What is Macrobiotics?
By John Kozinski ©2015
The word, macrobiotics, is derived from the ancient Greek language. It is defined as the way of longevity. Macrobiotics is also defined as the universal way of health, happiness and peace in some contemporary books on macrobiotics. As a person who has taught the macrobiotic philosophy of health and healing for more than 40 years, I know this definition well.
Over time through teaching and clinical experience with over 40,000 people, I have learned that the approach outlined in outdated macrobiotic books and classes is not universal. An up to date and progressive 21st century form of macrobiotics can start to come close to its promise of being more universal in creating better health, happiness and a more peaceful state of mind.
There are gems of wisdom in some macrobiotic books and classes. Unfortunately, the untruths can over the long haul lead people down the wrong path of diet, health and healing. I have had the unfortunate experience of knowing many colleagues, teachers and practitioners of a vegan style macrobiotic approach who got very sick with a wide range of diseases, and some have even died of cancer and heart disease. Updates are sorely needed, but few people practicing in this field are willing to make these changes. Reasons for this include a lack of ongoing unbiased continuing education, inadequate clinical experience and economic considerations.
I have come to understand that macrobiotics or the way of longevity is a philosophy rather than a rigid diet. Macrobiotics is the practice of applying the philosophy of balance in our daily lives. Understanding it as a philosophy is the key to seeing the potential as a universal way of health, happiness and peace.
In the 20th century, macrobiotics was presented as a system of do’s and don’ts related to diet. This creates what I call a small m-macrobiotics, a set of rules and regulations handed down by an authority that pretends to know best. I define, Big M-macrobiotics as the practice of living according to the philosophy of balance in our daily life. Broader guidelines about diet and lifestyle are useful in Big M- macrobiotics. If guidelines are too narrow, no one can make it to the eventual goal of a person knowing for themselves what to eat and how to live. A limited hierarchy or authority in teaching is beneficial for all learning. Someone who has studied long and hard can impart his or her knowledge. Since we have so many experts today telling us how to live, the knowledge they have has to be explained clearly. Only then can a person decide if they want to follow it. After deciding what makes sense to practice, a person’s experience and growing understanding can eventually guide them. This process of self-knowledge takes time to develop. There will always be a place for a more experienced person’s guidance.
A more universal approach to a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle includes the following practices:
1) A dietary approach that is truly universal is based upon what people really ate in healthy cultures throughout the world and what they ate before civilization existed. The root of this understanding is based on the knowledge that cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other modern maladies did not exist in hunter- gather societies or in traditional cultures living in smaller villages.
All modern diseases appeared with the beginning of cultivating and eating grains, along with the development of cities and agriculture. As people adapted to eating grains and city living improved, health became better as long as adequate and varied foods were available.
All varieties of natural foods were valued in traditional cultures. These native foods fostered high level health. Healthy animal foods were an important daily part of people’s diets along with vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, natural salts, flavorings and seasonal fruits. A universal macrobiotic approach to diet does not demonize healthy foods such as grass fed meats, pastured poultry and raw grass fed dairy products. Instead these foods are valued as important foods for regular consumption in moderate amounts.
Multiple researchers and teachers have documented that people eating traditional diets that included animal and vegetable foods were disease free. Outdated macrobiotic books blame animal foods for all of our modern illnesses. This is not accurate. At best, an argument can be made that some of our modern sicknesses can be blamed on the overconsumption of factory farmed animals that have been raised in ways that make them physically and emotionally sick while contaminated with industrial pesticides, hormones and other drugs. Traditional people that ate healthy animals were disease free.
One of the researchers who studied the value of native vegetable and animal foodstuffs was Weston Price. Weston Price was a Cleveland dentist who in the 1930’s traveled around the world on his summer vacations visiting isolated traditional peoples. He wanted to know if people were eating a different diet than his patients in Cleveland, would they have better dental health. His patients in Cleveland had very poor dental health.
He picked groups that had been isolated enough so that they were eating a similar diet for a few thousand years. He traveled to Northern Canada and Alaska, Africa, the Swiss Alps, and numerous other locations.
Price found incredibly good dental health among these peoples. He noticed that the condition of the teeth reflected overall health. He found entire cultures with neither tooth decay or children with misshapen dental arches and crowded teeth.
