For a long and healthy life, switch to brown rice

In my occasional seclusion in a coastal Visayan village, I find what I need in the backyard garden: malunggay, kamansi, kangkong, and kamote leaves. And with brown rice to go with it, I have my simple macrobiotic diet.

The village girl I have hired as my cook is perplexed over this; she is learning some variations of easy-to-make utan, vegetables that she can prepare in a stew or sautéed or mixed with freshly squeezed coconut milk as I like it. With this kind of home-cooked meals, I am deeply satisfied for what my food is – organic, green, and healthy. When I bike through the villages for my morning exercise, I see children carrying bundles of malunggay that they wave at me on their way home from school, evidently having picked the leaves in the outgrowth of fields. I wonder if they knew how much this would cost minced to powder and sold in Manila’s health shops. I buy my other vegetables from the women selling the alugbati, okra, kalabasa, and talong, at five pesos in each bundle as thick as a fist. In total I spend about one hundred pesos a week, not counting the fresh fruits and the whole-grain bread that I get from a German baker and the brown rice that I have to carry with me from the supermarket in the city. All in all, this is a health freak’s nirvana – having the best of locally grown, in-season vegetables capped with an environment of minimal pollution, the smell of the sea’s iodine, and a magnificent sunrise waking you each day. Secrets of the monks For almost eleven years that I have been a vegetarian, sticking to a macrobiotic regime (for most of the time anyway) has kept my body in good check, the term itself connoting longevity in Greek. The diet was developed by a Japanese who had discovered the secrets of the monks centuries ago, adhering to simplicity as the key to optimal health. Basically it boils down to brown rice, and I know this is the part that takes knocking out -- an entrenched habit of eating white rice. We take white rice for what it has always been - as our staple food, soft and fragrant. White comes a long way in our history, past the colonial years, way back to our forefathers for whom rice was mythical. And so it is the memory in our palate that keeps us from going brown. We complain that it is tasteless and tough to chew. But once you overcome the initial distaste, you will take a liking to a new habit and discipline, and you will notice that you crave less for merienda after a full meal of brown rice. If you chew very slowly, the liquid mixed with the saliva helps clean the blood in our system. I used to cook mine in a steel casserole, adding some heaps of other grains such as barley, millet, corn, oats, and soaking in a small slice of dried kombu seaweed to add extra protein – and it was heavenly. (To make brown rice softer, soak it in water a good half hour before putting it in the cooker.) It was the unpolished rice that fed the old village folks – and they lived long – with the bran layer giving more protein than the white, more fiber and vitamin B6 and B, as well as magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, selenium, and zinc. It’s the best detox there is, and depending on your body’s needs and blood type, your macrobiotic doctor can help you lose or gain weight; either way you keep the nutrients in your body. Food as medicine At first try you might have to make more visits to the toilet than usual. Don’t freak out, this is physical detox at work. Instead, be grateful that toxins are rushing out of your system at high speed. Macrobiotic has ten stages of diet, the last one being the most extreme with just brown rice and water. I tried it once (with only ten per cent of steamed vegetables) for a period of four months, producing out of me -- and unexpectedly -- a great deal of emotional discharge. With this kind of reaction you’re allowed to freak out, but go through it just the same, and let it pass. The emotions we keep in our body are stuck energy which food as medicine cleanses out. This type of diet is usually for those with serious illnesses, and it may be wise to consult a doctor before undergoing such a major change. By and large, a macrobiotic regime becomes a philosophy: you will have to choose how much of a fundamentalist you can be, as it could put drastic limits to a social lifestyle. Flexibility is the key. At its worst I suffered a nightmare only a vegetarian could encounter: I went craving for a fish fillet sandwich at MacDonald’s, and when I finally took that clandestine bite, it tasted flat and papery. This, I realized, was a breakthrough. Whatever we feed into our body is a matter of habit. We can make a choice. I’m very satisfied with my village lifestyle in the Visayas. For one thing, it keeps me away from the temptation of sweets and dairy products – which are a no-no for macrobiotic diets. Instead I would look for substitutes in local-made honey, muscovado sugar, or better yet, coco sugar. My doctor says our food choices have to be adapted to the changing climate – it is best to eat vegetables and fruits that bloom in season – that goes with the changing needs of our body. I can’t complain when the papayas aren’t ripe. I collect the duhats in the monsoon. I make friends with the villagers who have got breadfruit trees, kolo in the local language, which they give to me for free, and usually more than I ask for. I discovered my love for kamansi from the generic family of arto carpus, which my cook stews in fresh coconut milk sprinkled with malunggay leaves and bits of ginger. It is rich in carbs and that could probably be what my body demands from my strenuous biking. And she knows I would be most happy when she boils lemongrass for tea. But there are times, just sometimes, when the puto vendor comes by and I can’t resist a piece or two of his white glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk, shaped in a triangle and wrapped in banana leaves – the way it is done in the Visayas. It’s delicious for breakfast with a full stream of honey, once in a while. - YA, GMANews.TV