"Pros and Cons of a Macrobiotic Diet"
Macrobiotic diets have been described by the American Medical Association
as one of the most dangerous dietary regimens, posing not only serious
hazards to the health of the individual, but even to life itself.
After all, macrobiotic diets are predominantly vegetarian
with a great emphasis placed on whole grains.
What's wrong with that?
Well, they also used to tell people to not drink water, which isn't good,
and to avoid fruit, so much so it's resulted in modern-day cases of scurvy.
Now thankfully, the macrobiotic diet has evolved over the past 30 years.
This is the more contemporary version: an emphasis on whole grains, vegetables,
and beans, while minimizing most meat, eggs, and dairy.
I don't like them restricting fruits, don't like all the added salt,
but compared to the standard American diet it's got a lot of things going for it.
Only a quarter of the saturated fat intake, less than half the sugar intake.
A very respectable fiber intake—two and a half times the national average—
but actually taking in more sodium.
So while the macrobiotic diet is an anti-inflammatory diet—
has a negative dietary inflammatory index score
as opposed to the pro- inflammatory American diet—
some of the most anti-inflammatory foods are herbs and spices.
So instead of adding all that sea salt and soy sauce,
the macrobiotic diet could be improved by using natural seasonings instead.
OK, but has the macrobiotic diet ever been put to the test?
Yes, for diabetes.
The restriction on water probably wouldn't help, as higher plain
water consumption is associated with lower type 2 diabetes risk,
though part of that may be because they're drinking less soda.
And fruit restriction is probably not helpful since fruit consumption
is associated with a significantly reduced risk of type 2 diabetes as well,
but same with green leafy vegetables, which is where the macrobiotic diet
can really shine: it includes lots of greens.
Look, you can do randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled,
crossover studies of kale and show that it suppresses
the after-a-meal increase in blood sugars.
Eat a meal of white rice, chicken, and eggs and get a big spike in blood sugar,
though significantly less adding just a tablespoon of dried kale powder,
as opposed to some kind of placebo powder,
though the effect is visually exaggerated by their y-axis shenanigans.
And macrobiotic diets use whole grains, which can significantly improve
insulin sensitivity compared to refined grains, which may be due in part
to all the wonderful things fiber can do to help our good gut bacteria thrive,
which could potentially lower inflammation and decrease diabetes risk.
But you don't know until you put it to the test.
Just three weeks on a strictly plant-based diet
composed mostly of whole grains, vegetables and beans,
and they got about a 10% drop in blood pressure,
a whopping 35% drop in LDL bad cholesterol,
and a 38% drop in fasting blood sugars in just 21 days.
Were these changes statistically significant?
Here's some three-month P values for you.
Those are my kind of P values.
In other words, yes, the changes were significant in every possible way.
Similarly, short-term interventional studies on diabetics
with these so-called Ma-Pi 2 macrobiotic diets
have been performed across four continents.
The "Ma-Pi" comes from the guy that came up with the diet, Mario Pianesi—
a strictly plant-based diet based mostly on whole grains and vegetables,
with legumes and some seeds, and decaf green tea as the preferred beverage.
Look at these extraordinary numbers: a near 40% drop in fasting blood sugars,
near 27% drop in LDL cholesterol in 21 days.
Now they did lose weight, a few pounds a week,
but those kinds of results were way more than one would expect with weight loss.
And here's the kicker.
That 40% drop in blood sugars was after cutting their insulin in half!
So those numbers greatly underestimate the effects.
Better results on fewer drugs. That's the power of plants.
All we need now is a randomized, controlled clinical trial
to really seal the deal, which we'll cover next.