He interviewed an American doctor living among the Eskimos and northern Indians who reported that in thirty five years of observation, he had never seen a single case of cancer among the natives eating their native foods. In every culture where people were immune to dental disease and degenerative disease, analysis of the foods showed the diets to be rich in nutrients poorly supplied in modern diets. The Eskimos and Northern American Indians valued meat from healthy animals. Throughout the world, Price found where people had excellent dental health and were free of our modern degenerative diseases, they valued the meat of healthy animals so much that they considered these types of foods to be sacred.
Price looked for vegetarian populations throughout the world. He couldn’t find totally vegetarian cultures. In Africa, he found cultures that were more vegetarian. Their health was inferior to societies where they ate adequate animal source foods. Price wrote “It is significant that I have as yet not found a group that was building and maintaining good bodies exclusively on plant foods. A number of groups are endeavoring to do so with marked evidence of failure “. I highly recommend Weston Price’s book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
Hunter Gatherers were also known to be free of the modern diseases that we have. Early farmers got the worse of it. Researcher Mark Cohen ticks off the list of diseases and conditions evident in the skeletal and fecal remains of early farmers but absent among hunter gatherers. The list includes malnutrition, osteomyelitis and periostitis (bone infections), intestinal parasites, yaws, syphilis, leprosy, tuberculosis, anemia, rickets in children, retarded childhood growth and short stature among adults.
Mark is quoted in another excellent book, “Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization” by Richard Manning.
Other researchers have found that when hunter gathers made it to old age (by avoiding infections and accidents) they are consistently free of cancer and heart disease.
The illnesses that appeared after grains were introduced to larger populations a little over 10,000 years ago went away for the most part after humans adapted themselves to eating grains. There is information accumulated that aspects of our genetics altered in cultures that have been eating grains regularly. This made it possible for most cultures to not only tolerate grain eating, but too thrive on it as long as the rest of the diet had adequate nourishment from both animal and vegetable foods.
Lifestyle practices that are beneficial are those that would help us to create balance in daily life. These include eating practices, body care methods, having daily contact with nature, appropriate exercises and balancing exercises, harmonious relationships and harmonious family life, the importance of play, practices that offer relief from isolating consumerism and economic bondage, and spiritual studies and practices.
2) Healing strategies would include all aspects of daily life that would help to create balance as well as diet, nutritional supplements, herbs, energetic exercises and healing modalities including acupressure, chi gung, and when needed, appropriate modern medical therapies.
3) Macrobiotics as a noun is defined as the way of longevity. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, employed the term to describe a group of people who were healthy and long lived. According to Hippocrates, they were practicing macrobiotics or the way of longevity.
4) Macrobiotic as an adjective has a different, but related meaning. Macrobiotic means according to the philosophy of balance. A macrobiotic approach is applying the philosophy of balance to understanding and harmonizing any aspect of life or society. From this view, there is not a macrobiotic diet (one diet), there is a macrobiotic approach (applying the philosophy of balance) to diet.
5) Macrobiotic approaches are universal in that humans have been applying the philosophy of balance to various aspects of daily life since humanity first appeared in order to create harmony and balance. Greater harmony in daily life brought happiness, health, truth, wisdom and spiritual insights.
6) When the philosophy of balance was applied to health, longevity is the result. When the philosophy of balance is applied to the emotional realm, longer lasting happiness is achieved. When this philosophy is applied to the intellectual realm, longer lasting truth is achieved. When applied to society, peace results and when applied to the realm of the spirit, humans got in touch with that part of us that doesn’t die.
Various health teachings, religions, proverbs and teachings, philosophies and religions are based upon a macrobiotic philosophy of balance. When these systems become rigid and unchanging, they violate a central premise of the philosophy of balance, change. When these systems adapt, with society and the environment, they are following the philosophy of balance. In this sense, the macrobiotic philosophy of balance has always been a part of human wisdom. It is sorely needed in today’s world.
My macrobiotic or longevity approach is based upon a greater understanding of what traditional people ate and how they lived to stay healthy. Traditional wisdom can be blended with new information from science in order to make a more complete approach to health. Only then, can we adapt this combined knowledge to modern environmental and lifestyle conditions, and apply the philosophy of balance.
The goal would be to create long lasting sustainable physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. The main method of this approach is educational through experience and study. In my teachings and educational approach, I employ the findings of modern science and nutrition through the lens of the philosophy of balance. Combining these two poles make it easier for modern people to grasp the sensibility of what traditional practices can be adapted to modern times and which one’s must change for the times.
