LETTER

A CONVERSION FROM MACROBIOTICS TO VEGN RAW-FOOD DIET

Good evening Valdo, my name is Giusy and I’m a naturopath. A year ago I bought your book Natural Alimentazione Naturale and this made me decisively change course, going on to read books by Shelton and Ehret. From then on, even though I was into macrobiotics, I started a research that still hasn’t ended, and with much effort I’m trying to introduce my clients to raw-food veganism.

THE STINK OF CORPSE BEHIND MY VEGETARIANISM

As far as I’m concerned, instinctively and without even knowing the word vegan and raw-food, I eliminated meat, milk and eggs. I was 14 years old and still lived with my parents, when it all happened abruptly. I simply started to feel an unbearable intolerance to the stink of corpse every time my mother cooked meat, and especially meat sauce. And when I used to wake up in the mornings to the smell of freshly boiled milk, I used to feel like vomiting because it smelt like acid. Surely this will be making you smile, but this is how my vegetarian story started.

BOTH CHICKEN AND EGGS EMANATED AN INTOLERABLE OFFENSIVE SMELL

When I smell chicken meat, it has a medicinal odour, and the same goes for eggs. Even more than the taste of these foods, it’s really the smell that puts me off. I don’t know why, but anyway I don’t miss them and that’s it.

MY COMPANION IS ASSAILED BY GOUT

However I’m writing to you about a problem of gout that has been bothering my companion for almost ten years. Four years ago when I met him, he had terrible crises that obliged him to remain immobile and to take massive doses of Colchicina and Zirolic, which obviously ruined his stomach and often provoked diarrhoea and gas in the intestines. The latter however he has had practically since childhood.

A CRAZY DANCE OF PASTA, PIZZA, MOZZARELLA, CURED MEATS AND COFFEE

Firstly he’s Napoletan, which means pasta, pizza and tomato sauce cooked for hours on end, vegetables almost roasted in the pan with heavily cooked oil, slices of cured pork, industrial quantities of buffalo mozzarella, very little salad almost cooked in vinegar, and other pleasantries of this kind. At least this is what his mother cooks, other than crumbed, fried chicken. Cereals, vegetables and pulses? Never been seen in their house. And then litres of coffee, very strong with loads of sugar.

NORMALIZING URIC ACID VALUES

Without becoming a vegetarian (he still eats eggs, tuna and some milk products) he has eliminated meat, cured meats, fried foods, cheese and alcohol, and so managed to lower his uric acid values to normal levels. However sometimes his feet continue to hurt so much that he’s unable to walk for half an hour. And he’s only 40 years old! Colchicina and Nimesulide are now a part of his life, and I’m unable to make him understand that he needs to change his life style even more.

AN ARTICLE ON DEFEATING GOUT

When you have time, please could you send me an article about defeating gout with a vegan raw-food diet, also because some of my research shows that there are also some fruit and vegetables that are incompatible with this disease (however I don’t really believe it). I will give the article to my companion. I have already told him about you, and he knows I’m writing to you. Trying can’t harm. He has already changed his diet a lot, and one has to give him credit for this, seeing what he used to eat and drink in the past!

NATUROPATHY CURES INSTEAD OF MEDICAL CURES MEANS DOING THE SAME CURING MISTAKE

My heartfelt thanks for everything you have already given me, and for having opened my eyes with your book. Unfortunately naturopathy is taught badly in Italy. In some ways we have substituted pharmaceuticals with natural remedies, while the concept still remains the same. For some time I have even distanced myself from my school’s line of thought. Was I a potential hygienist, without knowing?

Giusy

REPLY

THE POSITIVE SIDE OF MACROBIOTICS

Giusy, my compliments for the decidedly virtuous path you have embarked on, and for working for the precious benefit of universal health. Those who come from macrobiotics and then have the strength to close that door and make a further qualitative leap, have great prospects ahead of them. As I often say, macrobiotics isn’t all just orientalised cultural waste to be rejected. It teaches us a poetic respect for nature (within certain limits) and contributes the concepts of acid-alkaline, hot-cold and yin-yang.

It teaches us to appreciate whole grain cereals, to eliminate sugar and milk products, Fantas and colas. All these are very positive things. Pity that macrobiotic shops and restaurants are often loaded with sugared products, sweets, biscuits, cakes, chocolate and marmelades.

