Macrobiotics

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

Zen-macrobiotics is a way of nourishing yourself. It is part of a way of life commonly known as Zenbuddhism, originating in ancient China, and practised by Zen-buddhist monks in and outside of monasteries. The purpose of Zen-macrobiotics is to keep your body's bio-chemical process operating at full capacity with a minimum wastage of physical or mental energy.

It was George Oshawa, a little Japanese fellow, who first brought Zen-macrobiotics to the West. When he was 16, orthodox Western medicine gave him no more than two years to live, as he was suffering from TB. Indeed his whole family had already died suffering from illnesses that could not be cured by conventional `scientific' methods. Having nothing much to lose, he turned to ancient Chinese medicine, and came up not with acupuncture but with Zen-macrobiotics. He lived happily to the age of 67.

When he started propagating this diet in the Fifties, he very much emphasized its medicinal use in curing ourselves from our welfare diseases, and the fact that it is part of a philosophy and a way of life was not made quite clear enough. Consequently, the real purpose and principles of macrobiotics have frequently been misunderstood. Like the idea that eating macrobiotically will increase your consciousness. It won't. What it increases is your sensual perceptivity. Or that it is a sober diet with very strict rules to follow, whereas the whole meaning of Zenmacrobiotics is to grasp a principle so basic and so essential to every form of life that it can be applied to any individual situation, circumstance, or metabolism.

This principle evolved from the concept of dual forces, antagonistic and complementary, and it is used to understand the laws according to which these forces integrate and create. The Chinese term them Yin and Yang, in the West we tend to think of them as positive and negative, while bio-chemistry defines them as acid-alkaline, or potassium and sodium. Yin is expansive, outward moving. Yang is contractive and inward moving. Yin is matriarchal, cold, dark, receptive, earth and water, fluid, and changeable in expression as the face of the moon. Yang is patriarchal, heat, light, creative, air and fire rigid, and constant in expression as the light of the sun.

It may seem odd, that Yin, or female motion, is termed as both expansive and receptive, the last seeming to indicate impressionability and passivity The way it works is that Yin, by its very unformed dispersive drive to expansion, invites, and receives, Yang rigidity and contraction, whereby a specific form or shape is created, depending on the integrational Yin-Yang pattern at that moment. In that way, light divides darkness, and planets, by pursuing their orbits in space, define time. By being obstructed in its expansion, Yin is thrown back on itself, and thereby regenerates, instead of dissolving into nothingness. And by having an expansive force to combat, Yang can actually realise its formative powers in matter. It is important to relate this Yin Yang principle to food, because physically speaking you are what you eat, and like every other form, the human body has an inherent balance, created the interaction of the two forces.

Imagine your body like a see-saw, one end extreme Yang the other extreme Yin. Keeping it poised in balance, so that a constant harmony is established on which you can base your (eventual) increase of consciousness, can be done by fortifying the centre through eating foods whose Yin-Yang balance is close to your own molecular structure. However, most people feed on foods that only strengthen one end of the see-saw or the other. As the body has to cope with these excesses, the cent is extensively strained, and thereby prone to all so of diseases. We are conditioned to believe that physical suffering is quite natural, to a degree, but that's not really true. There is such a thing as physical perfection, practically attainable. It's a question of balance.

. There are as many different ways to achieve the balance as there are people, but whole grains, for example, contain a lot of trace elements essential to the well-functioning of the human system, and the variety and quantity eaten can be adapted to any individual's needs. Brown rice, for example has a Yin-Yang potassium-sodium ratio of 5 to 1, which is the Yin-Yang ratio closest to that of the human body. Brown rice also contains protein, fat, silicium, magnesium, phospher, calcium, and vitamin Bi. Oats and corn are rich in fat, oats and barley are rich in mineral salts, whole wheat and buckwheat are rich in protein. All grains contain iron, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, protein, sugar, and an assortment of vitamins.

