Chapter II
a. A Balanced Diet A balanced diet is one that provides each organ with its own kind of energy. Each organ’s energy also feeds primary energy to certain systems in the body. To nourish the body’s various systems, you have to plan your meals accordingly. Thus, a balanced diet has equal parts of the following five tastes and colors: The liver and gall bladder like food that is green and sour tasting. This food feeds the nerves. The heart and small intestine like bitter tastes and food that is red. This food feeds the heart and its vessels. The spleen, pancreas, and stomach like food that is sweet. This food feeds the muscles. This does not mean adding sugar or sweeteners, but refers to food that is naturally sweet. The lungs and large intestine like food that is spicy and light colored. This food feeds the skin. The kidneys and bladder like food that is dark and salty. This food feeds the bones. This does not mean adding salt, but refers to food that is naturally salty. While food also has cold and hot, Yin/Yang properties that are important to understand and balance, many macrobiotic diets are incomplete because they only balance food according to Yin and Yang and do not include the Five Phases of Energy theory. b. Chewing Well and Activating the Saliva Another important aspect of diet is chewing. You should chew your food so that it becomes like liquid, because this starts the saliva flowing. Saliva has tremendous power to help heal the intestines. First, the saliva determines the taste of the food. Then it sends a taste message along the channel or meridian to the stomach which begins to prepare the proper mixture of digestive fluids accordingly. You must, therefore, chew slowly. If you swallow too quickly, the stomach will not know what food is coming and will not be prepared. The food then travels to the stomach via the saliva where it can be sorted and easily assimilated. The spleen, meanwhile, has already figure out where it is going to assign the Chi of that particular food.
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