Posts Tagged ‘Food’

Macro….what?….Fusion?!?

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

It doesn’t work anymore really…the name, Macrobiotics. “The times they are a changin’,,.” And it’s time for a name change. For too many years I’ve heard how people are put off by the name equating it with an unforgiving lifestyle geared only for those who seek it from sickness. Something more in tune with the times sounding less like an affliction itself, especially with all the meds and maladies that “…you should ask your doctor about…” Something more provocative, inviting curiosity for making a change, inspiring a creative quest for a tasty, culinary exploration into a healthier lifestyle. This baby has to expand and enjoy life.

Macro-fusion maybe? Sorry George (Ohsawa) and Michio (Kushi), but the time has come to rename this Rose called Macrobiotics. It is a Rose but the name still strikes unpleasant associations in the minds of many and doubts in their hearts. Like what is it really? It’s time for IT to get with it. It’s not Japanese anymore. It should be an intimate awareness of who we are, where we come from genealogically, environmentally, our DNA from however far back we can go including all the food textures and tastes that went into our makeup from way back there to here.

Macrobiotics sounds like a disease itself, like there has to be something wrong with you. Having come across so many who are hesitant to even try the lifestyle without being sick, and with managers of cooking schools impressing on me not to use this ‘M’ word in my classes, that it scares people away, and having taught it and cheffed it for at least half my life, I’ve come to the conclusion that it needs a name change with more pizzaz and panache. The content doesn’t need changing but does need expanding…infinitely. Michio used to say that if you are healthy, happy, and can transmute anything, then anything is good. Back in the early ‘70’s we didn’t have so many chemical additives and laboratory teched food ingredients, just major sugar, so I think he would amend that statement now. The point being that if you’re healthy, go for ‘it’. A few parameters are necessary and some guidelines to follow for when you’re paying for your playing. Only fair. Isn’t that what you’re doing by taking Western meds?

Macro: all-inclusive. Biotics: in-body. By virtue of it being called ‘Macro’, it is all-inclusive – something that seems to be misinterpreted pretty much by all to be the exact opposite – micro, tiny and inhibiting. Macro speaks to all foods of all peoples of all cultures of all biological make-ups and all should be included when adopting it as a lifestyle. We are Fusing our cultural food diversity. We are not all the same with the same sized shoe. We come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors ancestrally birthed from many different cultural and ethnic origins. That is Macro. When I lived in the Boston Macro birthplace back in the day, learning from Michio and Aveline in the early ‘70’s, it always bothered me that that the food preparations were pretty much geared to the Japanese palette. Delicious though they were/are what about my Jewish/ Russian/Spanish roots? Within each culture there are handed down cures and potions that in themselves are pure and ‘Macro-biotic’. Nothing wrong with them. Case in point: Chicken soup is not Japanese. Did I become healthy by embracing ‘pure’ Macrobiotics in the first place? You betcha! But as with all maladies, when you are well, you stop the ‘medication’. MacroFusion, as a ‘medication’, is whole food that can morph into a lifestyle which will be all inclusive and preventative. It will no longer be only a curing regimen but will be a way of life that intrigues you, a life of delicious culinary delights that doesn’t exclude friends and family but includes them and invites them into the MacroFusion world.

All other name change suggestions will be considered, so please tell me what you think.

Farmer in Chief

Monday, December 1st, 2008

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration–the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact–so easy to overlook these past few years–that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Complicating matters is the fact that the price and abundance of food are not the only problems we face; if they were, you could simply follow Nixon’s example, appoint a latter-day Earl Butz as your secretary of agriculture and instruct him or her to do whatever it takes to boost production. But there are reasons to think that the old approach won’t work this time around; for one thing, it depends on cheap energy that we can no longer count on. For another, expanding production of industrial agriculture today would require you to sacrifice important values on which you did campaign. Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them. Let me explain. (more…)

ABOUT: Wellness Chef Helen Sandler
Lecturer, personal chef, teacher, wellness coach, & speaker, Helen promotes a healthier lifestyle through common sense, organic / natural approach to a happier, positive life.

Helen Sandler is used to being an innovator and at the cutting edge of whole foods whole grains awareness. After graduating from SUNY, New York with a teaching degree, she began to follow her real passion for healthy cooking which took her from Los Angeles to Boston to attend the cooking school of the late and great master Japanese natural chef, Aveline Kushi. Later that passion took her to Kyoto, Japan to continue her studies, where she spent four more years learning the art of healthy Japanese cooking (Seishoku).

As Wellnes Chef Helen she is the featured authority at CTNgreen /wellness with articles in the library there and the virtual paperless magazine at CTNGreen Magazine



970-618-0731
helskitchen@gmail.com