In choosing fruits and vegetables you can't go far wrong if you stick to what grows naturally (not in greenhouses) within a 500 mile radius. Avoid potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant. The Yin-Yang ratio in a potato is 512 to 1, so it's very very Yin, and known to be poisonous when consumed in excesses. Most animal foods and their by-products are chemically treated, and for that reason should be avoided.

Macrobiotics is not to be confused with vegetarianism, and if you can find organic meat, go ahead and eat it, just remember it's. nourishing the extreme Yang end of your imaginary physical seesaw, so if taken in large quantities it will upset your equilibrium. Wild birds, fresh fish and shellfish are preferable in terms of balance.

In determining what is best for you, you use the Yin-Yang principle to analyse your environment physiologically. A cold climate will produce predominantly Yang feeds, while a hot, or Yang climate, will produce Yin feeds. Whether a fruit or vegetable is more Yin or Yang can be seen partly by observing its form, size, and colour. If you cut open an orange, for example, you'll see the lines of its flesh almost explosively radiate outwards, and it contains a lot of acidy liquid, which is enough at first sight to qualify it as a fairly Yin fruit. If you're in Morocco or California it's a harmonius thing to eat there, because that is where it naturally grows. Up north you had better get your vitamin C out of rosehip or hibiscus tea, as all that acidy juice makes you prone to colds. The diagram shows how most foods are rated on Yin-Yang terms, so you can see for yourself what sort of balance you are keeping now, and where there is room for improvement. Experimenting is the best way to find out where you're at, foodwise (or otherwise) and remember you are your own best medicineman or woman.

Now for some basic recipes to start with:
• Rice: use one cup brown rice for two cups cold water and half a teaspoon sea-salt. Allow to come to a rapid boil and then cook slowly over a low flame in a covered pot for about 45 minutes, until bottom of pot is slightly scorched. The yellow part is most Yang and very good because it's richest in minerals. For variety, combine with red soya beans, which need a slightly longer cooking time, so put them on about half an hour before adding the rice, and add salt when almost finished. Rice and beans are a very important food, and can be used as the main ingredient in a great variety of dishes. You can also mix lentils with the rice, and cook these together. Leftovers can be used to make croquettes by adding water and whole wheat flour, then deep frying. Wheat, barley and rye are delicious when cooked whole, but they require a couple of hours soaking in water and about I'h hour cooking time.

Bread: can be made out of almost any variation or combination of whole flours, and is most balanced when unyeasted, unless you use sourdough. Sourdough is made by leaving your dough to stand around under a yet cloth for a day or two. You need half a cup of oil to 4' cups of flour, one teaspoon salt, and about 'h cup of water, depending on what flour you use. Mix flour, salt and oil first, and work very well with your hands when adding the water. Kneading the dough is the most important part of making bread, and the quality of your product depends on it. When kneaded let stand for half hour, then bake it at approximate 375 degrees for 1 to 1.5 hours. Again, this is a very ripe, you can adjust it to your own taste and needs, mix it with raisins, nuts, dates, sesame seeds, or, for crunch, use some flakes instead of flour.

If you're a busy person with little time to spend on food, you should try chapatis, a quick to make bread that has survived a lot of cultural changes. Mix equal portions of wheatflour and cornflour. Salt to taste. Add water until dough doesn't stick to your fingers. Flatten with your hands or roll out and bake in pan over low flame for about ten minutes. Try buckwheat flour and unbleached white flour, too. Make chapati extremely thin. When making pies and pastries use more oil than you would for bread.

• Stews: vegetable stews are good when you use quite a bit of tamari (soya sauce) or miso (soya bean paste), and become very nice casseroles if you add some flour. Take care not to make it lumpy. Always use vegetables that are in season.

As said earlier there were no rules to follow, just a principle to understand and apply, but there is one thing you should never do, and that is use sugar. Neither brown and white sugar can be broken down into body sugar, so they clog up the bloodstream and they're plain poison.