Principal food: brown rice

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Human beings have evolved to eat anything. As the final development of evolution, the species is able to take in all the preceding stages of plants and animals. We can eat anything, but what we do eat will create a certain quality of being that is expressed in our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, responses, actions and behaviour. As the most developed form of life on the planet, we have a responsibility to choose judiciously.

Corresponding to our evolution from sea invertebrates to the top of the animal kingdom, plants have developed through evolution to whole cereal grains. Macrobiotics holds that because whole grains evolved in parallel with human beings, they are our counterpart in the plant kingdom and should form principal food. Principal food is consumed daily and at every meal. As nuts and fruit developed with apes, and dinosaurs ate primitive vegetation, grain is food for human beings.

In the Standard Macrobiotic Diet for a temperate climate, around 50% of the total volume of each meal should be whole grains, such as brown rice, whole wheat berries, rye, barley, oats, millet, buckwheat, quinoa and others. Of the various grains, brown rice is the most balanced in structure and composition and is especially calming to our highly developed nervous system. Short-grain brown rice is the most nutritious and is recommended for daily consumption.

(figure from The Book of Macrobiotics, Michio Kushi)