This macrobiotic food guru is the reason you and Gwyneth Paltrow eat like hippies
George Ohsawa preached the gospel of brown rice and balance in the 1960s
“The Hippies Have Won,” declared The New York Times in April of 2017, above a piece heralding the domination of natural foods — kale and kombucha, turmeric and quinoa — which are now mainstream. “Consider granola,” wrote Christina Muhlke. “The word used to be a derogatory term. Now it’s a supermarket category worth nearly $2 billion a year.” But the triumph of the natural food movement in America is a complex tale, and it owes a great deal to the advent of the macrobiotic philosophy. That story begins with a poor boy from a samurai family in early 20th century Japan.
George Ohsawa was born Nyoichi Sakurazawa in Wakayama prefecture in 1893. As a teenager beset with tuberculosis and ulcers, Ohsawa read Diet for Health, a pioneering 1898 book by Sagen Ishizuka, an imperial army doctor (sometimes called the Vegetable Doctor) who is credited with pairing the principles of Oriental medicine and Western science. Ohsawa retreated to the mountains where he claimed he cured himself largely by adhering to a diet based on the Ishizuka’s teachings and the ancient Taoist concept of yin and yang. He began to elaborate his theory of the links between diet and wellness, eventually making his way to Europe, where he reputedly took the name George Ohsawa because it sounded like the French phrase, “Oh, ça va,” or “I’m fine.”
Ohsawa used seven criteria to define health: lack of tiredness or fatigue; good appetite; good sleep; good memory; good humour; precision of thought and action; and gratitude. In 1931, he published The Unique Principle, a spiritual-philosophical tract drawing on both Eastern and Western thinking in which Ohsawa laid out his theory of the opposing forces in the universe and their application to a diet, based in part on Zen monastic cooking. It was one of eight books he would publish in French in his lifetime (there were also eight in Japanese.)
Ohsawa and his wife Lima attracted a large following, and the macrobiotic diet (derived from the Greek “macros,” or great, and “bias,” or life) took hold in Paris. Soon, the term became shorthand for a cure that would heal the ailing West. One of Ohsawa’s best known books was You Are All Sanpaku, published in 1965, in which he argued that because of unhealthy diets and habits, many westerners were dangerously off-kilter physically and spiritually and prone to chronic illness. (Sanpaku refers to the condition of having the whites of one’s eyes visible on three or more sides, i.e. to the left and right as well as beneath the iris. John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert were Ohsawa’s most famous examples.)
Among Ohsawa’s most ardent disciples was Michio Kushi, a Japanese-born international relations scholar who came to the U.S. in 1949. Along with his wife Aveline, in the 1960s Kushi kickstarted the macrobiotic craze that continues to echo today. (Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Scarlett Johansson have all been known adherents.) Drawing on Ohsawa’s teachings and his 1960 book Zen Macrobiotics: The Art of Rejuvenation and Longevity, Michio and Aveline Kushi began writing cookbooks and spreading the message. The couple opened Erewhon, the country’s first natural foods store, in Boston in 1966. They also started the East West Foundation to advance education about macrobiotics, and published a journal. They opened their home to many people interested in studying the macrobiotic lifestyle.
In the first half of the 20th century, the American diet had been through some notable changes. During World War II in particular, when rationing was commonplace, the emphasis was on making do with less. Recipes focused on stretching and reimagining basic ingredients. This approach arguably made cooking more complicated and less fun — which explains in part the postwar embrace of abundance and convenience. The 1950s saw the rise of shelf-stable artificial and “instant” foods, which resulted in unusual, Atomic Age combinations of things gelled, deviled, and stuffed. Tuna noodle casserole, anyone? One need only watch an episode of Mad Men to see that by the 1960s, unsurprisingly, many people weren’t terribly healthy. Meat, sugar, and booze were the holy trinity of American eating.
In contrast, the mostly vegan macrobiotic diet is based on eating whole, unprocessed foods. Brown rice is at the center of the diet, and the staple macrobiotic plate is a progenitor of the Instagram-friendly #buddhabowl, a serving of brown rice accompanied by beans, seaweed, and steamed vegetables — typically kale, carrots, and broccoli, and sometimes kabocha squash. Fermented foods (especially miso) and soy-based based foods such as tofu are also popular.
The macrobiotic philosophy divides food into yin and yang categories, and seeks a balance between them. Yin foods are considered cool and “expansive,” and they include vegetables, fruits, seaweed, and beans — foods that can be eaten fresh. Yang foods are considered warm and “contractive,” like eggs, meat, and fish. A balanced approach to this duality is thought to bring about health, energy, and calm.
But the macrobiotic way is a lifestyle, not simply a diet. For most of its proponents, it’s part of a larger journey of empowerment through self-healing. And the philosophy is holistic — physical, mental, and spiritual — and meant to bring about a sort of elevated consciousness. Embedded in the macrobiotic philosophy is a critique of a capitalist food culture driven by industrial production for profit and alienated from any genuine notion of health or wellness. Macrobiotic pioneers also drew an explicit link between natural foods and world peace, including, importantly, environmental wellbeing. “Unless people become healthy, and peaceful-minded from the heart, naturally, there is no peace in the world,” Michio Kushi said in a 2008 documentary.
Not surprisingly, the philosophy became wildly popular among hippies. The macrobiotic diet was the regime of choice for a great number of American communes. Cookbooks like Calvin Holt’s Zen Hash: Recipes for Peaceful Revolution emerged, hitching brown rice to the broader goals of personal fulfilment and social justice. And food culture began to divide along new lines. Perhaps more than ever before in American history, food was being seen as a divisive social issue, a marker of class, commitment to the earth, and hipness.
As tends to happen with diets, some “brown ricers” took it a bit far, subsisting only on the grain and tiny quantities of liquids. In 1965, a pregnant woman on a severely restricted macrobiotic diet died, prompting a wave of concern. In 1971, the American Medical Association published a paper saying they were “deeply concerned” about the Zen macrobiotic diet, calling it “an extreme example of a general trend toward natural and organic foods” and a “major public health problem.” The AMA also quotes Ohsawa at perhaps his most zany: “No illness is more simple to cure than cancer, through a return to the most elemental and natural eating and drinking.” Uh, okay.
Then as now, some followers of the macrobiotic lifestyle proclaim its ability to heal all manner of physical and mental ailments, from fatigue to diabetes. And over the decades, the diet has had to jostle for prominence with so many other food fads, from South Beach to Atkins to paleo and on and on. But the planet-friendly, wallet-friendly, mindful macrobiotic approach has endured — if not always as a strict regime, then at least as a guiding sensibility in many kitchens around the world.