THE IRREPARABLE DEFECTS OF OHSAWIAN THEORY

Macrobiotics’ serious defects however far outweigh its good points, and these are the defects of its creator George Ohsawa, with all due respect to his memory. He was a man of character, and pressed by negative events in his family, he also went into crisis as a doctor, finding the courage to leave and to rebel against the ineptitude and the noted defects of western medicine at a time when he was already at the peak of his career.

Throwing your white coat into the rubbish bin when you are the health director of an hospital, is not something that anyone can do.

CHERRIES SOLD IN FRUIT BOUTIQUES

The trouble is that Ohsawa was Japanese, the son of a fish-dependent and salt-dependent country which is also magnificent and clean, but where transport is very expensive and the distribution of fruit and vegetables costs an arm and a leg.

The son of a country where cherries are sold wrapped individually in paper bows, packaged as if they were Perugina chocolates, at the modest cost of 20 Euros for 15 cherries.

JAPAN, WORLD LEADER IN TINNED BEVERAGES AND VENDING MACHINES

A country which, if it were not for bananas (the biggest importers in the world), tomatoes, Fuji apples and mandarins, would be completely on its knees in terms of raw food. A country with the greatest production of tinned beverages in the world, and with vending machines placed on every street corner, on every hotel floor, and even in the toilets.

OHSAWA’S VERY SERIOUS ERRORS DECREED THE DOWNFALL OF MACROBIOTICS

The clamorous errors that decreed the tremendous and definitive defeat of macrobiotics are very precise. Firstly, the very thick-skinned and demential interpretation of the concept of yin-yang and of acidification, discharging onto the negative pole, the feminine side, the cold, and acidic side, all the bad, inauspicious qualities of the universe, and placing on a crystal pedestal the cooking and salting of food, a clamorous and blundering error, besides being a tragedy.

Diseases are yin, the moon and the night are yin, sugar is yin, fruit is yin, nervousness is yin, women are yin, while on the opposite side, health is yang, the day is yang, the sun is yang, salt is yang, calmness is yang, masculine is yang, and so on.

YIN AND YANG, WUITH AN EXCESSIVE PREFERENCE FOR YANG

The concept has a basis of truth, if one doesn’t fall into the pitfall of fanaticism and scientific incompetence regarding food and biology, and if one doesn’t separate it from the most advanced scientific research.

The concept is valid if one introduces the concept of equilibrium between the poles, and not that of defending yang with a vengeance. We can even say that Ohsawa suffered from acute ying-istis, something which he diffused throughout the world, without understanding that the body is not a whole which can be assembled and substituted like pieces of Lego, but a machine which elaborates and transforms.

AN ANTI-CITRUS AND ANTI-FRUITARIAN HERESY

Ohsawa didn’t understand that protein doesn’t make protein, that salt doesn’t make salt, that alkaline doesn’t alkalinize, that acid doesn’t acidify, that yang doesn’t create yang, but that in the human body everything is transformed and re-created according to precise laws. And Ohsawa himself is most responsible for the anti-citrus, anti-fruitarian heresy that even now pervades Western culture in a suffused but demoniacal way diseducating and confounding people. And, if I were a woman, I would feel profoundly offended by such male chauvinist yangist macrobiotics!

IT’S GOOD TO BECOME MORE YANG

Even I practiced the positive aspects of macrobiotics when I used to play soccer and eliminate 3-4 litres of water at a time, yangizing myself and becoming relaxed and happy after every game, or even deliciously erotic when necessary, because every global movement and involvement of the body, every overheating and aerobic perspiration, every beautiful shared emotion produce a loss of acidity and a rechange of waters.

FRUIT ANYWAY, ANYWHERE AND ANYHOW

But fruit has always remained the absolute priority in my life, something I have always harvested, sought after, pursued and acquired. I have never left the family home devoid of several boxes of citrus fruit, apples, melons, grapes, persimmons and chestnuts, organic when possible, and non organic when it’s not possible, because even non-organic is still fruit, second quality no doubt but still fruit, more blessed by the sun than demonized by too many poisons. I never leave my hotel room, or my shoulder bag without an adequate supply of fruit.

