|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Balance of foods
Yin and yang combines with acid and alkaline to form this four-wheel balance of foods, which Herman Aihara recommends.
Please click here to read about yin-yang balance if you are not yet familiar with the concept. Similarly, click here to read about acid-alkaline balance. This article forms part of a series based on macrobiotic lectures that Herman Aihara and his wife, Cornelia, gave in Singapore in 1995. Following that, I published an entire issue of The Good Life, summarising his key teachings in Singapore. Herman Aihara passed away on 25 February 1998 and Cornelia Aihara passed away exactly eight years later, on 25 February 2006.
The “Four Food Groups” usually refer to meat; milk & dairy foods; grains; fruits & vegetables. Nutritionists say we must eat from all these four group. But new research suggests that the first two – meat and dairy – are not necessary. They are more harmful than good. Herman Aihara's “Four Wheel Balance of Foods” balances yin and yang as well as acid and alkaline.
Foods are thus classified as:
A balanced meal would have yin and yang factors, as well as acid and alkaline factors. Such a balance of foods can be achieved by choosing foods from diagonal sections in the table presented here:
For example, a “balanced” meal can consist of yin alkaline-forming foods (I) combined with yang acid-forming foods (IV). This is how people in modern societies eat: a big steak(yang/acid) with alcohol, vegetables and fruit (yin/ alkaline).
After a dinner party with lots of meat and cheese (yang / acid), you wake up the next morning wanting a coffee or an orange juice (yin / alkaline). Coffee is touted as an effective remedy for hang-overs. From the yin-yang viewpoint, this may seem unusual, since coffee and alcohol are both extreme yin. But the reason becomes clear when we see that coffee is alkaline forming, while alcohol is acid-forming. Similarly, some vegetarians crave sugar although vegetables and sugar are both yin foods. But vegetables are alkaline-forming, while sugar is acid-forming. Meat (yang / acid) is traditionally cooked with spices (yin / alkaline) or soy sauce (yang / alkaline). Why are there two different ways of cooking meat? It’s to balance the environment. Meat is cooked with spices in hot climates, but with soy sauce or salt in cold climates. Traditional diets are very balanced. And in a sense, modern diets are balanced too. Modern people eat meat, eggs and cheese (yang / acid) with sugar and chemicals (yin / acid). This is balanced with lots of salt (yang / alkaline). The modern balance of foods isn’t perfect. If it is, people won’t be falling sick. They need to eat more vegetables and fruits (yin / alkaline). But if we choose our food intuitively, according to our desires, we will somehow achieve a rough balance.
Intellectual food choices Trouble starts when we select foods based on intellectual ideas rather than natural instinct. And so some of the so-called healthy diets can be quite unbalanced. Health-conscious people who eat only fruits and raw salads, for example, are eating just one category of food: yin / alkaline. Some may balance this type of diet wit lots of nuts, which are acid-forming. So they balance acid and alkaline. But their diet still consists only of yin foods. It is still not balanced. Those who observe a no-salt diet are deliberately leaving out a major category: yang / alkaline. In theory, such a diet can still be “balanced”, since it can still have acid and alkaline as well as yin and yang factors. But when a major category of food is deliberately left out, it’s not a very sensible balance. The ideal balance of foods is achieved with all four types of foods. Such a diet may consist of:
This is the macrobiotic diet. Click here to read Part II of this article about the Four Wheel Balance of Foods. |
|||||||||||||||||||||