Macrobiotic diet
| Alternative medicine | |
|---|---|
| Claims | Health effects from a diet avoiding refined foods and most animal products. Specific effects on cancer. |
| Related fields | Diet |
| Year proposed | 1797 |
| Original proponents | George Ohsawa |
| Subsequent proponents | Sagen Ishizuka |
A macrobiotic diet (or macrobiotics), is a fad diet fixed on ideas about types of food drawn from Zen buddhism. The diet attempts to balance the supposed yin and yang elements of food and cookware. Major principles of macrobiotic diets are to reduce animal product, eat locally grown foods that are in season, and consume meals in moderation.
Macrobiotics writers often claim that a macrobiotic diet is helpful for people with cancer and other chronic diseases, although there is no good evidence to support such recommendations. Studies that indicate positive results are of poor methodological quality. Neither the American Cancer Society nor Cancer Research UK recommend adopting the diet. Suggestions that a macrobiotic diet improves cardiovascular disease and diabetes are explained by the diet being, in part, consistent with science-based dietary approaches to disease prevention.
The macrobiotic diet is associated with Zen buddhism and is based on the idea of balancing yin and yang. The diet was popularized by George Ohsawa in the 1930s and subsequently elaborated by his disciple Michio Kushi.
Macrobiotics takes a view of health which contradicts science.
According to Kushi, one goal of modern macrobiotics is to become sensitive to the actual effects of foods on health and well-being, rather than to follow dietary rules and regulations. Dietary guidelines, however, help in developing sensitivity and an intuitive sense for what sustains health and well-being.
Macrobiotics emphasizes locally grown whole grain cereals, pulses (legumes), vegetables, seaweed, fermented soy products and fruit, combined into meals according to the ancient Chinese principle of balance known as yin and yang. Whole grains and whole-grain products such as brown rice and buckwheat pasta (soba), a variety of cooked and raw vegetables, beans and bean products, mild natural seasonings, fish, nuts and seeds, mild (non-stimulating) beverages such as bancha twig tea and fruit are recommended.
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