スキップしてメイン コンテンツに移動

The final part of Sagen Ishizuka's thoughts on healthy eating: Talent and wisdom

The main point of Chapter 5, "The Nature of Wisdom and Talent," is to eat the right foods and grow into a healthy, wise, and resourceful person. To achieve this, you should eat a proper diet of grains and vegetables when you are young to develop your wisdom, and then when you become an adult and enter society, eat more omnivorous foods such as meat and fish to develop your talents.

Intelligence or talent is the quality of the animal-based natron salt, and is associated with good decision-making ability and quick processing of things, but also with many mistakes. On the other hand, wisdom is the quality of the plant-based potassium salt, and although each action is slow, it is steady and makes few mistakes. In other words, whether one becomes a person with a lot of intelligence (talent) or wisdom depends on what one eats.


Compared to the past, people today value quick-witted, quick-decisive, and talented people. However, to complete a big project, you need to be thoughtful and persistent. To tackle a project, you need to have both wisdom and talent.


Finally, I would like to introduce the Buddha's great words of wisdom that were included in the text:
"To purify a person's mind and soul, one must purify his body. To purify the body, one must purify the blood. To purify the blood, one must purify the food one eats."


This concludes Sagen's introduction to healthy eating methods.


This book is a modern translation of a popular dietary regimen written by Sagen in 1898. It was published 126 years ago. I have written my detailed impressions of this book because I want modern people to know the thoughts of a great man from the past who has now been forgotten. I read it carefully, line by line, and sometimes I would eat brown rice, which Sagen considered to be the most important thing, while reciting the words in my head, trying to digest (understand) Sagen's message (brown rice).


The main points of this book can be summarized as follows: "If you eat right, your body and mind will be healthy. The right diet is brown rice, which is suitable for the shape of human teeth. If you eat poorly, your health will be impaired. A poor diet is one that ignores the local and seasonal characteristics, and is an imbalance of natron salts and potassium salts." I believe that this wisdom, which Sagen shared with the world more than 120 years ago, can provide a helping hand in this modern age, where many illnesses occur. Of course, it is not true that eating brown rice will cure all illnesses. However, as Sagen says, if we eat right, we will be greatly influenced by food, and we will gradually realize that we are alive because of food. In other words, we will understand that nature, which produces food, is our creator and foster mother, and we will become more conscious of nature. By eating natural food with gratitude, we will change to a natural state, that is, a healthy state. I would be happy if Sagen's message, which tried to get Japanese people to look toward nature again during the Meiji period, when Western scientific civilization had entered and science had become revered, reaches people today. If this piques your interest, I highly recommend you read this book.


I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for reading my humble writings on several occasions.


Source: Healthy Foods (published by Rural Culture Association, annotated by Hiroshi Maruyama, translated by Masanori Hashimoto)


22nd, Oct. 2024: Taka

コメント

コメントを投稿

このブログの人気の投稿

Want to try making some delicious squash dishes?

I first understood that cooking is a chemical reaction when I made a dish called azuki squash for the first time. Azuki squash is a dish made by simply boiling adzuki beans and winter squash together in water and seasoning it with salt, but the flavors of the two ingredients combine to make it very delicious. It's as if a chemical reaction occurs between the two while they are boiling, bringing out a flavor that can't be achieved by simply boiling them separately and combining them. Making azuki squash is very easy. Just boil the adzuki beans in a pot until they are soft, then add the squash and wait for the squash to cook. Once the beans are cooked, season with a little salt. Cut the squash into bite-sized pieces and rub with a little salt. Place it on top of the boiled red beans, cover, and heat until the squash is cooked. Once the squash is cooked, arrange it on the plate and it's done. It is very rare to come across a restaurant that serves a dish calle...
コメントを投稿
続きを読む

Sagen Ishizuka's explanation on bathing and health

According to Sagen, the necessity of bathing is to cleanse the body, refresh the mind, improve blood circulation, promote digestion and absorption, increase sweating, and excrete natron salts that have accumulated in the body. The frequency and temperature of bathing that each person prefers varies depending on the region they live in, the foods they normally eat, and their occupation. People who eat gourmet food on a daily basis or who take in a lot of salt because they do vigorous exercise tend to accumulate natron salt in their bodies, and prefer more baths and higher water temperatures than people who normally eat simple foods. It also varies by region, with people who live on the warmer southern sea side needing to bathe more frequently and in higher water temperatures than people who live on the northern mountain side. In the past, coastal cities in Osaka, Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu had steam baths separate from bathing facilities. This was a way to desalt the body, but it disa...
コメントを投稿
続きを読む