Customer Reviews

Zen Macrobiotics for Americans

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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!

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.

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.

A friend got me interested in macrobiotics. 12 years my senior he is healthier than I and more active and refuses to by health insurance. I found this book very helpful in understanding the choice he made.

The book presents good diet guidelines. Anyone who follows these guidelines will probably be eating in a healthier manner than they were before. While I do not agree with everything, I agree with 90% and I have been examining diet recommendations for more than 25 years.

You are what you eat! Want to know the right foods for better health? Must read!