1. I am feeling the need to broaden my diet more but after hearing and reading about certain foods I fear that adding some of these foods may cause cancer or some other serious disease. Any suggestions?

Comments: The negative use of the word cause or causes when associated with a particular food is enough to invoke fear and concern in the bravest and most courageous of beings intent on nourishing themselves with a healthy diet based on traditional/macrobiotic foods.

Upon hearing or reading that this food or that food "causes" disease or even "too much" of this or that food "causes" disease can easily set one up for a macrobiotic experience based on fear of food that can have long lasting and damaging effects on ones health and more so, on ones happiness.

The expression "too much" meat, cheese, fish…"causes" cancer and or other diseases or even the same expression without the "too much" where a particular food alone is presented as dangerous or even poisonous to health is a way of relating to food that is beyond strange when you think about it. Yet, at the same time, this mindset is not exclusive to Macrobiotics.

In fact, it is common expression among diet proponents of natural food diets of all types, but when coming from us it does little to support macrobiotic education as it stifles creative thought and limits understanding.

Even western nutritional science does not use this type of expression in their food/disease connections although theirs is not much of an improvement. When speaking in the negative about a particular food they use terms like such and such "has been linked to" or when speaking in the positive "may help to prevent" cancer or heart disease. Furthermore, when nutritional or medical science speaks to us about food they rarely speak of quality and mostly speak of isolated components.

For example, with the exception of the rare scientific report researched by pro-organic organizations, you are not likely to hear from mainstream science how nutritionally superior organic broccoli is compared to commercial broccoli. It is simply, "broccoli may help to prevent cancer" or you will hear about the polyphenols or anthocyanins in blueberries as if these chemical components were more important than the blueberries as a whole giving one the impression that these chemicals are the sole reason you should eat blueberries.

When speaking in the negative, they tend to speak in generalities but their data and research are based mostly on processed or poor quality foods; "Saturated fats have been linked to high cholesterol and heart disease," is one of many examples where all foods fitting that category of fats are inaccurately grouped together. It is no wonder all this terminology around food has contributed to such confusion among people trying to eat a healthy diet.

When nutritional science does use the word cause in connecting food and disease it is used to describe the effects of eating food in general. An example being, "Overeating disrupts entire networks of genes in the body, causing not only obesity, but diabetes and heart disease, in ways that may be possible to predict, researchers report."

Alternately, when proponents of natural diets, especially Macrobiotics, use the word 'causes' when connecting a food with a disease it is just as confusing. Unless this accursed food/cause connection can be clearly described as to how it does so, and so far, it cannot, then perhaps the word cause is best avoided when attempting to connect it with a traditional nourishing food.

Connecting a food as an influence on an organ as done in Traditional Chinese Medicine and macrobiotic philosophy or describing a food as having an energetic effect on an emotion is not the same as accusing a food of causing a disease.

Many of these energetic food and mind/body connections are thousands of years old and recognized in every traditional culture in some form as traditional folk medicine, many of which are being validated through modern scientific research-but nowhere do we find a historical precedent for a traditional food as a cause of disease. Energetic correspondences between foods and human physical/emotional health are simply examples of a food's potential to influence you based on a particular food's unique characteristics and your relationship with it.

While it is obvious that poor quality processed foods are strong contributors to degenerative diseases and that this connection has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is no causal connection what so ever that can be made to disease by any naturally grown traditional food of any kind through western science or macrobiotic/energetic science. On the other hand, foods can contribute to biological and psychological symptoms like digestive distress or worry, food poisoning… but even these are bound to other factors that include combinations, eating late at night, eating to fast and not chewing, spoiled food…

The closest historical examples we have to natural traditional foods being causal factors to diseases are as follows. War, occupation of foreign lands and peoples, famine, drought and other environmental catastrophes all have an effect on a culture's food and health but even with these problems one would be hard pressed to find a traditional natural food that caused any health problems during or in the aftermath of these events. The food related diseases associated with these events are primarily the result of deficiency and malnourishment due to loss of vital food crops and basic supplies for living.

Does naturally raised meat cause prostate cancer or liver cancer? Does raw un-pasteurized milk from grass fed cows cause breast cancer? No one really knows but historically, there has never been a reason to connect these or any other traditional foods as causal factors to any degenerative diseases especially when consumed proportionately with other traditional foods and certainly, no single traditional natural food in and of it self has caused a degenerative disease that anyone knows of.

Does hormone-injected, artificially raised cows or chickens cause cancer? Does pasteurized/homogenized milk and related processed products cause cancer? They certainly have been linked to diseases, for the most part, due to what has been done to these foods and their combinations with other processed foods but even these cannot be said to individually cause cancer or degenerative disease.

All diseases are the results of numerous influences in our lives so use your macrobiotic principles to create the diet you need for your lifestyle with the highest quality foods you can get and rest assured none of those foods will cause the problems you fear.

