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{Macrobiotic March} What is a Macro Plate?

A Macro Plate is the quintessential macrobiotic meal.

ozu-macro-plate

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

10 macro plate souen extra kabocha

  • 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?

semi-macro-plate

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 😉

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{Macrobiotic March} Are Nut Butters Macrobiotic?

Happy March! Here in NYC we are starting to warm up… a little!

To jumpstart the month of macrobiotic posts, I have 2 things for you.

1) I made a Macrobiotics page for the blog. I went through ALL my posts and recipes and put links to the relevant ones there. Please check it out if you have time.

2) I wanted to answer a common question:

Is nut butter macrobiotic?

peanut-butter

This is a toughie – the basic answer is YES, nut butters can be macrobiotic.

But the caveat is that nuts (and nut butters) should be eaten in moderation: maybe 2-3 times a week. The most specific measurement I found was no more than 1.5 cups of nuts in a week. I am not sure how much nut butter 1.5 cups of nuts would amount to. Probably 3/4 of a cup of nut butter? That is a little less than 2 tablespoons of nut butter a day.

Any nut butter with added sugar is not macrobiotic, so macrobiotic nut butters are the natural kind – nuts should be the only ingredient. No added sugars, no added oils.

Get freshly ground nut butter, if possible.

Some nuts are not macrobiotic: peanuts are not (much as I love them), pistachios, Brazil nuts, cashews (another love!), filberts (aka hazlenuts) and macadamia nuts – these are all not allowed.

Why are some nuts avoided on a macrobiotic diet?

The simple reason is that macrobiotics encourages eating in harmony with your climate. The disallowed nuts are likely not native and could not grow in the temperate climate where most of us live (I am in the northeast US). I think these nuts listed above are only found in tropical climates.

The other reason for avoiding certain foods, like these nuts, is that (according to macrobiotics) foods can have either yin (expansive, cooling, moist) or yang (contractive, warming, drying) energies. Likely these nuts to avoid are very yin or very yang (probably too yin). Macrobiotics tries to help you strike a balance, and it’s easiest to get this balance if you are not eating either of the extremes (far on the yin or yang side of the spectrum). But more on this later.

Note that peanuts are a different story – most peanuts and peanut butters have fungus on them/in them (yep, I know – sounds gross – they still taste great). The amount of fungus allowed in peanuts/peanut butter is small (15 or 25 parts per billion I believe) but that is too much for macrobiotics to be okay with.

However – don’t lose hope! There are lots of macrobiotic nuts and seeds: walnuts, sesame seeds (to make tahini or sesame butter), pumpkin and squash seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, pecans, coconuts, and chestnuts (are these really a nut?).

walnut

chestnuts

I like fresh almond butter, coconut butter, and I adore tahini and sesame seeds in general.

Another note – if you’re following a strict healing macrobiotic diet for a specific ailment, you’ll probably be avoiding all nuts + nut butters, at least until you are healed from whatever your illness is. Then you would slowly add nuts and nut butters back in, as your body allows.

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I hope this answered any questions you might have about macrobiotics and nuts / nut butters.

What is your favorite nut? What’s your favorite nut butter? How much do you eat in a week?

  • My favorite nut is the cashew (not macrobiotic)
  • My favorite nut butter is tahini (macrobiotic) or peanut butter (not)
  • It depends on the week – some weeks I probably eat 2-3 cups of nuts; other weeks I don’t have any at all.