Mythbusting macrobiotics

I get asked quite regularly what is a macrobiotic diet? I never know how to answer, I feel people want to hear what I do and don’t eat, but that is never accurate because macrobiotics isn’t all about what you eat.  It is more of a philosophy than a diet, a way of life rather than a temporary fix, it is perhaps best described by Warren as an orderly approach to diet and lifestyle. I’ll often launch into a description about eating for energetics without mentioning yin and yang which makes peoples eyes glaze over pretty fast. I find though that whatever I say people still want to know what I do and don’t eat. So I’m starting a collection of the best descriptions and explanations about the macrobiotic diet here, so that I can get better at explaining it all in a few sentences.

I have made a playlist on youtube called mythbusting macrobiotics, which has the following video featuring Lawrence Kushi the son of Michio and Aveline Kushi. He is a professor of etiology at Columbia University and I enjoy his balanced description of how he found an avenue of science that met his criteria of ethical inquiry and also matched his personal interest in nutrition after being raised in a macrobiotic household. He describes how science is reaching similar conclusions to those of the macrobiotic community about the relationship between diet & lifestyle and disease occurrence across populations. It is interesting when he modestly states that many major natural food companies in the United States were founded by people who initially studied macrobiotics.

The full playlist can be found on Mythbusting Macrobiotics playlist. Let me know what you think.