2. I seem to have lost my interest in sex with my partner and am wondering if there is anything I can do with my macrobiotic diet to improve that? My partner says my lack of sex drive is because I drink coffee and eat chocolate on occasion and we do not live in a tropical climate. Is there any truth to this?

Comments: Each person's sexual energy is fueled by numerous influences and to get into all of those contributing factors is far to complex an issue to go into here. However, there is no question that what we eat on a daily basis can have profound effects on our sex drives and our openness to intimacy.

Physical and emotional warmth is essential for healthy sexual relations and this is evidenced in the expression, "She/he is so hot!" Every culture has its own unique expressions for the physical heat of sexual passion and it is warmth and heat rather than cool and cold that is referred to with sex even with cultures that come from hot steamy climates.

While it is true that tropical climates produce an abundance of yin foods, people who live in them eat a wide variety of both yin and yang foods to make balance just as people do in any climate. One example of a type of food that sometimes causes confusion among macrobiotics is spices.

Since many strong spices grow in tropical climates and are hot to taste one would think they would make us hot but why would they originate in a hot climate if that were the case? Like many tropical fruits, spices too originate in these climates to help balance the intense heat of the environment and therefore have powerful cooling properties especially when prepared and consumed with other plant foods. On the other hand using hot spices in preparations with animal products tends to produce warming effects due to the warming qualities of fat and protein inherent in animal products.

This is just another one of many thousands of examples where yin and yang demonstrate their dynamic interaction forcing us to free ourselves from the trap of linear thinking where it is so easy to label something one way (yin) or the other (yang). These two energies must be understood as a dynamic flow. When yin and yang are applied to food one begins to see how each food reveals dimensions to it's being that science cannot see because those dimensions are invisible to a linear mode of consciousness.

One of the first food related issues you might want to address before you consider what you could add to your diet for sexual improvement is what you are doing now that could be putting a damper on your sexual energy.

Let us first look at what foods of hot arid climates and tropical origin you might be consuming on a regular or daily basis. Not the accepted Macrobiotic foods from these climates spoken of in the Standard Macrobiotic diet: sesame seeds and oil - origin, Africa and today mostly grown in India; chick peas - origin, Middle East more probably India; lentils - origin, Syria; barley - origin, Morocco, Fertile Crescent; wheat - origin, Levant, Middle East. These macrobiotic foods from tropical and semi-tropical, arid regions are not the ones of concern as they are in no way connected with the problem of diminished sexual energy.

The tropical foods most directly connected to sexual problems in macrobiotic circles are the unspoken of and often silently accepted tropical foods in many peoples' daily macrobiotic diets. These foods can sometimes comprise equal quantity as that of grains and vegetables and sometimes more than that. Let us keep in mind that this is but an observation and not a criticism or judgment against those who choose to consume these foods nor the foods themselves. Each of us is free to design our food choices to fit his/her needs.

The regular use of coffee and chocolate in many macrobiotic diets however, is telling in that they are also some of the most widely consumed foods in not only other natural food diets but processed food diets as well, and for the same purposes.

Because of their wide appeal and ability to influence so many diets, they deserve to be understood in terms of their unique energetic properties. Much can be said as to their powerful influence on eating disorders, the emotions, and related issues but that is for another discussion.

These two foods/stimulants, while having some positive qualities also contain a host of chemicals with strong negative qualities that can have adverse effects on sexual energy. The negative influences of these foods are especially noticeable among those whose diets are lacking in reasonable amounts of protein and fat with which to buffer the drying and cooling effects of these foods.

While both coffee and chocolate are extremely cooling foods, fats and proteins are warming therefore the more there are of the latter in one's diet the less cooling and depleting the effect will be on the individual who consumes coffee and chocolate. (Coffee and chocolate both contain fat and protein however, the existent amounts in each is in small quantities which is why coco butter from chocolate is so highly prized and priced)

Part of this reason for not choosing better quality sources to replace those fats and proteins when in the reaction mode of craving is due to your individual understanding of macrobiotics and tropical foods. Are tropical foods less worthy or less healthy than other macrobiotic foods? Why would this be so when, as you have seen, some of your principle foods are of tropical origin, and coffee and chocolate with far more extreme effects on the body are accepted, to varying degrees, and often consumed in quantities equal to or in excess of non-tropical foods by many macrobiotic friends?

Why not consider incorporating some additional tropical foods with extraordinary health benefits and no side effects into your diet since you already do so anyway? Even a cursory examination of the macrobiotic principle "eating according to ones environment" supports a great degree of flexibility when left for you to individually define "your environment" by and through your macrobiotic view of life. That is part of the greatness of macrobiotics-that freedom to define and redefine ourselves through the basic vehicle of our daily nourishment, our food.

