The macrobiotic way

This summer, I went to the Kushi Conference, and it opened my eyes to a healthier "macrobiotic" way of life. Much of macrobiotics involves eating healthy food, but a lot of it involves simply being good to your body: staying relaxed, balanced, and being grateful. Let me just go ahead and get this out on the table: none of macrobiotics even comes close to replacing a healthy relationship with God. (In him we live and move and have our being.)

Anyway, as far as the food, the essence is that food is energy. It's a lot of whole grains, greens, vegetables, beans, and soy. To that, add a little Japanese influence such as seaweed and miso. The whole grain that gets the most attention is brown rice. So, if you don't do anything else, start replacing your white rice with brown. Brown rice is actually a lot chewier and has more taste anyway. Greens are good steamed or sauteed. The main green that I've latched on to is kale, and I'll share a yummy recipe in an upcoming blog. As far as beans, macrobiotic cooks like to begin with dried beans. Ha! Maybe I'll cook them that way after I retire! Vegetables are pretty self explanatory, except that macrobiotic regimes shun white potatoes.

In fact, anything "white" is shunned: sugar, milk, flour and the white potatoes. The milk surprised me, due to calcium. However, at the conference, we learned that you can get plenty of good calcium through the greens and certain veggies such as broccoli.

The most fascinating part of the conference was when cancer survivors spoke about how the macrobiotic diet cured them. In fact, the friend who invited me got involved because her sister had cancer and had given up until she saw a brochure on macrobiotics and decided to give it a try. She's in complete remission now.

Am I 100% macrobiotic yet? Hmmm... not even close! I love sugar on my cereal. I like cheese on my veggie burger, and you are not taking my butter away from me! However, I have done a pretty darn good job of adding healthy options to my diet including quinoa and barley for grains. (I already used brown rice.) I've discovered a good black bean salad and a good lentil salad. You'll love my recipe for kale, and I've started toasting seaweed. And, have you ever tried tempeh? It's a tasty alternative to chicken.