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joe yang
25th June 2003, 11:29
From the preface to Introducing Macrobiotic Cooking, by Wendy Esko, Edward Esko writes;

"In macrobiotic cooking, we apply the various yin and yang factors in our food and environment to create balanced meals. The more yang environmental factors include fire, pressure, salt and time(aging): while the more yin factors are oil, water, lack of pressure, and less cooking time(freshness). Foods, like every phenomena in the universe, can be classified into these two categories, the more yin vegetable quality foods and the more yang animal quality foods. Also, within each category, individual items can be identified as more yin or more yang.

Cooking, for the most part, is the process whereby we take more yin, vegetable quality foods and yangize them with fire, pressure, salt, aging, and other factors to varying degrees, in order to balance our natural and social environments. In all but the most extreme polar climates, the mainstay of our diet should be vegetable-quality foods. However, when we do use animal food, it is possible to make them more yin with appropriate cooking techniques."