by Lawrence Wilson, MD

MACROBIOTICS, AND MODIFICATIONS WITH THE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

WHAT IS MACROBIOTICS?

Macrobiotics is an ancient Japanese science of life. It focuses heavily on the role of food and diet for improved health and longevity. It also makes use of some herbs and other traditional Japanese food items.

The main teacher of macrobiotics in the United States was Mr. Michio Kushi (1926-2014) and his wife, Aveline Kushi (1923-2001).

MY INVOLVEMENT WITH MICHIO AND AVELINE KUSHI

Michio and Aveline Kushi were my teachers, my mentors and my friends:

- I attended weekly lectures by Michio Kushi at the church in Boston.

- I attended the training classes for physicians that he taught.

- I attended macrobiotic cooking classes with Aveline Kushi.

- I attended the macrobiotic retreat led by Michele Abesera that took place in New Jersey.

- I ate meals at the macrobiotic houses in Boston, Massachusetts.

- I was a frequent visitor to the Erewhon Health Food Store that sold macrobiotic products and ate at the macrobiotic Sanai Restaurant.

MACROBIOTICS AND DEVELOPMENT

I believe macrobiotics is a development science. Some of the teachings are an integral part of current development science, a major theme of this website. For details about development, read Introduction To Development.

We heartily agree with all of the following macrobiotic concepts:

- The science of yang and yin is real and extremely important.

- Food and diet are critical for health and are the main ways to change the yang or yin quality of a body.

- Fresh, not frozen or canned food and organically grown food is superior to commercially grown food, which is always more yin.

- Macrobiotics recognizes correctly that unrefined sea salt is an excellent food item that does not raise blood pressure when used in moderation.

- Cooking food properly is critical for health. Cooking adds yang energy to food. The benefits of cooking most food far outweigh the problem of destroying a few nutrients by cooking food.

- Macrobiotics also teaches healthful eating habits such as eating food fresh rather than leftovers, sitting and relaxing when eating, chewing food thoroughly, and resting for a few minutes after meals.

- Women tend to be more sensitive than men. As a result, women tend to be best at the critical task of preparing food. We love this teaching. It is the opposite of the modern idea that preparing food is not important and that it just enslaves women in the kitchen.

However, many women experience rape – up to 80 to 90% - and this skews their judgment, in many cases. As a result, many of them don’t want to cook and don’t care enough about their family’s health in this way. Very few rapes are reported, so the statistics are wrong! This website is dedicated to women, in part for this reason. For details, read Rape.

WHAT ABOUT BIBLICAL VALUES?

Some people say I have gone off in a different direction from Michio Kushi by recommending Biblical values. The answer is that Michio and Aveline Kushi supported and lived these exact values in their everyday lives. They observed the Ten Commandments and they practiced the Golden Rule. They did not subscribe to modern gender identity and other non-Biblical teachings.

The reason we need to emphasize Biblical values today is because they are being challenged much more today than when I knew Michio Kushi.

YANG AND YIN

Most important for development, macrobiotics makes use of the principles of complementary opposite forces. These are sometimes called warming and cooling or yang and yin. The author is most grateful for having learned of this concept from Mr. and Mrs. Kushi.

Yang and yin are words in Chinese, Japanese and an ancient Hebrew dialect. Exact English words for the principles do not exist, so we will use the older Oriental and Hebrew words in most of the articles on this website.

Macrobiotics classifies food according to its yang or yin qualities. Then this science recommends that one eat mainly the balanced foods that are in the middle between yang and yin.

The importance of making the body more yang cannot be overemphasized today. This was not part of Dr. Paul Eck’s mineral balancing science or programs.

For details about yang and yin forces, read Yin/Yang Healing, Yin Disease and Yang and Yin of Food. For details about the biological theory of space, read The New Earth Blog.

MODIFYING THE MACROBIOTIC DIET

We believe that macrobiotics is a development science. That is, it aims to cause the expansion of the human energy field. However, it is geared to the bodies that existed 5000 to perhaps 10,000 years ago.

Using hair mineral testing, we find that the bodies are in much worse shape today than they were in the past. Among the main reasons are mineral-depleted soils of the earth, hybrid crops, widespread toxic metal poisoning, radiation poisoning and electromagnetic pollution. The changes needed to compensate for this situation are:

1. Everyone needs many more cooked vegetables. The macrobiotic diet, as taught by Michio Kushi and his students, centers around large amounts of rice and other whole grains, including wheat. It also includes a lot of cooked, dried beans or legumes, some cooked vegetables, sea vegetables, and some fish and meat.