HEROIS, PRESUMPTION AND CULTURAL DEFICIENCIES IN GEORGE OHSAWA’S LIFE

Ohsawa committed a great act of heroism and courage when he threw away his doctor’s uniform, but then he committed the serious error of lacking in humility when starting with his doctrine. If he had only known about hygienism, or just about Pauk Kouchakoff’s experiments regarding leucocytosis, or Paul Simoneton’s regarding electromagnetic waves, or those of Edward Howell regarding food enzymes, he would surely have renounced an all-out launch of that type of macrobiotics, and would have found modifying solutions which would have allowed the yin-yang theory to affirm itself without reservation, rather than allowing it become an insidious and often mortal trap for sick people drunk on overcooked brown rice and mu tea, afflicted with leucocytosis and precocious aging on a par with, if not worse than the average, despite the health aspects I mentioned in the beginning.

ITALY, COUNTRY OF COFFEES AND SUPPLEMENTS

That naturopathy is taught badly in our country is another clear and verifiable fact. There’s the impression that it’s moving at least. In this contradictory and deafened Italy, the rivers of coffee and supplements are in spate, while the supply of organic water immersed in sugary fruit juice is emaciated and struggling. From having been a healthy and happy country kissed by the sun and the sea, by art and culture, by Petrarchian and Nineteenth century style romantic love, by incredible, uproarious, licentious sex, and even by science and industry, we have become a population of whiners, of sick people and of impotent losers. No surprise that our national soccer team was indecorously eliminated from the last World Cup.

WE DON’T WANT TO LOOT MARCELLO LIPPI’S NATIONAL TEAM GRATUITOUSLY

As a simple fan of the Udinese Soccer team, I know only too well the magnificent boys called Di Natale, Quagliarella, Pepe and Iaquinta, and their companions in the national team. So obviously I was disappointed, as were all Italians. As the winners shouldn’t exalt too much, so the losers shouldn’t criticize themselves excessively. “One doesn’t kill a dead man” cried the bloodied, wounded and fallen Francesco Ferrucci to Fabrizio Maramaldo who was mercilessly impaling him during the battle of the people of Florence against the imperialists (Gavinana, 1530). Criticizing makes us feel just like looting persecutors.

MEAT, PASTA, PIZZA AND NUTELLA, AND SEE HOW THE DON’T RUN

But we can learn a lesson from the South African sporting episode. You, Giusy made it clear how one eats in Naples, a city that is a master of Italian cooking and of the Mediterranean diet. Meat, pasta, pizza and Nutella and see how they run went a TV ad that is more famous than Ave Maria, but which now appears as derisory as ever in the light of the facts.

A LESSON FROM SOUTH AFRICA

If we then add in coffee, supplements, high-fat (ham and Parmesan) high-protein, high-meat (cadaverine) and high-sugar diets typical of club and national teams, and add in the tattoos which hideously cover the only parts of our players’ skin which ought to be breathing freely (arms and legs), and add in the daily menu the regular vaccinations they’re subjected to (thanks to Lippi who was in favour of vaccines during the last swine flu pandemic), we have a desolate picture of the situation.

TOO MANY STIMULANTS, TOO MUCH ACCELERATION AND TOO MANY SUPPLEMENTS

The trouble is that our champions have become tired horses.

There is too much tension in the game, and too many cardiac accelerators (like coffee, colas and chocolate), accompanied by huge quantities of pig legs called “prosciutti”.

There is also too much money, but the real problem is not there.

If the horse is tired you can groom it and goad it as much as you like. It just loses strength, courage and illumination. The forwards don’t dribble and they don’t punch and shoot, they lack clarity and fast reflexes, they flop instead of capitalizing on the rare opportunities.

They kick out and too high, or they don’t kick at all, in every sense. Darkness and mistiness cloud their disturbed eyes so they don’t even see the adversary’s goal posts, while the defence becomes unwatchable and leaks like a sieve.

Then, if we lack even a pinch of luck, what on earth are we doing there? We would have lost even against the Galapagos Islands, if they only had a soccer team.

SO WE COME TO THE MAIN PROBLEM OF GOUT

Gout is the precursor of arthritis.

I don’t want to frighten your companion, but I do want to be frank and explicit, and invite him to take all the measures necessary in this case, as he has made some steps in the right direction even though he still remains attached to uric acid producing foods such as tuna, eggs and dairy products.

