So I went to visit a friend tonight that I haven’t seen in about a year. She was always (for as long as I have known her) a vegetarian, but in the past year has become a Macrobiotic Vegan. She cooked a very nice dinner for me and a few of our other friends that were over, and it was very tasty. I told her how great it was to eat a healthy meal for a change and how I am trying to change my eating habits but am having trouble getting started. Then she starts talking about how great Macrobiotics is and how much healthier she has been feeling since she went Macrobiotic etc etc.
Well she honestly does have me intrigued, but I am a bit skeptical about the whole venture. For example at one point she and a friend of hers went off on dairy products, and how the dairy products and eating meat increase your risk of cancer. These are the types of opinions I have always associated with crazies, but here were two very thoughtful intelligent people telling me that drinking milk is more dangerous than smoking. These are the types of things that make me wonder if the whole thing isn’t just so much new age bullshit.
I am assuming that there is some hard science behind Macrobiotics, but the way she described it made it sound more like a religion than a dietary choice. On the other hand, just because Macrobiotics is supported by people who may be slightly loony doesn’t mean that it is loony itself.
So what is the dope on Macrobiotics, what EXACTLY is it, what is the science behind it? More importantly is it really as good for you as my friend says? Is it really a healthier lifestyle or just a more restrictive one?
I was originally going to put this in GQ but put this in GD because I would like to allow for potential back and forth between pro and con sides of Macrobiotics, but would like to keep this as free from general mud slinging as possible. (not sure if that will be an issue, but it never hurts to mention it.)
I vaguely remember macrobiotics in the eighties. A major proponent of it claimed to have cured his prostatic cancer by going on a macrobiotic diet. He did all the talk shows. Of course if you want to read his book, caveat emptor:
the guy died soon afterof prostate cancer!
I tried macrobiotics for a while when I was in college. It involves a lot of nonsense about balancing “yin and yang.” Certain foods (like meat) are supposed to be masculine/yang and others (like fruit) are supposed to be feminine/yang. Supposedly some people get out of whack in one direction or another and need to get it back. Brown rice was supposed to be right doown the middle and so was the staple.
I did feel more healthy for a time but that was mostly just because I quite eating sugar and processed crap and ate brown rice and veggies. Eventually, though, it got to be too much work. I couldn’t be bothered to keep computing yin and yang for everything (and I never bought that part anyway) plus it required a lot of time to always cook everything from scratch and never be able to just nuke a bowl of Ramen or a couple of hot pockets. I also started “cheating” and chowing fast food burgers while I was on campus. My wife (who was my live-in girlfriend at the time) also got sort of bored with the diet and didn’t want to give up chocolate so we eventually just abandoned it.
I think it is generally heathy because it’s low fat, low sugar, high fiber and doesn’t use anything processed but it’s also kind of boring and tedious for the exact same reasons.
Most anything anyone says about diet beyond “try to eat healthy” is bullshit. Some people do need a “structure” behind what they eat. The problem is that they get mixed up and start thinking that their structure is anything but an ultimately arbitrary thing.
Going vegetarian did make me more healthy, but mostly because it forced me to actually think about what I was eating. Atkins does help a lot of people lose weight. But ultimately our bodies are dumb machines and don’t really care what kind of fuel they are burning, and no diet can work magic.
wonderwench, protein combining has been thouroughly disproved. Nobody eating a reasonably varied diet is at any risk for lacking protein. In order to have a protein deficientcy, you’d actually have to work at it.
Goldmine Natural Foods is a great company - they cater primarily to macrobiotics, and people wanting more natural foods in their diet…the ‘convenience’ foods and snack foods they have are things like cookies made with fruit juice instead of processed sugar, or crackers like the japanese eat that have rice, and seaweed, and seeds/nuts. They have a great wheat free tamari, and ume goodness in the form of ume vinegar, ume paste and umeboshi, and all sorts of spiffy cooking ingredients. I know that I do best on atkins, but any carbs I do add in I prefer to have as close to natural as possible.
You can add macrobiotic principals to how you normally eat, the balance thing is just that, you have to balance. A friend is into the pH diet thang, and I will admit that many of the recipes she uses are great - there are some soups and salads that seriously rock…but I cant do that diet myself, I am basically a carnivore. I have always felt healthier being carnivorus, and gained weight when I was vegetarian [lacto/ovo/fish…and YES I do know the different terms noncarnivores use. Lets NOT split hairs and say we did, mmmmkay? my diabetic nutritionist had me on so little animal product I might have well just grazed out in our field.]]
Natural or no, that cheeseburger has saturated fat out the wazoo, and all the organic farming in the world doesn’t stop animals from concentrating environmental toxins in their flesh.
Not to say you shouldn’t have it. But, as Sesame Street has taught us all, some foods are “sometimes foods”.
The trouble being that Ug doesn’t have to depend on his environment anymore. Ug can eat limitless quantities of whatever he likes best. Without having our environment limit our choices for us, we have to do it ourselves.
Besides, what makes you think Ug was healthy doing that?
I remember reading about an organic farm in Australia (I believe) which eschewed the use of pesticides. One year there was an insect infestation that conventional farmers dealt with through insecticides, while this farmer did not. Bottom line, the zucchini’s response to insect attack was to produce large amounts of an endogenous compound which repelled the insects. And made people who ate them violently ill.
People actually deliberately grow zucchini? Around here you can’t put more than one plant in the ground or you’ll have to sneak them into strangers cars to get rid of the excess. I could swear zucchini bread is just another way to get rid of too many zucchini by masking it w/ cinnamon and the like.
Where does added salt fit into the macrobiotic idea? Your body makes it responsively, right? So, if you crave it do you need it?
