Great Construction

Eight, How to Eat

     To propound regimens and so forth on how a person should eat is most absurd. It is stupid. When you get hungry, it is sufficient that you bring chopsticks to a rice bowl and eat. At present, there are many areas that are mistaken due to the development of culture, so I will explain what the real way to eat should be like.
     It is truth that we eat because we are hungry, but that is not the way it is nowadays. Often we force ourselves to eat even though we are not hungry and we eat delicious foods in the most undelicious ways. Even though it is natural to say that we eat what we want, there are many strange, civilized people who force themselves to not eat what they want and force themselves to eat what they do not want.
     Actually, there is nothing as mistaken as fixing at three times the number of meals to be eaten a day. Equally mistaken is setting amounts to be eaten. Think about it. The infinite variety of foods in the world do not take the same amount of time to digest. Each differs. One variety may take three hours to digest and another may require over five hours for digestion. Therefore, if intervals between meals were to be set, it is only natural that there will be times when one is really hungry and other times when one is not hungry at all. This situation may perhaps be satisfactory when one is hungry, but to eat when one is not hungry because the determined time has come is as I referred to at the beginning about eating when not hungry. And then again, when very hungry, people tend to eat too much, and when not so hungry, is it not the most natural a rational thing to not eat too much? For example, one puts on a cotton coat and stays near a hibachi when one is cold. When one is hot, one puts on a yukata and drinks cold water. So, as you can see, because all things in human life cannot be uniformly set, it is impossible to determine fixed guidelines. Nowadays, when doctors talk about rules for health, they say that it is better when times for eating and amounts to be digested are set, but it should be obvious how erroneous this “rule” is. Even though doctors prescribe such regimens, to those in circumstances where such prescriptions unavoidably cannot be followed, where a specific time cannot be set, that eating may occur only at irregular times, those such as workers, doctors, say the only thing that can be done is for these people to reduce the amount they eat. But, for those who can eat as I instruct, I guarantee that the condition of the stomach will improve and health will be stimulated.
     My next topic is that people at present have very mistaken ideas about foods. It is said that such-and-such is medicinal or that this-and-that is poisonous, and there is a tendency for people not to eat what they want to eat and to tolerate eating tasteless matter they do not want to eat. If such ideas were actually the case, that would be all right, but actually doing so is an incredible mistake. God created the human being and the necessary elements were put into all foods to nourish that physical human being. Therefore, the required elements in foods have different forms and different tastes. Human beings should not be unilaterally deciding what is medicinal and what is poisonous. In other words, what one wants to eat at a certain time is what one needs at that time. What one wants to eat at that time becomes at that time medicinal for that person. When one’s throat becomes parched, one wants to drink water, and that is because one is dehydrated. What one does not want to eat or which is tasteless means that that food is not necessary for that person. If one forces oneself to eat such, it will become poison and not medicine. The most ideal way of eating is to eat as much as you want when you want to eat it. Invalids should at least do so.
     Next I want to discuss mastication. It has been put about that the more one’s food is chewed the better it is for health, and most people believe this, but this claim is also mistaken. I have personal experience in this regard. I believe it was a little over ten years ago. In the United States, there was a guy named Fletcher, and he created a way of eating he named Fletcherism. It is a way of eating, very popular at the time, where the food is chewed well, until it has no shape, and when it becomes a mushy mass, it is swallowed. I myself tried this regimen for about a month. I felt fine at first, but as I continued, I felt my stomach gradually and slowly weaken. Because I sensed that my physical vitality was decreasing, I thought this will not do and changed back to my original way of eating, after which I quickly recovered my strength. Through this experience, I learned that masticating one’s food thoroughly is a big mistake that weakens the stomach. I found that my stomach became extremely healthy when I chewed my food about halfway.
     To give an example of the foods I eat, I eat a lot of pickled eggplant and edamame in summer. A lot of phlegm is produced when eggplant is eaten. That is because the eggplant has a tremendous cleansing function within the body, and as a way of letting human beings know to eat a lot of eggplant, God caused eggplant to be plentiful. Edamame is in season only in the summer, thus meant to be heavily consumed in the summer months. Then, in autumn, it is good to eat as many persimmons as possible. Persimmons are said to cool and chill the body, but persimmons do not chill the body, they cleanse the insides for which reason, a lot of water is excreted.

Lectures on Japanese Medicine, Volume 1, 1935
translated by cynndd

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“Hachi, Shokuji no Hōhō” is the eighth chapter of Nihon Ijutsu Kōgiroku, Dai-ippen (Lectures on Japanese Medicine, Volume 1) which was compiled and distributed in mimeographed form in 1935. Although “Dai-ippen” (Volume 1) is included in the title where it has been anthologized, there are no subsequent volumes.