Considering your case of sexual deficiency, might not coconut milk/cream and avocados, two examples of tropical macrobiotic/traditional foods that have a long history of being acknowledged as foods that help to build semen and increase vaginal juices be useful in cases of sexual deficiency? Indeed, these foods can be considered yin foods but there are yin foods that deplete and there are yin foods that build and contribute to affection and passion. These two are of the latter category. Yin and yang are always relative.

Consider the nutritional and energetic properties of the coffee bean (origin-Arabia). A tropically grown shrub bearing a fruit with the power to release reserved and stored energy in an explosive manner while expanding the mind with a rush of ideas and thoughts, dehydrating body tissue and cells, and forcing the kidneys to work overtime all for that brief excursion into hyper time. Then consider the avocado, also of tropical origin. To the ancient Mayans the avocado tree was called the testicle tree because the avocado grows in pairs and produces a rich creamy, non-sweet nourishing fruit that supports the reproductive functions and fluids of both men and women.

Then consider the fussy, temperamental, high maintenance and decadent nature of the cacao tree that has to have everything in its environment maintain a very specific order or it refuses to bear fruit. Like the cacao tree, its fruit, the prima donna of plant foods, convinces you that you need no one when you have it for your companion. Sensuous, satisfying, comforting…in the privacy of your space, only you and your chocolate. You feel protected and safe like it when nestled beneath the canopy of the rainforest shielded from the harsh rays of sunlight.

What of the coconut tree so aptly called The Tree of Life by those fortunate enough to live in its presence? Over 100 life-sustaining products are made from it and it's fruit. A natural water filter with the ability to filter seawater into a refreshing juice with an electrolyte profile almost identical to blood plasma, a pure isotonic fluid that when consumed has the added benefit of cleansing the kidneys and bladder of deeply stored toxins. It has even been used as intravenous fluid in life threatening medical emergencies. A tree that bears fruit after nine months and through its life maintains among its fruits a variety of offspring ranging from infancy to old age and all in between living in continuous harmony together.

Yin really is relative and so is yang so when seeking foods to rejuvenate sexual energy consider some of those traditional macrobiotic foods of a sensual and nourishing nature that contain the necessary energies and ingredients to support the passion you want to put back in your relationship. Share these foods in intimate settings with your partner and reignite that fire again but this time do it with new and exciting flavors that will inspire you to continue your macrobiotic journey of love and learning together.

3. Why do some people end up quitting their macrobiotic diets while others begin broadening their diets to extremes? Can the latter group still be considered macrobiotic?

Comments: Whenever possible it can be useful to compare macrobiotics with other natural food diets (raw foods, vegan, low carb…) because natural diets often have similar patterns that show up with those practicing them and quitting and extremism are common to all natural food diets. Understanding the similarities in flaws and weaknesses with similar approaches to diet can help us understand our own interpretation of how we practice macrobiotics. All natural food diets have a high attrition rate and though the reasons for this are many, there are a few reasons they all share.

Diet Versions and Diversions

One of the latest and greatest celebrity hopping and media focused natural diets of the last couple of years is the vegan raw food diet. Like other natural diets, it has its strong points and its weak points. Furthermore, like other diets, it has several versions each with a specific goal. The two examples that follow do not represent the raw foods approach to diet in its entirety but they are versions of this approach embraced by many followers of living foods diets.

One version of the raw food vegan diet is what could be called the "Mastering Your Inner Monkey" diet. It starts with a wide variety of raw plant based foods and ideally, if you are doing it correctly, you will end up with the ultimate goal of eating only raw fruits, cultivated by hand, in the nude. There is no need to go into the absurd reasoning or rather, lack of reasoning, behind this extremist approach to diet but it is an example of a form of raw food diet that is widely accepted and practiced by health "conscious" people.

Another one, based on the same raw vegan diet, is what can be called the "Super food Scam" diet. This one has the ultimate goal of eating only raw super foods (raw cacao, maca, goji berries...) usually blended or combined to get the maximum buzz for your buck. Numerous super foods (most of which have been used traditionally in small quantities for medicinal purposes and not consumed all day in extreme amounts) are combined in exotic combinations.

Support for this diet is based on the scientific research of specific ingredients contained in super foods. By rationalizing the health benefits of these isolated ingredients (especially those found to be stimulating in some degree), one then creates the ideal diet for "perfect" health based exclusively on super foods containing these ingredients with the promise of getting you both healthy and high.

Using the latest nutritional science on particular super food ingredients appears to give this version of a raw food diet an air of authenticity and adding the old axiom "more is better" (common to many natural diets), appeals to the non-thinking mind. Additionally, one is expected to purchase his/her supply of super foods from a source where the prices are jacked up to percentages exceeding 50% or more than the same quality products available elsewhere. These two examples are mentioned simply to reiterate the point that macrobiotics is not alone when it comes to fanatical or extreme versions of diets.