THE URATES AT THE BASIS OF THIS TERRIBLE PATHOLOGY

Gout is defined as a metabolic disease caused by the accumulation of urates which are deposited principally in the cartilage of the joints, causing swelling and even permanent deformation.

Gout, more a male than a female disease (16 in a 1,000 for men, and only 3 in a 1,000 for women), causes painful inflammations that bring about the progressive destruction of the cartilage itself, while also forming kidney stones due to salts acquired by drinking hard water and the intake of supplements, dairy products and cooked food.

The disorder is caused by excess uric acid in the blood. The deposits of noxious minerals (which only oranges and citrus fruit can tackle efficiently) can get to the point of blocking all movements of the joints.

THE CAUSE OF GOUT AND THE USUAL INEFFICIENCY OF PHARMACEUTICALS

Gout is caused by toxic deposits in the (especially terminal) joints, when the body is unable to properly eliminate its toxic waste products. The solution is to increase the body’s capacity to excrete and to clean itself. However this doesn’t happen with drugs like Colchicine, Allopurinol and Nimesulide, which only serve to mask the problem and to wreck our organs, leaving the cause unaltered, all the while winking at the sources of uric acid which remain firmly in place. There can also be further complications, as in the case of septic arthritis called psoriasis, or in the case of arthritic gout or uric-acid renal calculi.

URIC ACID IS A TERRIBLE MONSTER IN HUMANS

Uric acid is a highly toxic substance that accumulates in the bodies of adults, because children are normally not yet acidified to that degree, having just started the strange human sport of kicking ourselves, of sucking the milk of others, of drinking hard water, of avoiding fruit, and of cooking (destroying vitamins-minerals-hormones-enzymes).

Albumins are protein substances of organized bodies, composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and iron. Uric acid accumulates in the organism due to excess of albumins. The foods under accusation are all the ‘noble’ proteins, all spicy and matured cheeses (in particular Parmesan cheese), but also pulses, dried mushrooms, alcohol, coffee, tea and chocolate.

THE CAUSES OF GOUT ARE CLEAR

Uric acid is a curse in every sense.

It produces arteriosclerosis, angina pectoris, apoplexy, migraine, renal diseases, hepatic diseases, disease of the prostate and the bladder, rheumatism and gout. Sometimes gout is derived from a predisposition that the gouty acquire by living in families who for decades have perpetrated a certain dietary foolhardiness which has never been subject to discussion by any teacher or wise man, by any superior illumination or good, ancient cultural example. Gout is favoured by precise and undeniable facts, such as a meat-egg-dairy diet, alcoholic drinks, nervine drinks. Climatic factors such as cold and humidity also aggravate the situation.

AN ENZYME DEFICIENCY INHERITED FROM DADDY ADAM AND MUMMY EVE

Humans, vegan-fruitarian creatures by natural biological design, completely lack the enzyme uricase which is needed to disintegrate the dreadful uric acid in meat, fish, eggs, cheeses and coffee.

This enzyme however is abundant in the bodies of dogs, cats, crocodiles, hyenas, condors and snakes. The answer that we give to those doctors is that, all told, they are almost right in the sense that we inherited an anti-uric acid enzyme deficiency from Adam and Eve, the famous eaters of permitted and prohibited apples, but never of decomposing corpses.

TO DEFEAT GOUT AND ARTHRITIS THE FIRST THING IS TO STOP ALL URIC ACIDS SOURCES

Arthritis is a generalized inflammatory state of the joints, caused by an excessive presence of toxic substances in the blood. These can be liquid like water, or thicker like pus. There’s also dry arthritis where the joints literally crackle when they move.

For doctors, arthritis is just one of the many incurable evils in their interminable repertoire. Certainly one can’t defeat gout and arthritis from one day to the next. However if these pathologies are to become a thing of the past that we can even joke about, and no longer the drama of our daily lives, we have to stop provoking gout and arthritis in our bodies.

The only real enemies are us. Nothing can be cured if we do not block the sources of evil.

THE REGULAR DISCHARGE OF TOXIC MATTER BY THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

Nature (in the form of the immune system) doesn’t betray itself, and has its own methods of maintaining its operational efficiency in the battlefield which is life.

One of its methods is to discharge toxic accumulations in our bodies whenever they reach the maximum limit of tolerance.

