I first learned about Macrobiotics
when I lived in San Francisco and was volunteering
for Francis’ organization as a researcher
for a book on the ownership of the tools of agricultural
production (from seeds to equipment to feed mills)
– the Institute for Food & Development
Policy (now known as Food First).
Francis’ first edition of her groundbreaking
book – Diet for a Small Planet – contained
one glaring error, which she corrected in subsequent
editions.. Of all the alternatives to the Standard
American Diet, she warned readers away from the
Macrobiotic diet because it discouraged the consumption
of dairy products.
Ironically, it was that reference in her book
that introduced me to Macrobiotics, and inaugurated
my journey back to the New York City to attend
regular lectures at the Doral Inn given by senior
teacher Murray Snyder.
Bill’s
piece stands on its own firm feet, but I would
simply like to add a few points to buttress it.
The
Very Nature of Hunger:
Consider the nature of hunger.
The reason we eat is to sustain life, and, so,
the sensation of hunger is simply the life-sustaining
desire to eat, which makes hunger a positive force
in our lives. This is to say that the sensation
of hunger is not some cosmic mistake in the grand
scheme of things. At birth, we are endowed with
two senses of hunger: one for food, which ensures
our survival as individuals, and a hunger (or
“thirst”) for knowledge, which ensures
our survival and growth as a species. Both are
forms of sustenance in a very real sense, and
Macrobiotics alone supports this point of view.
As a social effort, it can be difficult
to galvanize support around ending hunger –
or ending anything for that matter – because
wanting to simply end something envisions just
that: nothing! How do we work toward creating
something we do not want? The absence of something
is hard to create. Instead, it would be more productive
to think and speak about satisfying people’s
hunger, just as we satisfy our own.
How
does one end hunger?
Nothing short of death does that.
During the course of our lives, we merely keep
hunger at bay every few hours. How does one satisfy
hunger? Begin in the home. We can learn to choose
foods more appropriate for our well-being, and
not eating to the point of dullness. Illnesses
attributed to people of the poorer nations are
due chiefly from want. Those of us living within
developed countries suffer chiefly from excess
in one form or another.
On a national level, we can encourage
our representatives to sponsor or support legislation,
such as the foreign aid appropriations bills,
which have allowed the United States to forgive
billions of dollars of debt 16 countries in sub-Saharan
Africa. (A UNICEF report noted that as many as
a half million children die each year as a direct
result of debt and recession alone.) On an international
level, we can support relief organizations such
as Oxfam America.
Oxfam not only provides emergency food relief
but emphasizes self-sustaining agriculture throughout
the world in order to lessens people’s dependence
upon shifting political winds and handouts.
For those who believe that there
is simply not enough food to go around, consider
that planting one single grain of rice will yield,
after only 10 harvests, 26 sextillion, 321 quintillion,
583 quadrillion, 711 trillion, 527 billion, 1
million, 953 thousand and 125 grains of rice (give
or take a handful).
Those who fear that ensuring survival for so many
people only ensures the growth of a world population
already difficult to feed should consider this:
Demographers are discovering that the best way
to slow, and even halt, population growth is not
through starvation but through an adequate food
supply. Reproduction levels taper off the better
fed the nation. Ironically, bread becomes an effective
means of stabilizing our world family.
Is this idea of satisfying –
as opposed to ending – hunger a mere play
on words? I think not. In the words of George
Bernard Shaw, “Playing with mere words is
like playing with mere dynamite.” Words reveal
our perceptions. Perceptions guide our actions.
We are fortunate in having the food security in
this country to the extent that we do.
Without it, we could not enjoy the privilege of
pursuing our higher personal, social and cultural
aspirations. It would be ideal to incorporate
those aspirations with the most fundamental and
immediate need we all share: sustenance. Among
all the challenges set squarely before us today,
there is none quite so fundamental and beneficent
as ensuring survival. It is one of the most life-affirming
statements we can make. In a word: Macrobiotics.
2. The Influence of Sir
Albert Howard, and How His Message Has Gotten
Lost.
Health
From the Ground Up
Discussion of diet and health
usually begins with the quality of the food on
our plate, but we need to back up one step to
understand the foundation of health: living soil.
During the first half of this century, soil scientists
Albert Howard discovered a secret to health through
trial and error in his agricultural work for the
Crown throughout India and Singapore. He was later
knighted for his work, which is summed up in his
two books, The Soil and Health and An Agricultural
Testament. Sir Howard discovered, and confirmed
through his fieldwork, the disease-resisting power
of natural living soil. Observing that untouched
forest and field required neither heavy dressings
of fertilizer nor blankets of chemical sprays
to maintain their health and fertility, Sir Howard
fashioned a soil composting system based upon
the grades of soil found on a typical forest floor.
