I love how a blog series drives up my traffic!! Today's quiz will be easy for most of my dear and faithful readers.
This diet was promoted by a concerned fellow citizen of the world who felt that our diet was ruining the planet. Not ecologically, necessarily, but spiritually, or morally, well not sure on that. Of course, the experts thought all that was bunk....
To correct the imbalance, food was supposed to be grown, harvested, prepared and eaten in a natural state. Meats were to be a small item on the table, and all food was to be gently prepared by steaming, braising and cooking with low heat.
Food was not to be seasoned with gobs of sugary and chemical-laden sauces purchased from the grocery store, but was to be carefully seasoned with tiny amounts of natural ingredients or home-prepared condiments. Most foods were to be eaten plain, with no seasoning added at all. Herbs and spices were discouraged, and reserved only for special occasions, like illness. Herbs and spices were seen more as a drug, and with unintended consequences (like lack of balance, or even obesity) if consumed regularly.
OK, you're probably thinking right now, trick me once, but never twice, 'cause you can tell by the title that this is the same sort of trick that I tried to pull when I used that title the last time.
And....DING DING DING DING DING... you are correct. This is a trick blog post. Who is this guru? It's Michio Kushi again. Not Dr. Guyenet. By the way, I eventually gained weight on this macrobiotic diet, so not only is Dr. G wrong, he's not even first! Not good for a PhD, not good at all, to not be first, that is. And to top all of that, a REAL doctor from a REAL school like Harvard has declared macrobiotics to be a fad diet and many of its fans to be eating-disordered, at least more disordered than paleo.
And here's a little end-note, to educate some of the experts. People who flock from fad to fad are just seekers who haven't found the diet that is right for their situation. Maybe some of the anxiety is caused by brain chemicals, but I'll suspect lots of the anxiety comes from the trashy way society treats fat people, and the un-ease fat people feel about their continued placement in that fat camp. So, it is good that Dr. Emily continues to clarify her position on eating disorders, and I hope she continues to herd the tribe towards a suitable and civil response to the camp.
I am afraid I am hopelessly pre-judged against all form of idealism in the world. As I noticed all changes occur only after a situation reaches the bottom, most things attempted before a crisis usually are utopias.
ReplyDeleteProbably people should change their attitude and neighborhood rules and start with keeping rabbits and Guinea pigs at home as a food resources, and each family who lives in own house should be expected to keep chicken and goats instead of spending a fortune on chemicals and poisoning environment while taking care of their perfectly manicured lawns, and every restaurant would feed some pigs with leftovers. Oops, it will be more smelly, noisy, harder, unholy than eating bland plant-based chow. More labor-intense with less moral satisfaction, even harder than cooking own food in a microwave from bought in store ingredients. So lets eat plants and feel good about saving the Mother Earth.
EB, I am not accusing you in being an idealist.
I would so love to pull up a lawn chair and watch this go down in Greenwood Village, a suburb of Denver where the HOA measures people's fences and orders noncompliant swing sets taken down.
DeleteIt is my point that there is no food shortage in US at all, just enormous waste of food, and mostly vanity-driven life-style choices. It is socially expected somehow to feel guilty eating meat , but ok to use tones of chemicals to keep a personal lawn in an abnormally perfect state. I remember how a mom of my son's roommate tryed to lecture him how it was environmentally irresponsible to eat stakes everyday.She got lucky I was not present. People are more concerned about looking like upper-class families than having more economical everyday decisions. In our neighborhood it is absolutely impossible to air-dry laundry in a way somebody may see it. You know, it is only poor people who do not use air-dryer. Such nonsense will continue undisturbed until real crisis arrives. In the normal problem-free life people are unable to change enough anything what matters.
DeleteAs I recall, it took a world war to get some of the manicured lawns of England tilled under to plant vegetable gardens.
DeleteWow, this is a big status symbol--having the bucks to buy a clothes dryer at Sears? I don't live in Greenwood Village or any other place where you have to run your paint or garden choices by a committee. (My xeriscape yard full of flowers wouldn't have passed muster.) But now that you've got me thinking about it, there's nothing in my neighborhood that sells anything high-status. Indeed, high status and common sense are often at odds. Here, you can buy a used book, a good used dryer, a used sweater, a bottle of wine and a can of wild sardines. What else do you need on a snowy day?
Steaming is too rewarding. To ensure minimum FR, foods should not be processed (ie. undergo heat/cut/washed) in any way.
ReplyDeleteyep, pull them carrots straight from the ground, and chow down.... salvage the other half of the green tomato that the squirrel stole and didn't finish.... think of the, er, STUFF clinging to that veggie as a probiotic! the good news is, if you can get enough people eating like this, you'll solve the population problem.
ReplyDelete...you don't suppose Goofenet got himself a vegan girlfriend, do you? it's happened before, to better men than he....
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DeleteI wanted to say "it completely makes sense". Developing more bonds with vegs community could explain a lot in SG case.
DeleteGalina, I had always thought that macrobiotics would never have caught on again if not for Hiroshima.
ReplyDelete..and I need to add that Macro wasn't about saving the planet because of the "wise" use of resources. It was about the balance of yin and yang. In macro, about the worst thing you could eat is what is featured on Dr. G's food reward friday series.
ReplyDeleteLori, I do have to run paint and plant choices by the committee, but I am free to run a hydroponics system and/or hang my laundry in the backyard. All the Mexican workers think it is a great idea, but the locals think that having laundry pulls down prices. Like, what is a pair of pajamas worth? 200,000 lower? Who knows?
ReplyDeleteI wonder what hanging out my Laura Ashley sheets and maybe some ridiculously shredded jeans that I'd normally throw out would do for my valuation.
DeleteLaura Ashley? I'd say that's low. How about some Haight Ashbury?
DeleteActually, Almond, macro has strict rules for how foods are cut, in order to change their energy, but Chinese-style stir-fry cooking is too chaotic, even if a suitable oil was used. Not cutting or washing foods is so Paleo!
ReplyDelete@Tess, oh I know, what is this all about, those Paleo elites getting controlled by their women? Look at those wusses like Jaminet and Matesz. We must resist those asian influences in our diet that dilute our scandinavian paleo heritage.
ReplyDeleteDr. Oz is not a paleo-elite, but at least ones he said that everything he knew about nutrition he learned from his vegetarian wife.
DeleteAnd then there's Morgan Spurlock.
DeleteMy bet is that Dr. G is a meat-eating locavore, but not much meat. I'll bet that if he didn't collect a measly post-doc salary, he would have a nice home, a large garden, and grow all his own food. Maybe some par-boiled snails or some wild-caught fish. Not too different from me except that I probably eat more meat and try to deliberately make my food tasty.
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