{Macrobiotic March} What is a Macro Plate?

A Macro Plate is the quintessential macrobiotic meal.

It’s a perfectly balanced plate of macrobiotic foods. My favorite macro plate consists of…

• Brown rice
• Beans or tofu
• Seaweed (hijiki is probably the most common)
• Steamed greens (kale, collards, chard)
• Steamed broccoli
• Steamed carrot or sweet potato
• KABOCHA or other squash
• Dipping sauce (I like tahini-based ones)

What does perfectly balanced mean exactly? This goes back to the concept of yin and yang that I touched on earlier this month. Foods (and everything, really) can have yin qualities (expansive, cooling, moist) or yang qualities (contractive, warming, dry). We should try to avoid things that are way off on either side of the spectrum. Let’s go through the list of foods in a macro plate…

• Brown rice –> this whole grain has almost equal parts yin and yang.
• Beans, tofu, and tempeh –> these foods are also in the middle of the yin to yang spectrum.
• Sea vegetables –> in the middle of the spectrum.
• Leafy green vegetables (greens) and round vegetables (I guess broccoli?) –> in the middle.
• Root vegetables –> in the middle of the spectrum.
• Kabocha / squash –> Do these count as ’round’ veggies? They are also in the midde.
• Tahini dipping sauce –> nuts are in the middle, but miso (salty – which I like in dipping sauce as well) starts to veer to the yang side of the spectrum.

Overall, a very balanced plate. If you were wondering, fish is a moderate food, though other meats (poultry, red meat, and eggs) are yang. Dairy is on the yin side.

I made a semi-macro plate just last night. I say semi because it had a fried egg on it and as I noted above, eggs are yang. Eggs are even more yang than poultry because they compress all the energy of a chicken into one small egg. That makes sense, right?

This was…

• Sauteed greens
• Brown rice (hiding)
• Avocado
• Kabocha squash
• Fried egg + ground sesame on top (it had a runny yolk – it’s not popped in the picture though)
• 2 umeboshi plums (top right)
• Tahini drizzzzzled on top

Tonight I had a macro-ish meal from the nearby Chinese takeout place. It was just scallops and veggies in a very light white sauce over white rice.

Even when I’m not trying, my dinners end up kind of macrobiotic-ish these days.

SO – Macrobiotic March is wrapping up. I have covered a lot of topics but are there any other questions at all that you guys have about macrobiotics that I haven’t answered yet? Even if I don’t know the answer I’d be happy to research it and give my thoughts.

But don’t worry – just because Macro March is almost over doesn’t mean I won’t be doing macrobiotic posts. I loved posting this month and I will definitely continue to talk about my macro finds.

P.S. I updated my Macrobiotics page – just in time for Macro March to end 😉