HelpfulGardener.com

The Western diet is based on whatever we feel like at any given moment; we ship around the planet, grow in greenhouses and in general satisfy our whims instantly. Asparagus in December? Sure...raspberries in April? Why not?

Our subjugation of Nature extends from our agricultural dominance of the land to our tables. What difference will we make if we stop eating out of season? Is this a diet of principle if we do it to save the planet? It seems so. Sensei says we can throw away his food mandala once we have seen it once; even that principle is disposable...

Nature takes care of healthy people

Nature makes the finest gardens and the best food; once we accept that we will find nature's way of gardening in our own gardens (or learning not to garden in our own gardens).

HG

the prime consideration is for a person to develop the sensitivity to allow the body to choose food by itself.

This is what resonated with me, reading this book for the first time and coming across the statement near the end.

I had reached the same conclusion about diet 15 years ago... That in a healthy state, uncontaminated by environmental and dietary pollutants, our bodies KNOW what we need to eat. THAT's why we find ourselves standing with the fridge door open, staring into it's depths, then close the door, only to open it and stare inside, fruitlessly looking for that nourishment that we know we need but are not in there. That's why when we come across the right food, we find ourselves unable to stop eating it -- and this physical response is clearly different from addictive eating.

We need to UNlearn about food and diet, and the cultural practice to eat the same food at a sitting -- Because intellectually determining the combination of foods and portions to eat and applying the "formula" to everyone is inconsistent with individual needs at that particular moment.

I also was taken by the same line, Applestar. It sums up Fukuoka's whole idea about food and diet. A healthy diet arises of itself (ideally). When we become more in tune with nature our bodies are attracted certain foods as we need them. Diets based on human concepts, for example the food triangle, are simply ideas. If they are based on science, that means they are based on ideas based on other intellectual ideas. And on and on always moving away from the center which is true natural diet. Of course all this is complicated by the fact that most of us live in situations that far from "natural."