The
Forest Floor
Broken by the canopy of leaves
overhead, oxygen-rich rainwater falls and percolates
down through the soil – highly charged water,
unlike the flat chemicalized tap water we pour
onto our houseplants. Lifting up the mantle of
last year’s leaves, you will discover a cool,
moist and vibrant world beneath. Suddenly exposed
to bright light and dry air, small visible animals
scurry for cover, as earthworms slip back into
their holes. This soil pulsates with life. Do
you know that once ounce of fertile soil contains
over one mile of protein-rich fungus and 20 times
as many microbes as there are men, women, and
children on our planet? Or that a single rye plant
grown in fertile soil was found to have over 14
miles of roots and root hairs? That worms leave
one ton of nitrogen-rich castings in every acre
of living soil?
The dynamics, or “ki,” of living soil
is a world unto itself. Moist, rich and sweet-smelling
soil crumbs composed of minerals and clay, “glued”
together by specks of decaying organic matter
and animal protein… the stuff of food for
plants. Plants cultivated in such soil naturally
resist disease. Sir Howard confirmed this time
and again by introducing numerous infectious diseases
into his plant populations. The diseases wouldn’t
take. He then experimented with animals that had
fed upon plants grown in this living soil. He
exposed cattle to the most highly infectious diseases
plaguing cattle in India at the time: septicemia,
rinderpest, and foot-and-mouth disease. Again,
the diseases wouldn’t take and his cattle
remained healthy and strong while surrounding
populations of cattle were decimated by these
same diseases. He then observed that his workers,
who also lived off food grown in this soil, lived
free of illnesses.
Sir Howard classified soil diseases into two broad
categories: overly acidic soil and overly alkaline
soil. Employing the art of physiogamy, or, visual
diagnosis (he would have preferred to call it
simply the art of observation), he could determine,
from the symptoms displayed by each plant, the
specific causes of illness, relating it always
to the diet… of the plant! He would readjust
the diet by amending the soil naturally in order
to reestablish its health and natural resistance.
The Nature of Disease
Soil and Health concludes with
a chapter titled “The Nature of Disease.”
Howard reflects on what he had observed regarding
diseases of the soil, animals and humans. He asks
the question, “Is there any underlying cause
for all this disease?” He finds an answer
in a book written by Dr. J.E.R. McDonagh, The
Universe Through Medicine, published in 1940.
Sir Howard asked Dr. McDonagh to sum up his philosophy
detailed inn that book. Dr. McDonagh contributed
the following passage to Sir Howard’s book:
“The Nature of Disease. Every body in the
universe is a condensation product of activity
[energy]. Every body pulsates; that is to say
it undergoes alternate expansion and contraction.
The rhythm is actuated by climate. Protein in
the sap of plants and in the food of animals is
such a body, and it is also the matrix of the
structures of the former, and of the organs and
tissues of the latter..
“If the sap in the plant does not obtain
from the soil the quality of nourishment it requires,
the protein over-expands. This over expansion
renders the action of climate an invader; that
is to say climate, instead of regulating the pulsation,
adds to the expansion.”
Dr. McDonagh goes on to explain how this over-expansion
of the plant protein gives rise to the creation
of viruses and the gradual degeneration of health,
first in the plants feeding from the deficient
soil, progressing to the animals and people consuming
the plants.
Sir Howard’s work provided the inspiration
for J. I. Rodale, the founding of Rodale Press
and the beginning of organized organic agriculture
throughout the Americas, Europe and the Far East,
but I believe there is a fundamental difference
between macrobiotic-quality soil and today’s
organic movement. I spoke with a grandson of J.I.
Rodale who is actively involved in the organic
agriculture movement in the United States. While
acknowledging Howard’s influence on his grandfather
and the organic movement worldwide, he was himself
was personally unaware of the startling discoveries
Sir Howard made regarding the health of the soil
and natural resistance. That message, which undoubtedly
inspired the original Rodale, has been lost. It’s
significance as it relates to agriculture and
animal and human health has been – for the
most part – lost, including even within the
organic movement.
Nature’s
Answer to GMO Crops.
Because of changing climate conditions,
and the movement of the Sahara south each year,
soil scientists and engineers are looking for
ways to introduce genetically modified food crops
that can withstand drought and arid growing conditions.
I was involved in a United Nations-sponsored online
dialogue with these advocates throughout the world.
What became clear to me is that these men (yes,
they were all males) were highly specialized engineers.
They had a superior understanding of plant genomes
but lacked almost complete understanding of the
interconnectedness of living systems, and no appreciation
for the cultural history that has led to deprivation
throughout arid climates.
Very briefly: After conquering
areas of South America during the 1700s, the Portuguese
exported cassava and introduced it to their colonies
throughout Africa. This nutritionally inferior
plant became a mainstay in the African diet, where
it remains to this day. It is also ill-suited
to the climates of northern Africa. I simply refer
readers to several United nations publications
– including The
Lost Crops of Africa and The Lost Crops of
Peru – for an in-depth look at the hundreds
of varieties of nutritionally superior native
grains, beans, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds
that evolved in arid climates, but that were displaced
by the European colonists over the past three
centuries. There is absolutely no need to genetically
modify plants when nature has done that over the
millennia. We simply need to reintroduce them.
In a word: Macrobiotics.
Jeffrey
Reel
Sustainability Coordinator
Omega Institute for Holistic Studies
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