Standard Diet and Healing Diet

Foods to Eliminate While On Healing Macrobiotic Diet

Healing Macrobiotic Diet-Transition and Discharge Phase

General Suggestions

Methods of Cooking and Food Preparation

Setting Up Your Macrobiotic Kitchen

You Must Have "Good Blood Quality" For Best Health

Common Mistakes In Beginning Macrobiotic Practise

Condiment Guidelines/ Use of Leftovers and Reheating Foods

Maintaining Macrobiotic Practise While Travelling

Transition and Discharge

What's Wrong With Soft Drinks?


Dairy Products





Excessive sugar can suppress the immune system, inhibit liver function, and cause energy loss, depression and obesity. You may be aware that sugar lacks vitamins, minerals and fiber, but do you know that your body actually depletes its own store of minerals and co-enzymes in order to metabolize it? It’s not just a matter of missing out on some important nutrients, you are actually burning up the nutrients. Maybe that’s why the most reported symptom in this country is “lack of energy.”

The fact that sugar is a pure carbohydrate is not good news to the 20 million Americans who suffer from carbohydrate sensitivity, according to researchers at Georgetown University, Washington, D. C.. Daily over-consumption of sugar can cause the pancreas to become over stimulated and produce too much insulin, leading to chronic hypoglycemia. As insulin causes the blood sugar to drop too much, you again crave sugar.

Sugar primarily affects your brain and nervous system. Sixty percent of the glucose from sugar is utilized by the brain, and fluctuations of blood sugar can cause any number of the following side effects: depression, anxiety, irritability, crankiness, headaches, uncontrolled emotions, poor memory and poor concentration. It also has been linked to confusion, dizziness, indecisiveness, hyperactivity in children, nightmares, increased aggressiveness, anti-social behavior, suicidal tendencies and mental illness.

By over stimulating the production of insulin by the pancreas, sugar causes low blood sugar or hypoglycemia. It makes the alkaline digestive juices acidic and upsets the normal alkaline balance in the gastrointestinal tract.

Sugar is a major contributor to intestinal cancer, peptic ulcers, appendicitis, cholecystitis or inflammation of the gall bladder, and hemorrhoids. Sugar interferes with the absorption of calcium, magnesium, chromium, and other minerals.

Hypoglycemia, or hyperinsulin, is defined as low blood sugar. Normally, the pancreas produces the exact amount of insulin necessary to maintain a small but stable supply of sugar in the blood. With hypoglycemia, the pancreas becomes overactive and over responsive to sugar, resulting in an over production of insulin.

Insulin helps us to burn sugar and to recycle reserve sugar supplies when the body needs them. Always maintaining the body’s insulin level within a specified range is critical. For example, if a diabetic, who has high blood sugar, takes even a small insulin overdose, the blood sugar bottoms out too quickly. The result is insulin shock, which can be so severe it was once used with electric shock as treatment for mental illness. This is the state that hypoglycemics live with on a daily basis.

The brain and eyes use only glucose, a sugar, for fuel. Other organs can substitute fats and amino acids if necessary. Since the central nervous system does not store glucose, it is totally dependent an glucose from the bloodstream. It is also the first to be affected by any deviation, whether high or low, from normal blood sugar levels. When these levels are low, the brain does not receive enough energy to function properly. It does not react well to starvation.
According to H.E.L.P., The Institute for Body Chemistry in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, there are an estimated 50 to 75 million Americans with low blood sugar tendencies. These are individuals whose body chemistries cannot handle sugar, fruits, starchy foods, alcohol, and stimulants like caffeine or nicotine. In a society where all these are considered a normal diet, this condition is often overlooked.