Basic Miso Soup

4 servings

Organic ingredients:

• 4 slices of corn about 3 cm thick, cut into half moon shape 3 cm
• Carrots, sliced thinly
• Pinch of cut wakame seaweed
• 600ml Macro dashi stock no. 1
• 25g barley miso, unpasteurized
• Garnishing: microgreens

Method:

1. In a stainless steel pot, bring Macro dashi stock to a boil over a gas stove.
2. Add corn, carrot and wakame seaweed, use a medium fire and continue cooking for about 1-2 minutes.
3. Reduce flame, add miso. Stir to combine. Remove from the fire.
4. Serve in a soup bowl, garnish with microgreens before serving.

The Macrobiotic diet prevents radiation sickness amongst atomic bomb survivors in Japan.

With the beginning of the atomic age in 1945, nuclear energy became a major personal and planetary health issue. Atmospheric atomic and hydrogen bomb testing as well as nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the 1970s and 1980s released radioactive particles into the environment that have been associated with causing leukemia, lymphoma, and other cancers; birth defects; anemia, and other diseases. Several foods, especially miso and sea vegetables, have a strong neutralizing effect on radioactivity and can help the body release Strontium-90 and other particles from the body.

In August 1945, at the time of the atomic bombing of Japan, Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D. , was director of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Francis Hospital in Nagasaki. Most patients in the hospital, located one mile from the centre of the blast, survived the initial effects of the bomb, but soon after came down with symptoms of radiation sickness from the fallout that had been released.  Dr. Akizuki fed his staff and patients a strict macrobiotic diet of brown rice, miso soup, wakame, kombu seaweed and other sea vegetables, Hokkaido pumpkin, and sea salt and prohibited the consumption of sugar and sweets. As a result, he saved everyone in his hospital while many other survivors in the city perished from the radiation sickness.

“I gave the cooks and staff strict orders that they should make unpolished wholegrain brown rice balls, add salt to them, prepare strong miso soup for each meal, and never use sugar. Sugar will destroy your blood!...

“This dietary method made it possible for me to remain alive and go on working vigorously as a doctor. The radioactivity may not have been a fatal dose, but thanks to this method. Brother Iwanaga, Reverend Noguchi, Chief nurse Miss Murai, other staff members and in-patients as well as myself, all kept on living in the lethal ashes of the bombed ruins. It is thanks to the Macrobiotic diet that all of us can work for people day after day, overcoming fatigue or symptoms of atomic disease and survive the disaster free from severe symptoms of radioactivity.

Sources: Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D. Nagasaki 1945 (Lodon, Quarter Books, 1981); Tatsuichiro Akizuki, “How we survived Nagasaki,” East West Journal, December 1980; “Let Food be Thy medicine”, Alex Jack 1999.

Other scientific findings on the benefits of miso:

1. Miso reduces breast cancer risk
2. Miso decreases tumors by two thirds in animal experiments
3. Miso removes radioactive elements from the body
4. Miso protects against stomach cancer and heart diseases
5. Miso’s antitumor effect on brain, breast, and prostate cancer
6. Miso promotes longevity

Types of unpasteurized miso available and distributed by Unsui Macrobiotics in Malaysia are:

1. Unpasteurized mugi barley miso
2. Unpasteurized genmai brown rice miso
3. Unpasteurized hatcho soybean miso
4. Pasteurized shiro white miso

Courtesy of Woods Macrobiotics