The word, macrobiotics, is derived from the ancient Greek language. It is defined as the way of longevity. Macrobiotics is also defined as the universal way of health, happiness and peace in some contemporary books on macrobiotics. As a person who has taught the macrobiotic philosophy of health and healing for more than 40 years, I know this definition well.
Over time through teaching and clinical experience with over 40,000 people, I have learned that the approach outlined in outdated macrobiotic books and classes is not universal. An up to date and progressive 21st century form of macrobiotics can start to come close to its promise of being more universal in creating better health, happiness and a more peaceful state of mind.
There are gems of wisdom in some macrobiotic books and classes. Unfortunately, the untruths can over the long haul lead people down the wrong path of diet, health and healing. I have had the unfortunate experience of knowing many colleagues, teachers and practitioners of a vegan style macrobiotic approach who got very sick with a wide range of diseases, and some have even died of cancer and heart disease. Updates are sorely needed, but few people practicing in this field are willing to make these changes. Reasons for this include a lack of ongoing unbiased continuing education, inadequate clinical experience and economic considerations.
I have come to understand that macrobiotics or the way of longevity is a philosophy rather than a rigid diet. Macrobiotics is the practice of applying the philosophy of balance in our daily lives. Understanding it as a philosophy is the key to seeing the potential as a universal way of health, happiness and peace.
In the 20th century, macrobiotics was presented as a system of do’s and don’ts related to diet. This creates what I call a small m-macrobiotics, a set of rules and regulations handed down by an authority that pretends to know best. I define, Big M-macrobiotics as the practice of living according to the philosophy of balance in our daily life. Broader guidelines about diet and lifestyle are useful in Big M- macrobiotics. If guidelines are too narrow, no one can make it to the eventual goal of a person knowing for themselves what to eat and how to live. A limited hierarchy or authority in teaching is beneficial for all learning. Someone who has studied long and hard can impart his or her knowledge. Since we have so many experts today telling us how to live, the knowledge they have has to be explained clearly. Only then can a person decide if they want to follow it. After deciding what makes sense to practice, a person’s experience and growing understanding can eventually guide them. This process of self-knowledge takes time to develop. There will always be a place for a more experienced person’s guidance.
A more universal approach to a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle includes the following practices:
1) A dietary approach that is truly universal is based upon what people really ate in healthy cultures throughout the world and what they ate before civilization existed. The root of this understanding is based on the knowledge that cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other modern maladies did not exist in hunter- gather societies or in traditional cultures living in smaller villages.
All modern diseases appeared with the beginning of cultivating and eating grains, along with the development of cities and agriculture. As people adapted to eating grains and city living improved, health became better as long as adequate and varied foods were available.
All varieties of natural foods were valued in traditional cultures. These native foods fostered high level health. Healthy animal foods were an important daily part of people’s diets along with vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, natural salts, flavorings and seasonal fruits. A universal macrobiotic approach to diet does not demonize healthy foods such as grass fed meats, pastured poultry and raw grass fed dairy products. Instead these foods are valued as important foods for regular consumption in moderate amounts.
Multiple researchers and teachers have documented that people eating traditional diets that included animal and vegetable foods were disease free. Outdated macrobiotic books blame animal foods for all of our modern illnesses. This is not accurate. At best, an argument can be made that some of our modern sicknesses can be blamed on the overconsumption of factory farmed animals that have been raised in ways that make them physically and emotionally sick while contaminated with industrial pesticides, hormones and other drugs. Traditional people that ate healthy animals were disease free.
One of the researchers who studied the value of native vegetable and animal foodstuffs was Weston Price. Weston Price was a Cleveland dentist who in the 1930’s traveled around the world on his summer vacations visiting isolated traditional peoples. He wanted to know if people were eating a different diet than his patients in Cleveland, would they have better dental health. His patients in Cleveland had very poor dental health.
He picked groups that had been isolated enough so that they were eating a similar diet for a few thousand years. He traveled to Northern Canada and Alaska, Africa, the Swiss Alps, and numerous other locations.
Price found incredibly good dental health among these peoples. He noticed that the condition of the teeth reflected overall health. He found entire cultures with neither tooth decay or children with misshapen dental arches and crowded teeth.
