Talk:Macrobiotic diet

Bias in text about macrobiotic diet

I feel the text about macrobiotic diet is very biased and subjective. I can hear a judgemental viewpoint underpinning the whole article and towards the dietary guidelines, rather than a neutral curiosity and openness about the topic. Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be non biased and simply for the sharing of information?

Apparently it is according to the Wikipedia guidelines: Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind: commercial, political, scientific, religious, national, sports-related, or otherwise. An article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to describe the topic from a neutral point of view.

This specific article seems to contradict this very guideline.

To me the macrobiotic diet sounds like a very wholesome and nourishing way to eat - eating seasonally, organically and without toxins, correct me if i'm wrong in thinking those sound are good things. It's definitely much better than the mainstream diets that most people adopt - take aways, high fat greasy foods, processed ready meals, processed non organic animal products full of hormones and antibiotics, high sugar and antibiotic filled dairy.

I feel it's very concerning that you've labelled the macrobiotic diet as a 'fad' diet and shared the info here with obvious bias and intention to influence in a certain direction. 2A02:C7C:6E40:AE00:709E:8E94:5875:601A (talk) 19:18, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

"Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be non biased and simply for the sharing of information?" - LOL. Supposed to, yes, but it's chock-full of the most extreme propaganda. Just read anything at all concerning (yes, that's what 'concerning' means - about something; not 'worrying', the way you use it) Israel ...

A WP:BIGMISTAKE. Bon courage (talk) 19:31, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't even know what these short hands mean lol i'm new to commenting on posts - deffo need some education around it. I'll review and Google it 2A02:C7C:6E40:AE00:559B:68E6:F8FC:BF3D (talk) 11:02, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't even know what these short hands mean That is why you can click on them and find out. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:44, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

I will, thank you 2A02:C7C:6E40:AE00:C0C0:B078:EC4D:6DD9 (talk) 12:41, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

@Bon courage i think this kind of response feels a bit dismissive: Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers

the original poster seems legitimately concerned that the article is not accurately summarizing the sources, though i understand that they may have not be so clear about this concern

there seems to be some confusion about the definition of a "macrobiotic diet," and whether it is "nothing but whole grains" (according to one cited source) or if it is "a diet consisting mostly of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains" which (according to another cited source) "is associated with general health benefits and lower risk for several diseases" dzahsh (talk) 14:17, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

You have misunderstood what the OP wrote, which had nothing to do with "summarizing the sources". Bon courage (talk) 14:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I totally agree that FAD DIET is a denigratory description. (a) Macrobiotics is not a 'diet', but a philosophy of life, of which the diet forms just a part. (b) It is a sincere philosophy based on age-old notions of balance, a concept echoed in many religions and approaches to life, for instance Hinduism, which identifies three gunas (qualities) in existence: dull, balanced and over-active (tamasic, sathwic and rajasic). (c) Of course warnings of fanaticism are appropriate, but fanaticism is a risk in any way of life or dietary plan! Countless people have benefited from the principles of Macrobiotics and I speak from personal experience and that of many close friends.

HOW CAN THE DISMISSIVE ATTITUDE BE CORRECTED? HOW CAN I EDIT THIS PAGE? WHO CAN? TruthIan (talk) 13:52, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

The goal of Wikipedia is to summarize the way topics are covered in reliable, independent sources. The best sources so far consider the macrobiotic diet a fad diet based on mysterious mechanisms with no evidence of effectiveness. If you want to change the article, present some high-quality sources. Your own personal experiences are not relevant. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 08:19, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Updated at last to less derogatory

I have been able to answer many of the criticisms above, including the mention of of Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland TruthIan (talk) 12:09, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

The content you are adding is WP:OR and not properly sourced. Your edits have been disrupting the article. We have good WP:RS in the lead, your edits are not helpful when you are whitewashing good sources. Psychologist Guy (talk) 12:58, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Fad diet

A fad diet is one that has a relatively brief moment of popularity. If the Wikipedia article is going to say that something is a fad diet, we need decent sources for it. Here are a few:

• doi:10.3390/ijerph20156461 PMID 37569002: "Despite its well-intended claim to be the diet for planetary health, this was considered faddish. With its roots in traditional Asian medicine (a diet said to balance yin/yang), western scientists referred to the diet as 'quasi-religious'."
• ISBN 9780199734962, |chapter=Diet, fad : "A “fad diet” is a scheme of eating that enjoys temporary and sometimes enthusiastic popularity. Usually created by one person or the product of a religious movement...George Ohsawa, a Japanese philosopher, developed Zen macrobiotics. It is a belief based on the laws of yin and yang described in the ancient Buddhist philosophy. An extremely restrictive diet regimen, this diet consists of whole cereal grains; locally and organically grown vegetables; small amounts of soups; beans; sea vegetables; and meat, fish, and fruit in limited amounts. Popular from the 1960s into the 1980s, this dietary concept has been criticized as having been developed without the benefit of scientific evidence, but its principles have made their way into mainstream healthy-diet literature and practice."
• ISBN 9780199734962, |chapter=Health Food : "The history of health foods in the United States is often intertwined with food faddism, defined as a prescription of foods with exaggerated and scientifically unproven health claims....From the 1960s onward macrobiotic diets became especially popular"
  • Note that Food faddism (which is about science) is not the same thing as a Fad diet (which is about popularity). Macrobiotic dieting is probably both of these things.
• ISBN 9780199734962. |chapter=Juice Bars : "The macrobiotic vegetarianism fad in the mid-1960s stirred up the juice-bar business with the creation of smoothies, originally a mixture of fruit, fruit juice, and ice sold in the back of health-food restaurants and stores."
• ISBN 9780199734962, |chapter=Vegetarianism : "From the late 1960s to the present, the influence of Asian religions has played a key role in orienting many Americans toward a vegetarian lifestyle. One of the earliest manifestations of this trend was macrobiotics, a quasi-religious food-reform movement with dietary principles based on a yin-yang dichotomy derived from Taoism."
• doi:10.36019/9780813591513-012: "food cultists, from old-line vegetarians to youthful Orient-oriented ‘macrobiotic’ dieters..."
• doi:10.1515/9781438436272-006 takes a more nuanced view: It "Macrobiotics initially came into vogue in the United States in the mid 1960s" but has "enduring appeal". (I think this could be a valuable book chapter for many parts of this article; this is the one source I most recommend.)
• This book: "Not so harmless was the “macrobiotic” diet that became a cult in 1960s North America. Adherents followed a regime of ten steps that increasingly restricted their diet until the final stage, when only brown rice, salt, and herbal teas were allowed. Few reached this ultimate stage, but some of those who did died of malnutrition. As with many food fads..."

Looking in a few dictionaries, I didn't see any that defined it as a fad diet. The closest I saw was in Green's Dictionary of Slang, which said that "rice and beaner" was derived from the macrobiotic diet and meant a person who was concerned with the issues of the 1960s.

doi:10.9783/9781512820010-003 also looks useful for developing the article, but doesn't address the fad/non-fad question directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 29 June 2024 (UTC)