two thousand years is the true best seller.

If we are unhappy, we are violating the Order of the Universe.

Accept everything with greatest pleasure and thanks. Accept misfortune like happiness, disease like health, war like peace, foe like friend, death like life, poverty like prosperity— and in case you do not like it or you cannot stand it, refer to your universal compass, the Unifying Principle; there you will find the best direction. Everything that happens to you is what you are lacking. All that is antagonistic and unbearable is complementary. He who can embrace his antagonists is the happiest man.

Without a basic principle to follow, any sort of practice is no more than superstition. The principle (spirit) of macrobiotic living lies in recognizing, experiencing, and understanding nature. This is Tao—the return to and contemplation of God.

essentialohsawa

Any theory, be it scientific, religious, or philosophical, is quite useless if it is too difficult to understand or impractical for daily living.
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The Macrobiotic Path to Total Health Michio Kushi & Alex Jack

Rooted in the traditional teachings of East and West, the term macrobiotics derives from the Greek root words macro, meaning “long” or “great” and bios, meaning “life.” It was coined by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, nearly 2,500 years ago, whose approach to health and healing was based on his famous proverb “Let food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be food.”

Macrobiotic-quality foods are organically grown as much as possible, traditionally or naturally processed, and contain no sugar, dairy, white flour, chemicals, or other harmful ingredients.

The macrobiotic way of eating is very broad and comprehensive. It has been observed by millions of human beings for thousands of years, contributing to health, happiness, and peace for endless generations and our species’ overall biological and spiritual evolution. For the most part, it is based on whole cereal grains (the traditional staff of life), vegetables from land and sea, beans, and other fresh foods, with a minimum of animal products. With the advent of the modern era about 400 years ago, this way of eating steadily declined around the world, as meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy became the center of the diet; white flour and white rice displaced whole-wheat flour and brown rice; and canned and frozen foods, highly processed foods, and foods grown with or containing chemicals largely replaced fresh, local produce grown organically and consumed in season.

The goal of macrobiotics is freedom—the ability to create and realize our dream in life as part of our endless spiritual journal in the infinite universe.

The macrobiotic approach is based not only on meeting optimal nutritional needs but also on a deep understanding of the earth’s relation to the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies; the evolution of life on the planet; ancestral tradition and heritage; ever-changing environmental and climatic conditions; humidity, pressure, and other atmospheric influences; local availability, affordability, and other economic factors; natural storability and other practical considerations; and the effects of different foods and beverages on our mind, body, and spirit. The macrobiotic way of eating is not a set diet that applies rigidly to everyone, but a flexible dietary approach that differs according to climate, environment, condition of health, sex, age, activity level, and personal need. Macrobiotics is the collective wisdom and universal heritage of humanity.
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