We suggest 6-9 cups of cooked vegetables daily, or about 2-3 cups per meal, three times daily of cooked, not raw vegetables. This means that cooked vegetables will be about 70-80% of the daily diet.

This is a significant departure from the macrobiotic diet. People today need this many cooked vegetables to get enough alkaline reserve minerals and hundreds of other phytonutrients. For details about the development diet, read Food For Daily Use

2. Blue corn, not other grains. Macrobiotics suggests that whole, unrefined cereal grains, particularly brown rice, should be the main focus of the diet.

We find that rice is not healthful today, for some reason we do not understand. We do not recommend eating it at all.

Also, for development one needs to eat organic blue corn tortilla chips. They contain selenium and other compounds the bodies need today. Blue corn cereal does not work as well. For details, read Blue Corn.

3. Avoid all wheat and spelt. Wheat, in particular, we find to be a poor quality food today, even organic whole wheat. It has been severely hybridized or perhaps genetically modified. The protein content is much lower, the starch content is much higher, it contains too much glutamic acid, and the zinc content is much lower.

Other trace element levels are lower as well. As a result, wheat in any form, especially refined wheat, but also organic whole wheat products, are not healthful foods and best avoided completely.

Wheat is now an inflammatory food that causes a myriad of subtle problems and allergic reactions, including irritating the intestines and causing leaky gut syndrome. Spelt, einkorn and other variants are also best avoided, also.

Some people must also avoid all gluten-containing grains for a while such as oats, barley and rye. As the intestines heal with a development program, often gluten will be tolerated again.

4. Legumes. Macrobiotics recommends a lot of legumes or dried beans in the diet. However, we find that dried beans do not contain enough of the chemicals the bodies need today for development.

Instead, for protein we recommend more meats such as 4-5 ounce portions of lamb, dark meat chicken, a little goat yogurt and some eggs.

5. Problems with sea vegetables. We would love to recommend a lot of sea vegetables. However, unlike thousands of years ago, all sea vegetables are very high in mercury and perhaps other toxic metals. This shows up on the hair tests of anyone who eats a lot of nori, hijiki, wakame or other sea vegetables.

As a result, we only recommend kelp or kombu. This has some mercury. However, it is high in alginates that bind up and remove most of the mercury. We use it in capsules, which is more yin, but much easier to eat and it seems to work well.

6. Fish and sea food are all contaminated today. Fish is an important food in macrobiotics, and in all Oriental cuisine. It is a very nutritious food. However, today most fish are very contaminated with mercury, in particular, and some contain other toxic metals, as well.

As a result, we suggest limiting fish intake to very small fish such as sardines, and only 3-4 cans weekly. We find that anyone who eats any amount of larger fish, even wild caught salmon, for example, quickly begins to show high levels of mercury on hair mineral analyses.

Sardines are so small they do not have time to accumulate much mercury, although they contain some. Do not eat more than 3-4 cans per week for an adult, however, unless the sardines are skinless and boneless. Then one may have 5 cans weekly. These have less mercury because the mercury concentrates in the spinal cord of the sardine, which is removed in boneless sardines.

The macrobiotic diet also allows seafood such as shrimp, oysters, lobster, clams, scallops, crab and eel. These foods are even more contaminated with toxic metals today because they usually come from coastal waters. They are filthy foods today!

As a result, we do not recommend any of them at any time, no matter where they come from.

7. Goat yogurt. Macrobiotics does not recommend dairy products at all. It is true that most dairy products today are not of good quality because they are pasteurized and homogenized, among other types of processing. Also, avoiding dairy products is an ancient Japanese food pattern.

However, we find there is benefit from eating about 8 ounces a week of plain, organic goat yogurt. For details, read Dairy Products.

8. Eggs. Macrobiotics does not recommend many eggs, as they are a more yang food. However, we find they contain chemicals needed for development and we recommend them in moderation.

They must be cooked soft, with the yolk runny. Also, women can only eat up to 6 per week while men can eat only up to 8 eggs weekly. For details, read Eggs.

9. Avoid vegetarian diets. Some macrobiotic practitioners and their followers suggest vegetarian diets. That was not the teaching of Michio Kushi, however!

Reasons for eating meats are that most people are too yin, and because animal products provide vital nutrients that are not found in vegetable foods in large enough quantities such as zinc, carnitine, taurine, sulfur amino acids, and others.

We find that ALL strict vegetarian regimens cause serious difficulties that are subtle and hard to detect. They include low zinc levels, high copper levels, protein imbalances and others. Vegetarian diets, especially vegan diets, tend to shorten one’s lifespan and cause severe illnesses, particularly brain problems in children such as ADD. For more, read Vegetarian Diets.