He interviewed an American doctor living among the Eskimos and northern Indians who reported that in thirty five years of observation, he had never seen a single case of cancer among the natives eating their native foods. In every culture where people were immune to dental disease and degenerative disease, analysis of the foods showed the diets to be rich in nutrients poorly supplied in modern diets. The Eskimos and Northern American Indians valued meat from healthy animals. Throughout the world, Price found where people had excellent dental health and were free of our modern degenerative diseases, they valued the meat of healthy animals so much that they considered these types of foods to be sacred.
Price looked for vegetarian populations throughout the world. He couldn’t find totally vegetarian cultures. In Africa, he found cultures that were more vegetarian. Their health was inferior to societies where they ate adequate animal source foods. Price wrote “It is significant that I have as yet not found a group that was building and maintaining good bodies exclusively on plant foods. A number of groups are endeavoring to do so with marked evidence of failure “. I highly recommend Weston Price’s book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
Hunter Gatherers were also known to be free of the modern diseases that we have. Early farmers got the worse of it. Researcher Mark Cohen ticks off the list of diseases and conditions evident in the skeletal and fecal remains of early farmers but absent among hunter gatherers. The list includes malnutrition, osteomyelitis and periostitis (bone infections), intestinal parasites, yaws, syphilis, leprosy, tuberculosis, anemia, rickets in children, retarded childhood growth and short stature among adults.
Mark is quoted in another excellent book, “Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization” by Richard Manning.
Other researchers have found that when hunter gathers made it to old age (by avoiding infections and accidents) they are consistently free of cancer and heart disease.
The illnesses that appeared after grains were introduced to larger populations a little over 10,000 years ago went away for the most part after humans adapted themselves to eating grains. There is information accumulated that aspects of our genetics altered in cultures that have been eating grains regularly. This made it possible for most cultures to not only tolerate grain eating, but too thrive on it as long as the rest of the diet had adequate nourishment from both animal and vegetable foods.
Lifestyle practices that are beneficial are those that would help us to create balance in daily life. These include eating practices, body care methods, having daily contact with nature, appropriate exercises and balancing exercises, harmonious relationships and harmonious family life, the importance of play, practices that offer relief from isolating consumerism and economic bondage, and spiritual studies and practices.
2) Healing strategies would include all aspects of daily life that would help to create balance as well as diet, nutritional supplements, herbs, energetic exercises and healing modalities including acupressure, chi gung, and when needed, appropriate modern medical therapies.
3) Macrobiotics as a noun is defined as the way of longevity. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, employed the term to describe a group of people who were healthy and long lived. According to Hippocrates, they were practicing macrobiotics or the way of longevity.
4) Macrobiotic as an adjective has a different, but related meaning. Macrobiotic means according to the philosophy of balance. A macrobiotic approach is applying the philosophy of balance to understanding and harmonizing any aspect of life or society. From this view, there is not a macrobiotic diet (one diet), there is a macrobiotic approach (applying the philosophy of balance) to diet.
5) Macrobiotic approaches are universal in that humans have been applying the philosophy of balance to various aspects of daily life since humanity first appeared in order to create harmony and balance. Greater harmony in daily life brought happiness, health, truth, wisdom and spiritual insights.
6) When the philosophy of balance was applied to health, longevity is the result. When the philosophy of balance is applied to the emotional realm, longer lasting happiness is achieved. When this philosophy is applied to the intellectual realm, longer lasting truth is achieved. When applied to society, peace results and when applied to the realm of the spirit, humans got in touch with that part of us that doesn’t die.
Various health teachings, religions, proverbs and teachings, philosophies and religions are based upon a macrobiotic philosophy of balance. When these systems become rigid and unchanging, they violate a central premise of the philosophy of balance, change. When these systems adapt, with society and the environment, they are following the philosophy of balance. In this sense, the macrobiotic philosophy of balance has always been a part of human wisdom. It is sorely needed in today’s world.
My macrobiotic or longevity approach is based upon a greater understanding of what traditional people ate and how they lived to stay healthy. Traditional wisdom can be blended with new information from science in order to make a more complete approach to health. Only then, can we adapt this combined knowledge to modern environmental and lifestyle conditions, and apply the philosophy of balance.
The goal would be to create long lasting sustainable physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. The main method of this approach is educational through experience and study. In my teachings and educational approach, I employ the findings of modern science and nutrition through the lens of the philosophy of balance. Combining these two poles make it easier for modern people to grasp the sensibility of what traditional practices can be adapted to modern times and which one’s must change for the times.