If our personal type of blood tolerates 5% of inorganic minerals, cadaverine and putrescine, and other crap of this nature, when the rubbish exceeds the limit, immediately a discharge takes place.

The discharge appears as new growths, like cysts and tumours, or strong flu crises, or unending skin eruptions, and it can also appear, as is the case with arthritis, as deposits of toxic refuse in the joints, with the resultant inflammation, rigidity, swelling and joint pain.

FRUITARIAN VEGAN RAW-FOOD DIET AS THE ONLY POSSIBLE COUNTERMEASURE TO GOUT AND ARTHRITIS

Arthritis is a disease made of ups and downs, tending however to deteriorate and to become more and more serious. But before the joints become blocked and rigid, it is reversible like all diseases if we decide to replace our gouty and arthritic habits with lifestyles adapted to our type of body. The causes and treatment of arthritis have been known for decades. The role of the fruitarian, vegan, tendentially raw-food diet is fundamental. So if we really want to defeat these pathologies, we have to be rigorous and constant. We must throw ourselves decisively into fruit, without fear and without looking back.

WE NEED SUN, AIR AND VITAL JUICES

The advice that can be given is the usual, breathe better, get indigestion from air rather than from food, from the sun instead of from shade, from relaxing instead of from stress.

And if you have high blood pressure as well, the problem becomes doubled, so you have to normalize the system.

Raw food is very good, and a preparatory fast is also helpful, remembering however that during the expulsion of toxins there can also be delicate, painful moments of crisis, called eliminative crisis.

A RIGOROUS FIELD CHOICE IS TO AVOID DRUGS, SUPPLEMENTS, BEER AND COFFEE

One has absolutely to make a choice. As we often say there is a contradiction, a head on collision between pharmaceuticals and raw food, in as much as raw food liquidizes the blood without the use of heparins, and this more fluid blood becomes ultrasensitive to the corrosive and doping action of pharmaceuticals. Avoid alcohol and above all beer, loaded with almost as much uric acid as coffee. Rigorously avoid synthetic vitamins and mineral supplements.

NO ASPIRIN, NO DIURETICS AND NO FOOD CONTAINING ANIMAL PURINES

It is obligatory to liberate oneself as fast as possible from pharmacological dependence, choosing a system which progressively reduces them day by day, or even putting an immediate stop to them if you can. Avoid aspirin and diuretics in general, which augment the urate peaks in the system. If overweight, you should get rid of the excess kilos as fast as possible. Avoid foods containing purine or nucleo-proteins, above all from the animal kingdom. Amongst the vegetables cited are spinach and asparagus.

KEEP A LOOK TO GROUP B NATURAL VITAMINS

Some authors cite whole grain cereals, bread, and even rolled oats, as foods to be avoided as they are rich in purines. I repeat however that it is important to aim at a balanced vegan diet which also contains vegetable proteins as long as they are not overcooked, as they always find ways of being expelled when they are in excess. There must be a rigorous exclusion of fresh and tinned fish, meat stock cubes, salami and eggs. I would not at all exclude rolled oats (raw or slightly cooked) with plenty of crushed seeds from an anti-gout diet, as long as you eat fruit abundantly and well away from such meals. I would even include laxative green vegetables such as dandelion, chicory and arctium root.

A SPECIAL RECIPE IS KINDLY OFFERED BY NANDINI

Grate 2 fresh young courgettes and an equal quantity of raw green cabbage.

Peel 4-5 tomatoes, plunging them into boiling water for 6 seconds and liquidize them. Pour the tomato juice over the grated vegetables, mix and garnish with lots of fresh chopped parsley (excellent for helping nephritic people). A tiny pinch of salt and a spoon of olive oil, plus some vegan horseradish mayonnaise, can be also added.

THE PANACEA AGAINST GOUT AND ARTHRITIS

Eat an abundant quantity of oranges and citrus fruit for break-fast, eat loads of cherries, grapes, strawberries and apples. Raw cabbage, watercress, artichokes, fennel and radishes are also very good.

There is a panacea for gout and arthritis, and it is freshly squeezed carrot and celery juice or juice made from other roots and tubers, radishes, apples, beets and pineapple, also with a little ginger.

Completely forget about cooked food, and about every kind of junk-food.

Valdo Vaccaro – English translation by Nandini