Non-raw vegan diets too have several versions. Intelligent or educated vegans discourage the use of refined soy products like soy milk, soy hot dogs and other modern processed soy foods along with non traditional fats and oils-canola oil, safflower oil, soybean oil etc. Packaged food vegans, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with no animal products and pay little attention to quality when it comes to vegan sources of food. Refined sugar along with non-animal based processed foods find their way into this version of a vegan diet on a regular basis.

And what about the macrobiotic versions of diet? The most harmful or shall we say the most 'misunderstood' of the macrobiotic diets is the "Narrow Is Noble" diet or the "Seriously Strict" diet. Like other extreme diets, these versions of a macrobiotic diet make little sense in the context of the big picture. There is nothing noble about eating a narrow diet and being seriously strict or taking your diet seriously.

Practicing extreme discipline with a macrobiotic diet doesn't prove anything either, except that you are guaranteed to binge like crazy making all that seriousness and discipline result in potential mental instability, nutritional deficiencies, and additional health problems. Furthermore, no one is impressed by it. This is the version of a macrobiotic diet that finds quitters.

Equally problematic to the extreme version of a macrobiotic diet is the interpretation of the macrobiotic approach to diet by those who practice for it is this interpretation that is at the root of the problem for those who quit or give up.

Personal Interpretations

Considering that all natural diets have several versions, let us ask ourselves why there are several versions and more specifically macrobiotic versions of diet since the only types of macrobiotic diets one would even consider quitting are the versions mentioned above. Enough has been said about the macrobiotic diet to cure cancer version so we will leave that alone and focus more on the mentality of interpretation.

We can begin with the premise that there would probably not be any extreme diets if we still held the integrity and respect of traditional foods consumed in balanced proportions in our cultures and that the reaction of extreme diets is in essence the result of this loss of traditional food values extending from the farm to our dinner plates.

While our initial introduction to macrobiotics can set the stage for our macrobiotic journey, how it will be practiced is also based on our individual need to interpret food and diet according to our worldview and self-image. Both of these are brought with us when we decide to try a new diet.

People (celebrities, engineers, bank tellers…people are people) who, for years have been concerned about weight loss and self-image issues are more likely to interpret macrobiotics as a means of discipline with specific rules to be followed in order to accomplish their goals of weight loss, improved skin tone, a cure for disease…a specific means to an end.

Obsessive character types.

These people are more likely to take their new diet to narrow extremes because this is how they tend to operate and interpret things in their world. Their world is often perceived as a place that must be organized and structured to the extreme at all levels even if life does not always work out that way.

With diet, they believe that results are gained through extreme structure, limitations, and discipline. When things do not work as planned, they will often blame the diet, specific foods, and other people because things did not work out according to how they had envisioned it though their particular worldview or culturally induced self-image.

These people often find it difficult to broaden their diets unless given permission by an authority figure and in extreme cases; even an authority may not be trusted. Naturally, then, the attrition rate for macrobiotics would be higher with people focused on a specific expectation from their newly found culinary experience.

A common pattern with people who interpret diets this way is for them to move on to the next extreme diet for a while interpreting it in the same way as the last diet, as a means to an end. Narrowness and rigidity are common trademarks of diet extremists and usually leads to an "us versus them" mentality that includes the belief that my diet is better than your diet and therefore the people doing my version of diet are special and healthier than those following your diet!

There is a simple yet important lesson to be learned here for those who choose to interpret a macrobiotic diet this way:

Macrobiotics not only embraces all peoples as equal it also includes all traditional natural foods as options for creating an optimal diet for health and happiness.

Another category of people, those more concerned with an active lifestyle who simply want good nutrition, improved energy levels and fitness in general will be less likely to interpret a macrobiotic diet as the only means to an end. Rather, they will see it as a sensible approach to diet based on traditional foods that are easily incorporated into daily living without having to change too much beyond the quality and proportions of foods.

For these people, macrobiotics is an ongoing learning experience where understanding individual needs through food and natural living play an important, even essential-but not serious, role in their lives. For these people, incorporating new traditional foods of all types in their macrobiotic diets is common practice and when done in moderation and proportion shows a clear understanding of macrobiotic principles.

Through years of consuming processed foods and cultural conditioning, many people have naturally lost their connection and relationship to real food. This is why it is so common for people to want direction in what to do for their health. Natural food diets tend to cater to this lack of direction and confusion through control, disciplinary measures, and even fear tactics.

Macrobiotics too has been known to cater to these same problems with extreme conditioning yet, at the same time, it is the only natural approach to diet that goes beyond this mental conditioning where the freedom to choose and the understanding of all wholesome foods are encouraged through principles that are easily applied to all peoples and lifestyles.

Also Read Part 1