10. The use of fats and oils. Macrobiotics does not recommend a lot of fat in the diet at all, other than some sesame oil or other used in cooking. We find that to balance a fast oxidation rate (very uncommon in Japanese people but common in Westerners) requires more fat or oil in the diet. Fast oxidizers also do not do well on grains, beans and other starches. For details, read The Oxidation Types.

11. Eating red meat and avoiding all pig products. Red meat is not recommended much in macrobiotics because it is more yang. However, we find that most adults need some red meat – about three 4-5 ounce servings weekly – especially lamb and 100% grass fed or organic beef. We do not recommend eating regular or feedlot beef.

Macrobiotics may allow some pig products, but we find they are all contaminated with trichina worm cysts, even if well-cooked, so we suggest strictly avoiding all products of the pig. The only exception is that porcine pancreas used as a digestive aid appears to be safe.

12. Avoid fruits, sugars, alcohol and drugs. These are concepts shared between macrobiotics and development.

13. Traditional herbal remedies and Western supplementary nutrients. Macrobiotics uses some traditional Oriental herbs as medicines, and shuns modern, synthetic vitamins and minerals.

However, we find that:

- Herbs today are not as pure today, no matter how they are grown. Most contain some toxic metals, which is not helpful.

- Herbs are not as useful to balance the body chemistry as is the judicious use of certain mineral supplements. This was difficult for the author to accept, but experience has shown it to be true.

As a result, at this time, development requires a few synthesized food supplements. We think this is simply because the bodies today are so ill.

When given in the correct way, they act as placeholders, a vital concept in development science. For details, read The Placeholder Concept.

Among the most important food supplements needed today are omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, magnesium, zinc, a digestive aid, trimethylglycine, and mineral supplements such as kelp and sea salt. Some of these can be obtained from food, but some need to be supplemented for optimal health and rapid development. For details, read Why Use Food Supplements.

14. The need for detoxification and development procedures. Macrobiotics does not include the use of Coffee Enemas and Red Heat Lamp Saunas. We find that most people are so ill today that they need these procedures or development is slow. The procedures can speed up detoxification of toxic metals and toxic chemicals often 100-fold.

The other development procedures are also excellent, such as the Pulling Down Exercise and Foot Reflexology. The latter is mentioned sometimes in macrobiotic literature, but we consider it a primary healing modality.

We also highly recommend the Spinal Twists, the Neck Pull, Down Sex and other Accelerators for rapid development and overall health. Without these procedures, many people simply will not get fully well and will not develop quickly.

15. The need for more drinking water. Macrobiotics teaches not to drink much water, since water is more yin. However, we don’t find this to be good advice. Reasons that about 100 ounces of water daily are needed are:

- The level of toxins in the bodies today is enormous.

- A development program removes toxins quickly and they must be removed from the body. Enough water helps them move through the blood and the kidneys easily. Otherwise, one can have kidney pain, leg cramps, restless leg syndrome and other problems.

- Grains break down in the body to water. However, we do not recommend the large amount of grains that macrobiotic practitioners recommend. Therefore, water intake must be higher.

For details about what kind and how much water to drink, please read Water For Drinking.

16. Oriental diagnosis is not as accurate today because everyone is so ill. Mr. Kushi taught Oriental face, pulse and tongue diagnosis to assess yin and yang qualities. However, we find that all bodies today are quite yin. We believe that people today are so deficient and toxic that the older Oriental diagnostic methods are not as accurate.

For example, most everyone today has been exposed to ionizing radiation, electromagnetic stress from cell phone towers, and thousands of times the amount of toxic metals and toxic chemicals as in the past. Everyone is born this way. Most of these toxins are very yin.

17. Pressure cooking. We do not believe that Michio Kushi recommended pressure cooking vegetables. It is a more modern cooking method that is more yang and much faster than traditional cooking.

We find it is the best. Do not pressure cook beef and be careful because it is very easy to overcook food in a pressure cooker. For details, read Pressure Cooking and Food For Daily Use.

In summary, development programs are geared to the needs of 21^st century people who are so nutritionally depleted it is truly sad and shocking. We believe that the older sciences such as macrobiotics and acupuncture need adjusting for this reason.

However, I am eternally grateful to Michio Kushi for his mentoring and teaching me regarding understanding food, its effects on the body, and for many other insights about health and life, in general.

References

The Teachings Of Michio Kushi, The Order Of The Universe Compiled Edition, Volume I, Tao Books And Publications, Inc., 1972.

Other material is available from the Kushi Institute.

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