sea vegetables

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The Need for Seaweed, Revisited

March 12, 2010 in Personal Health, Vegetables by bursty | 2 comments

Jake wrote this great post about a year and a half ago, and I think it bears revisiting.  As I’ve written over and over, eating seaweed is something that I thought I could really do without as part of the macrobiotic diet.  Who would ever think that eating seaweed made sense?  But the more I learn about it, the more I think that eating sea vegetables (sounds better than “seaweed“) is natural and makes a lot of sense.

Another lovely way of referring to them is “Neptune’s Garden,” as Sundance Natural Foods does in this informative page.  As they note, sea vegetables are nourished by underwater currents, and they soak in the abundant minerals available in the sea.  And did you know that sea water and human blood contain many of the same minerals in similar concentrations!?  The minerals in sea vegetables are alkalizing, and whole brown seaweeds like kelp contain alginic acid, which binds with toxins (heavy metals and radioactive agents) in the intestines, renders them indigestible, and carries them out of the body — almost magical!

One of the current goals around [Casa] AGAD is to incorporate more sea veggies into our diet — what are some of your favorite ways of mixing in some of these nutrient-rich and magical macrobiotic foods?

Addicted to Alkalinity

February 24, 2010 in Personal Health by bursty | 3 comments

Let’s do some macro basics today.  Macrobiotics is all about balance (I wish I had a nickel for every time I wrote that here!).  At it’s very core, it’s about balancing out the blood from it’s pre-macro [usually] acidic state to a slightly alkaline state.  The Happy Herbalist notes that a balanced diet contains 35% acid forming foods and 65% alkaline.  As it relates to macrobiotics, yin is acid and yang is alkaline.  Your typical meat-and-potatoes-eating American has a diet that is WAY too high in yin/acid-forming foods (think meat, sugar, eggs, butter/milk).  The typical [intentional] macrobiotic diet is higher in yang/alkaline-forming foods (think daikon, miso, seaweed, fermented soy).  {Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post delving deeper into acidic versus acid-forming, etc.}

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Farm Fresh: What’s my Local?

September 15, 2008 in Farm Fresh, Seasonal Eating by Andrew Lee | 6 comments

I’ve read a handful of macrobiotic books and I sense a contradiction.  Eat seasonally / locally AND eat brown rice and sea vegetables.  Well… what if I’m from a region that doesn’t naturally produce brown rice or sea vegetables?    I grew up in the middle of rural Minnesota.  We were landlocked.  The closest ’sea’ was Lake Superior, and I don’t think it has any wakame for sale.

Do I really need my sheets of nori flown in from the other side of the world?
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Review: The Self-Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner *****

August 22, 2008 in Personal Health, Reviews by bursty | 3 comments

You saw it here folks, this one gets five stars! “The Self-Healing Cookbook” By Kristina Turner. My sister recommended this book to me a while back but we didn’t get it until just a few weeks ago… then it was on loan to a new friend and now we’ve had a week or so to get acquainted with it. Top ten reasons this book is a must have for all new (and old, I suspect) macros:

1. I’m a sucker for anything simple looking. This book has lovely little sketches inside (see the cover, above), it is written with a typewriter, and it’s just got an overall user-friendly, down to earth format and appearance. No big fancy graphics or photographs — if you are one for cookbooks with beautiful photographs of food, this one isn’t going to help you with that - but there are plenty of those out there.

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Farm Fresh: My Empty Wallet Is Full Of Seaweed

July 28, 2008 in Farm Fresh by Andrew Lee | 3 comments

I’ve been struggling to find balance in my life for a few years, but after reading Jessica Porter’s the Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics and Michio Kushi’s The Macrobiotic Way, I was inspired. Balancing yin and yang sounds like an adventure! And if I can manage a balanced intake then, heck, I might be able to moderate my crash and burn, adrenaline-fueled lifestyle. So… the morning I finished reading, I wrote out my first macrobiotic grocery list and headed to the local co-op.

Hijiki! Arame! Wakame! Kombu! Umeboshi! Shoyu! Nori! Miso! Dulse! Agar Agar! Holy Shitake! This stuff is expensive. I’m used to buying a tube of ground beef, salted butter, potatoes, and a bag of baby carrots. At $5 - $8 a pop for each bag of these sea vegetables, as well as all of the other organic products on the list, I’m starting to freak out because I’m about to drop a cool $200 on groceries. My new lifestyle is going to bankrupt me!

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The Need For Seaweed

June 13, 2008 in Personal Health by cooljuice | 6 comments

Hijiki, wakame, kombu, nori…usually if I can’t pronounce it, I usually don’t eat it. But in the case of sea vegetables, I have to eat my words.

Like most normal people, when I think of vegetables I think of tractors and dirt and farms and all things earthly. Being macro has challenged that paradigm for me by opening my mind (and mouth) to the fruits of the sea.

Since we have cut out or dramatically reduced meat and dairy products and heaped up on whole grains and vegetables we have been enjoying more varied, complex proteins and carbohydrates. The thing that vegans and macros need to watch out for is deficiency in essential minerals and proteins. Whole grains cover many of these, but tacking on sea vegetables to your diet can give true balance to a no-meat and dairy diet.

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