Microbiotic eating in LA

LOS ANGELES – One can only do so much eating green in Tucson.

So I caught a flight out to LA this last week to check out the eating green scene in the City of Angels (that and I covered the Arizona men’s basketball team’s road trip at USC and No. 5 UCLA for the Arizona Daily Wildcat.)

My cousin who lives in LA told me to check out M Café de Chaya, a restaurant that does not serve meat and as I later found out dairy either.

I caught up with the restaurant’s director of operations Bill Disselhorst, who stopped me from taking pictures in his place after a few clicks, and he explained that M Café features contemporary macrobiotic cuisine.

That means food should be eaten according to the season and climate where you’re located, so you wouldn’t be eating strawberries in the dead of winter in Chicago. That’s why the restaurant offers some salads that change with the seasons along with year-round entrees.

“They believe that people stay healthy when you eat according to seasons,” Disselhorst said.

The second aspect of eating a macrobiotic diet involves not using any dairy products, he said, or anything dependent on animals. M Café offers fish but does not sell anything with milk, butter, meat, chicken or white sugar.

There’s also no processed food or anything with preservatives on the menu, as most of it is organic and natural.

The reason behind that is people who eat a
macrobiotic diet believe humans should consume
grains as 60 percent of their diet, as that’s how it was before the Industrial Revolution.

“You’re going to be healthy because your cholesterol’s going to be low, there’s fiber in the whole grain, basically it pulls everything down, takes care of your blood really, really well,” Disselhorst said.

Macrobiotic eaters also talk about the yin and the yang of food, which needs to stay in balance for optimal health.

For example, Disselhorst explained, if a man eats a big streak, he’s consumed a lot of yang, so he wants to counterbalance that by eating a sweet dessert.

“What we’re trying to here is serve food that’s in balance so you’re not getting too much of one thing, too little of another, so when you eat you stay very well balanced,” Disselhorst said.

For more on macrobiotic eating, check out the Macrobiotic Guide, the Kushi Institute and Macrobiotics Cooking for some good recipes.

Check back with this blog next week for more on macrobiotic eating at M Café, as well as to find out which Phoenix Suns player stopped by the restaurant during a recent road trip.