When you prepare foods, it is very important to use all of the recommended cooking styles, because each one starts to draw different aspects out from the food. For sauteed vegetables, you use a high flame, a little oil and cut-up vegetable and some salt. You turn them so they cook evenly. This high flame and the turning of the vegetables makes your energy very active. Nutritionally, because the temperature is higher, it brings out different nutritional aspects from the food. Even if you water-saute (saute with water instead of oil) the vegetables taste much richer than they do when you steam them. This is because when you water-saute, this activity and also the higher temperature, even though it is done in water, starts to bring out more protein from the vegetables. It gives a richness and more strength than steamed vegetables do. Steamed vegetables, steamed greens, do not make you strong. But if you saute greens such as broccoli, you bring out more richness, actually more protein.

It is more physically oriented, more strengthening in that way. The brightness that you get when you saute vegetables is very different than the brightness from blanching. It is also bright, but not in such a clear way and has a richer color. It makes our energy active with a kind of richness.

We can change our energy and level of health by the food we eat.

Yin and yang is a way of seeing life. It is a way of bringing order, harmony and change into our lives. Once we know about this principle, we start to see things in a different way. Things start to come to life. Our education teaches us to look at things in a very static way, that something has a certain state and that’s what it is.
But if we look around, we can see that everything is constantly changing. All things are constantly harmonizing and balancing each other.

In essence, everything is dominated by an excess of yin or yang force. We consider everything coming down towards the center of the earth as yang. Everything moving away from the center of the earth we call yin. Yang means centripetal force. Yin, conversely means centrifugal force, moving outward.
On the yang side, this centrifugal force creates contraction or we can say more gathering. Whereas yin creates more the opposite, expansion or dispersion, what can be thought of as separation.

On the yang side there is unification. This contraction creates more downward movement. Naturally, yin would be up. As things move down, contracting, gathering, then they start to become more dry and hard. As things are expanding outward they become more wet or humid and soft. Then this downward movement continues, because this is actually a spiral. As we move closer to the center, then activity increases and things move faster, are more active. On the inside, however, they are more inactive, because energy is dispersing outwards.

This activity means an increase in speed, faster movement. Inactivity means a decrease or slower movement. As activity increases, so does the temperature, which becomes hot. Conversely the yin produces coldness. At this point, on the yang side, heat no longer produces further contraction, but the opposite, expansion. Eventually cold is arrived at, and in the same way, cold no longer produces expansion, but its opposite, contraction. And again the cycle continues until we have heat.
Yin in its extreme will become yang. Yang in its extreme will become yin. Yin and yang endlessly alternate. One constantly changes to the other. When we look through the eyes of yin and yang, we start to see everything as a kind of movement in a state of change with a certain direction. Through the framework of this up and down movement, we can interpret nature and just about everything in life, including personal and global health.

There is a style of macrobiotic cooking called Kinpira. This dish usually uses certain combination of vegetables, such as carrot and burdock, or carrot, onion and turnip. The essence of kinpira is that after sauteeing, we add water, cover the pan and let it steam. Steaming makes more downward energy. It is done in a covered pot with a small amount of water. The steam goes up to the lid, hits the lid and then rains down. Steaming is something like rain. What does that movement make?

It makes more downward, stabilizing energy. When you simmer the vegetables afterwards, it takes that active, rich energy and sends it down, deep inside. It makes your energy strong and active, but deep inside. Not so much on the surface, but deep inside. Kinpira is a dish we use for weakness or anemia, to make you strong and help you to discharge yin foods. That isn’t important to know, however.

If you start to look at food as energy it may look difficult to figure out. But once you start to look at it, then little by little you start to see it and then it seems interesting. Then you start to know which way to go with your cooking, whether you need more of this or that. If this seems difficult to understand now, try it!

When you start to choose foods, when you start to think of what combinations you are going to make, and what cooking styles, start to think “How will this nourish my energy?” I guarantee that if you do this every time you cook, before long, you will start to see these relationships.

Once you start to see food as energy, then food starts to come alive!
When it comes alive, we can better nourish ourselves, our families and our world.

Food is energy. We might think that vegetables are vegetables, but this isn’t the case. Each vegetable in a dish attracts certain aspects from the other vegetables. This is similar to how it is when you meet someone. You have a certain kind of conversation, a certain feeling between you. Then if you meet someone else, you have a different feeling, a different exchange, a different conversation. If two people are talking and a third person comes, the dynamics of the group totally changes. If a fourth person comes, the dynamic shifts again. If you leave that group and go and talk to another group, there is a different dynamic. Each one is drawing something out. Everyone knows that we act a certain way with some people and different with others.

We like to be with certain people rather than with others. Some people bring out things we don’t like too much. Others bring out things that we really like. We are more upward with those people, more happy or outgoing or creative. Others seem to block our energy.

With vegetables it is the same. When you make a combination of vegetables, each one draws out from the other and you end up with something unique, different from either of the original ones. When you introduce a third vegetable, it is again different. If you put onions and carrots and cabbages together you have a different dynamic. Onions, carrots and broccoli is yet a different one. Put lotus root in there and you have a totally different dynamic.

Each combination has a different effect. By each combination you make, you actually change the nutrition that you get. When we select our foods, we have to select according to the energy. First, from the quality of food, then, depending on what type of effects we want from the food. But after that, the dynamics that come into play from the combinations make endless possibilities and that is a great deal of where our uniqueness comes from.