Customer Reviews

You Are All Sanpaku

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

"You Are All Sanpaku" makes wild claims. By eating nothing but brown rice and drinking very little toasted green tea, you can supposedly clear the symptoms of any ailment within two weeks and heal it eventually. Supposedly, you can cure myopia (nearsightedness) by eating brown rice and some grated radish. The author fails to mention that eating nothing but brown rice will lead to serious deficiencies. Macrobiotics claim that Ohsawa advocated eating brown rice only for a limited time as a kind of "cleanse," but in this book he clearly writes that eating only brown rice is the ideal diet for humans.

Ohsawa claims that his diet is a traditional one that bestows health on people. However, he does not seem to know anything about traditional heathy diets, because he did not study them. His point of departure is his philophy of yin and yang, not observation. Somebody who did examine traditional diets that kept generation after generation of people happy and healthy to a ripe age was Dr. Weston A. Price. Read his book, it will be a revelation in regards of what is truly a "natural" diet for human beings.

Ahem!! The very real benefits of macrobiotics aside, I must strongly take issue with the premise of this book, which is that somehow having a visible portion of the white of one's eye above or below the iris is an indicator of unhealthy diet, even a portent of doom. Come ON, people!

Must I point out that human beings of different ethnic origins naturally have differently shaped faces? And that when someone bends their neck to look down at something (like a shorter person holding a camera), the lower whites of their eyes automatically reveal themselves? The biggest point is this: there is absolutely no scientific basis in medicine to believe that this so-called condition has any relationship to one's health. We don't believe in physiognomy any more - when was the last time a doctor measured the shape of your child's head to see whether or not he was going to grow up to be a criminal?

Anyone who applies any basic reasoning will automatically see the fault in logic. Here are some supposed signs of "sanpaku:" chronic fatigue, low sexual vitality, poor instinctive reactions, bad humor, and lack of precision in thought and action. Held up as an example, based on his presidential photo, is John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy! Hmm, let's look at this...chronic fatigue? Despite having an almost crippling back problem, the man was a workaholic, who regularly put in a 70-80-hour work-week. Poor instinctive reactions? I guess you could say The Bay of Pigs wasn't a good call, but what about the Cuban Missile Crisis? I'd call that very good instincts. Bad humor? JFK had a touchy side, but he was an enormously positive person, and sometimes a brilliantly funny man. Lack of precision in thought and action? Kennedy was the smartest, most logical, and most coherent president ever. Low sexual vitality? In JFK? HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

It is a very common tactic of those who are seeking followers to find a real or imagined weakness that most people share, and shame an audience into looking to them for the answer. Ohsawa would gain an audience's confidence by speaking knowledgeably about nutrition, then slowly strip away their complacency by attacking their eating habits. Finally, he would attack them with a cry of revulsion: "You are all Sanpaku!" I really hope we have moved past this level of discussion when addressing the problems of obesity, type-1 diabetes, heart disease, and other diet-specific ailments that are much more significant than the shape of your eyeballs.

I think that the macrobiotic diet is nutritious, groundbreaking, and a very important part of the nutrition re-think of recent times. But to base it on a principle that is at best pseudoscience and at worst possibly meant to inspire self-loathing in Westerners is tragic. Question this poppycock!

As a youth in the 70's I was a fairly strict macrobiotic. I should have been leery of this book right off the bat. The forward, back then, had Ohsawa ruminating about the violent Westerners vs. the peaceful and serene Japanese (because of the different diets). He must have been commenting on his opinion about roller derby vs tea ceremony, but he forgot to mention that it had been only 30 years since the Rape of Nanking and Pearl Harbor. This should have been a significant warning about the bias and fantasy in this book.
The second warning about this diet was a kind of cultish adherence to the diet. Just like following some sociopathic Guru, if you found yourself feeling sick, it meant you weren't doing it enough. It had to be your fault. Time for the "number 7" brown rice fast.
I knew many macrobiotics - people who earned their living as cooks or diet counselors. A number of them flipped out, left their wives and took off without a trace, or just went totally crazy.
Truly, is there any evidence that across a large population this diet is healthy? As far as I am concerned, I would rather be a 200 lb, vital meat eater, than be 150 lbs and risk my bone density, muscle strength and nervous system with this low protein and nearly zilch fat diet.
If you have MS or cancer or some horrible degenerative disease, this diet may be useful to you. But most people don't need it and will not thrive on it and the concomitant spirituality it professes.

I feel that the introduction portion of the book would give a reader a good idea of the whole concept. Must read!

Great book. Excellent conduction. Delivered on time. Bought this for myself, and then bought others as gifts. Great points on healing your body naturally and information about why consuming certain products is not healthy for you.

Cons: Ohsawa(the author)made a list of supposedly 'Sanpaku' celebrities, many of whom later died.

Problem: He based his idea that they were 'sanpaku' on photos, and the angle of a photo can make a person look like his eye whites are larger or smaller; he would have needed to have done that in person for it to be valid. Later, many of these people died, including JFK. This was supposed 'proof' that they were sanpaku. Everybody dies, many in unexpected fashion. Make a list today of twenty celebrities, put it in a time capsule, and many will be dead in a couple of decades. Phony psychics get famous that way. Make two hundred predictions at the beginning of the year, especially about death, or sickness, or financial issues, all of which happen to every human being at some point. When one is correct, brag about it. Would bullets have bounced off JFK's head if he had eaten more brown rice? And if untimely death equals sanpaku, were all the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died in the atomic blast sanpaku? Come on. He couldn't miss by diagnosing that people would die.

Problem: Westerners are all sanpaku? Rather, we have a different structure to our eyes, the 'round eyes' as they are sometimes called. But that all westerners are ill is a generalization, and is no truer than other generalizations. Ohsawa lived through the Japanese surrender, and this sounds like he was harboring a grudge.

Problem: Eating virtually only brown rice and several other foods will never be practical for most people for an extended period of time. Most people will not do it, not Asians, not Westerners.

Pros: Having a 'go to grain' that one eats regularly, would benefit many people. Making the plan simple could make it easier to understand; not too many instructions, and perhaps the author realized that people would, on their own, add things to the diet.

You are all Sanpaku by George Ohsawa is truly a masterpiece for those looking to heal themselves. This 10 day diet will do all and more the author claims it does. I have to take issue with the other reviews here because I've used this diet and just like the Introduction by William Duffy have experienced the results. The claims made in other reviews are untrue. Nowhere does George tell you to eat only brown rice as a staple. There is a chart that shows you how to properly balance your eating with other types of food. He does have a starting point of 10 days for the initial beginning to rid your body of harmful toxins and to begin the healing process. The idea is to introduce other food after the ten day diet slowly. Like everything in life one must see if it is something that works for you. Experience should be belief but not before experience. As far as the Sanpaku (three whites) in Japanese, well we have all seen unbalanced people. Was John F Kennedy unbalanced? I'd say from some perspectives yes he was but as a human being no one is perfect. The facts about his true demise are covered up but the observation of impending tragedy predicted by Ohsawa before it happened speaks loudly to his power of observation in life. Your perception is your illusion bound by your consciousness.