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[personal profile] ecosophia
Macrobiotic Home RemediesI spent some of this evening reading an old book on macrobiotic home remedies by Michio Kushi -- one of the few relics I still have of my extended flirtation with the macrobiotic diet back when I was young and wet behind the ears and willing to try just about anything. It was, in several senses of the word, an educational experience; it taught me among other things that my body doesn't handle a vegan diet at all well -- I don't process vegetable protein adequately, and so I ended up with the classic vegan syndrome, pale and gaunt and catching every cold that came through, before I figured out that my body was desperately trying to tell me that I needed a cheeseburger or the close equivalent every so often to stay in good health. 

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)
yuccaglauca: Photo of a yucca moth on the petal of a yucca flower. (Default)
From: [personal profile] yuccaglauca
JMG,

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.

Diet Discussions

Date: 2018-01-08 03:06 pm (UTC)
degringolade: (Default)
From: [personal profile] degringolade
Look, I am about as far as one can get from the food nazis of all type. Sausage and cheese are my preferred foods. But I will be turning sixty-five this year.

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

(no subject)

Date: 2018-01-09 05:11 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] oakmouse
It's a pity that Adele Davis attributed her cancer to the "bad" foods she'd eaten in her youth. A cnance for valuable observation missed.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-01-09 05:28 am (UTC)
avalonautumn: sage and a hill (Default)
From: [personal profile] avalonautumn
I've always been massively frustrated by the crazy imbalanced approach the majority seems to have regarding how to eat! It seems to be either all-indulgence and gluttony or severe restrictions until even anorexia nervosa seems healthier!

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.
Edited Date: 2018-01-09 05:30 am (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2018-01-09 05:57 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I am a few years older than you, JMG, and also got caught up in the macrobiotic fervor in my early 30s. I living in NYC then, and my husband -to-be and I frequently went to Souen and East-West restaurants--very groovy macrobiotic places. That diet was a disaster for me; I could not subsist on a diet without animal protein and fat. When we went to those restaurants, there was always one fish dish on the menu, and I always ordered that--feeling guilty as I did so. Finally, when I went back home to the Midwest for Christmas one year, my mother had cooked her signature roast beef for the big dinner. I smelled that aroma and knew I HAD to eat it! I did--it was the most delicious thing I'd ever had--and never looked back. Oddly, it wasn't until quite recently that I realized that the macrobiotic diet was actually a vegan diet--that term wasn't really being used back then. However, I always thought that macrobiotics was a yin diet--all those vegetables and grains, but no meat (yang) and salt was discouraged. Those restaurants, by the way, were always staffed by willowy modern dancer types (I was a dancer too, and could tell). My husband and I used to joke about how they all looked gaunt, depressed, and angry--not a good advertisement for the food. I suppose some of the medicinal aspects are useful; I tend to look to western herbs and homeopathy myself.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-01-09 09:56 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Made it to the section in CGD that talks about Hippocratic diet. It was a shock, but glad to get it over with. Veggie diets have clearly not been working out for me but the wife loves them and can't understand why I'm miserable. Guess who's hot/moist vs cold/dry?

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.

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ecosophia: (Default)John Michael Greer

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