Musings on macrobiotics
Jan. 7th, 2018 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

The thing is, there's actually a lot of wisdom and a lot of useful material in the macrobiotic tradition; it just got taken to unproductive extremes -- again, in several senses of the word. The notion that meat is always bad, that sugar is always bad, that this whole list of vegetables over here is bad, and so on and so forth, was neither necessary nor healthy, and let's not even talk about the pervasive tendency in a lot of macrobiotic scenes to push people toward the extreme forms of the diet, just rice and a few suitably yang vegetables and fermented soy products and tea. That's great if you're a Zen monk in a monastery, not so great if you live in the midst of a modern city and stay active in the world.
And then there were the overblown health claims, especially the insistence that the macrobiotic diet would cure cancer. In some cases, maybe;but Aveline Kushi, one of the most respected macrobiotic teachers in the world, who'd been eating macrobiotic meals for I forget how many decades, died in 2001 of -- you guessed it -- cancer. She wasn't the only leading macrobiotic person to go that way, either. (People who promote cancer-curing diets tend to die of cancer at a rate that seems to exceed chance. Adele Davis, I'm looking at you...)
And yet, again, there's a lot of wisdom and a lot of useful material in macrobiotics. You can treat quite a few ordinary ailments (colds, digestive upsets, etc.) with the preparations in the book I was reading, and prevent many others by adjusting what you eat to bring your body back into balance in various ways. Some of the other things that got caught up in the macrobiotic movement were invaluable -- Do-in, a system of self-massage related to acupressure, is high on my list here; it's a very effective self-healing modality. And a lot of the food tastes good. :-)
I read online just now that the Kushi Institute in Massachusetts shut down a few years ago owing umpty-thousand dollars in back property taxes. What was once a thriving movement seems to be on its last legs, the victim of its own excesses. (Too much Yang, not enough Yin, and I don't think a change of diet would have fixed that.) It's probably a good thing, since the extreme macrobiotics types were just as abrasive and self-righteousness as evangelical vegans nowadays, but I'll be sad to see a lot of good tossed out with the mistakes.
Or maybe it's just that I'm well into middle age, and watching the dreams of my youth fade out.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-08 07:30 am (UTC)I've found Macrobiotics rather interesting--in a negative way, particularly given its body count--since I started reading about Do-In on account of a certain Archdruid. It seems so incongruous to push to such unhealthy extremes given the emphasis in Do-In about paying attention to the feedback from one's own body.
I've noted a couple details that I think of as "lessons of Macrobiotics."
First, it's fascinating to see how someone can be astute and competent in many ways only to apparently stop thinking when a pet issue comes up. This is another way of wording what you're saying about wisdom mixed with bad advice, of course. I'm reminded of certain Discordian sayings that describe how, let's say, that-which-makes-the-flowers-grow is most dangerous when it comes from oneself.
Second, I've really only skimmed Macrobiotics books and picked up more details from Do-In books that talk about it, but I've always thought it was strange that Yin and Yang seem to be the only categories mentioned, when more traditional Chinese modalities (including Do-In itself) involve balance on a finer scale--four natures, five phases, eight trigrams, etc.--which has lead to me to ponder a lot of issues with how scale relates to practical applications of the idea of balance.
Third, there seems to be an issue here regarding what you've called confounding the planes. As far as I can tell (and please correct me if there's something going over my head), describing foods as Yin and Yang only really makes sense if you're describing their energetic properties. Those properties might be expressed on the physical plane in a doctrine of signatures sort of way, but the real "action" goes on elsewhere. Balancing the subtle properties of foods might be great for your subtle bodies, but doing so at the expense of a tremendously imbalanced physical body will result, naturally, is physical illness. All the dietary advice from Sagen Ishizuka to George Ohsawa and on in that lineage seems to confuse astral/etheric properties and chemical properties with the result of acting like the chemical properties don't really matter.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-08 05:41 pm (UTC)That said, you're quite correct that this doesn't substitute for making sure you have complete protein, adequate vitamin and mineral intake, enough calories to meet metabolic needs, and so on. That was part of the pervasive yang imbalance in classical macrobiotics. (Another part is the tendency to move toward neutral foods and away from strongly yin or yang foods -- movement toward the center is yang, after all. A balanced diet would have modest amounts of far-from-center foods (meat, yin vegetables, etc.) balanced by a larger amount of more neutral foods.)
Diet Discussions
Date: 2018-01-08 03:06 pm (UTC)I got annoyed at my fridge and cupboards a couple of weeks ago and swore a mickle oath that I would not buy anything new until the damn thing was empty.
Well pilgrims, the bread was the first thing to go and from there I went into cooking up all the various vegetables/meats/beans into various conformations.
Three weeks later, I hadn't eaten any wheat for a while and my body felt better. Pain went from a routine six to a routine three.
Now, I am with you on thinking that there is merit in watching your diet, especially after you get past fifty. You liver doesn't do the detox thing that well anymore, so you gotta keep a weather-eye on what your body is telling you.
Right now my body approves the use of root vegetables, cabbage, onions, pork and chicken, beans, and rice. My body expresses this approval by not making me hurt.
Cheese is iffy....I am going to be very sad if it turns out to be on my "pisses off the liver" list
Re: Diet Discussions
Date: 2018-01-08 05:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-09 05:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-09 05:28 am (UTC)I link this to the all-or-nothing, black-or-white categorizing our society seems to insist upon. And so many seem so hung up on it. I've found myself flummoxed by a female friend insisting I HAVE to eat breakfast or I HAVE to drink 8 glasses of water (of what size??) regardless of the hunger or thirst signals from my own body which quite adequately tells me when to eat or drink!
It is bad enough when people insist on these things for themselves, but when they readily attack others for their own choices... Le sigh.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-09 06:16 pm (UTC)Paying attention to your own body -- yes, exactly. It bears thinking about why that's so verboten in today's society...
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-09 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-09 07:40 pm (UTC)These days I mostly use biochemic cell salts (an offshoot of homeopathy) and ritual magic (which mostly works via a greatly amplified placebo effect), but there are still some things I took from my macrobiotic days that I still use.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-09 09:56 pm (UTC)After reading that chapter yesterday I ran down to the store and picked up some pork chops to go with the veggies and it was like FINALLY a real meal.
Don't like the idea of poisoned mass produced suffering animals and I'll get back into hunting as soon as I'm able, but have to do what is necessary to stay functional in the meantime.
Is there a list of the temperature/moisture aspects of food that's a little more expansive? I'm interested to find out about tropical fare like coconut and taro (especially the purple varieties) as well as shellfish and nightshades like eggplant and tomato.
Thanks as always for your expansive body of work and uncanny sense of timing.