Zen Macrobiotics for Americans [Paperback]

Roger Mason (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2002

The first and only practical book to make eating well fun and delicious. Find out how to cure cancer and other incurable diseases; the best foods to eat; foods to avoid; the right natural supplements to take; natural hormone balance; life extension made easy; fasting as the most powerful healer and how to meditate.

This book expands upon the traditional Japanese macrobiotic diet to become a practical guide for Americans. It offers a diet that is more fun, tastier, more creative, less restrictive and still effective. Offers foods selections that are readily available in our markets and reworked percentages of food groups allowed. It should be the new "Bible" for health conscious natural foods devotees.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roger Mason is a nationally known research chemist, who studies life extension and natural health. He develops unique natural supplements and products. Roger is heard on 1400 radio stations every week as well as national TV advocating natural cures for illness. He is an author and lecturer and lives in Wilmington, NC with his wife, Ivy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

About This Book

Back in the late sixties most of the middle class youth of America seem to have joined the psychedelic generation and looked for new horizons to expand their lives. Most all of these young people had grown up on meat, potatoes, white bread and sugar as this is all they knew.

Along came very conservative George Ohsawa and talked about a way of health and longevity that expanded your mind naturally by being in tune with the universal order. This was ap-pealing to many people and became rather popular along with the general interest in natural food and herbal healing. Now over three decades macrobiotics is still popular and well known.

As I got older and had practiced this way of eating for over thirty years I noticed that all the books were, in fact, on JAPANESE macrobiotics written by Japanese people (or with their outlook) with Japanese cooking. Someone needed to write a book making macrobiotics more PRACTICAL, more down to earth, more fun, tastier, more creative, less restrictive, and just plain more American without watering it down or weakening it at all. There were just too many unneeded limitations and too much cul-tural influence that simply did not translate here. Foods included expensive, hard to find Japanese vegetables, only allowed 5% of the time, tea with caffeine, buckwheat noodles with white flour, refined couscous, very limited seasonings and condiments, few fresh green and yellow vegetables, with all that salt., There were no supplements or natural hormones, almost no raw foods, sprouts or fresh salads, and did not include fasting.

All the books on macrobiotics followed this same Japanese path without deviating. Someone needed to write a book that would keep the integrity and effectiveness of macrobiotics while expanding the scope of it. This will not be a long book, nor filled with recipes and personal stories. At first this may seem like too austere a way to eat everyday, but more and more it becomes your natural way of life and you enjoy it. You no longer want to eat meat, dairy, desserts or tropical foods except very occasionally if at all. After more than 30 years of personally doing this you can believe that this is a wonderful, fulfilling and rewarding way to live as well as the best way to cure ?incurable? illnesses.

Product Details

• Paperback: 94 pages
• Publisher: Safe Goods Publishing (August 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884820700
• ISBN-13: 978-1884820700
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #833,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Buddhism > Zen

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Pleasant Surprise, November 2, 2004

By 

Sue-Ann "Truth Seeker" (Lebanon, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Zen Macrobiotics for Americans (Paperback)

In the past, whenever I heard that someone was following a "Macrobiotic" diet, I cringed. Thoughts of a limited, boring, and tasteless diet came to mind. Roger Mason brings East & West together in a well-written book that clearly demonstrates how to eat healthy with a variety of foods and flavors. He offers an easy to follow eating plan combined with recommended supplements and lifestyle suggestions. This concise book is a must read if you want to look and feel better!

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat different approach to diet, January 29, 2005

By 

LF "Keep your feedback to yourself, these are... (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Zen Macrobiotics for Americans (Paperback)

What makes this book unique from most other healthy diets? Like most of the others, it tells us to avoid meat, fat, sweets. In these general ways it agrees with everything the health experts are always telling us, except of course for Atkins, who is on a planet of his own.

The main difference here, for me, is that we are told to really fill up on the whole grains. It is supposed to be the number one ingredient for us.

What is a whole grain anyway? No, it is not the whole wheat bread in your grocery store. In fact, when you go to the local health food store and look for whole grain bread, you had better ask the store employees for help, because breads aren't necessarily labeled whole grain. Some are, some aren't. If it has white flour, it is not whole grain.

I found a bread based on brown rice, and to my surprise it was really tasty, when toasted. It was frozen in the health food refrigerator. It is hard, substantial, and good.

I was surprised to see that corn is mentioned in the whole grains section of this book. Shows what I know, right? So buy that corn on the cob.

Brown rice and whole grain pasta are also in the category. Get the book to see what other whole grains you should be making the number one ingredient of your daily diet, according to this book.

The book then discusses beans. Basically, get every kind of bean. Vegetables are good too.

One thing that this book tells you to avoid is Nightshade vegetables. That includes potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant.

The book advises you to have an occasional piece of fish if you want, but to choose the lean fish like sole, flounder, scallops, and to avoid the fatty fish like tuna (oh my god!).

It attacks milk in a big way, blaming milk for a lot of heart-related deaths. It also has charts correlating fat intake to prostate and breast cancer.

I'm prepared to change my eating habits based on this book, to incorporate more whole grains and beans. I eat pretty healthy already, but I have a problem or two I need to deal with.

I don't know if the author's claims that nightshade vegetables are bad for you, that it is not a good idea to drink a lot of water, and that Vitamin C is much less important than we think, are correct or not. Sometimes he really goes "against the grain".

If the author reads this, I have a special message for him. You need someone like me to edit your book. There are a lot of editing problems in it. I'm doing that already for another published author who didn't go with one of the big publishing houses. I can get rid of the mistakes in here. I'm not talking about mistakes in advice. I'm talking about use of the language(...)It helps your credibility to eliminate the errors.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Macrobiotics for those who don't want to follow a macrobiotic way of life, October 9, 2008

By 

C. Snow - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zen Macrobiotics for Americans (Paperback)

I purchased this book hoping that it would be a good update to traditional macrobiotic reference material and it wasn't. The author dismisses both miso and bancha tea as too salty and containing too much caffeine. The author makes limited mention of the yin / yang food philospohy and then dismisses many traditional macrobiotic foods such as daikon as too difficult to find in the stores. He also does not even mention cast iron cooking methods that I could find, and only in passing says you can use a pressure cooker but most people don't.

The author also continues on about supplements, and bioidenical hormones, which he provides a convenient resource link for purchasing, which have nothing to do with traditional macrobiotics, or zen, or any eastern philosophy of medicine.

In essence if you are looking for a book about macrobiotics, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a book about hormones and following a vegan diet this may be for you.