Steven Acuff – The Benefits of a Macrobiotic Diet

Content by: Steven Accuff

Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.

Stu: This week, I’m excited to welcome Steven Acuff to the podcast. Stephen is a nutrition consultant offering a holistic approach to self-healing, health and wellbeing. He’s an expert in the field of the macrobiotic diet and his book, Eating the Wu Way, takes into account personal needs that otherwise often get overlooked with a common one-size-fits-all approach to food. In this episode, we discussed the principles of the macrobiotic diet, explore the acid alkaline balance and dig into the potential roadblocks that a modern day diet could present. Over to Steven..

Audio Version

Some questions asked during this episode:

  • How do you define macrobiotic food? (05:03)
  • Should we be worried about chemicals if buying non-organic produce? (19:55)
  • Should we be concerned about the acid-alkaline balance of our food or is it a myth? (25:45)

Get more of Steven

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The views expressed on this podcast are the personal views of the host and guest speakers and not the views of Bega Cheese Limited or 180 Nutrition Pty Ltd. In addition, the views expressed should not be taken or relied upon as medical advice. Listeners should speak to their doctor to obtain medical advice.

Disclaimer: The transcript below has not been proofread and some words may be mis-transcribed.

Full Transcript

Stu

(00:06)

Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and welcome to another episode of the health sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness, and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve long lasting health. Now, I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do.

Stu

(00:26)

Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We are into whole food nutrition and have a range of super foods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website. That is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay, back to the show.

Stu

(00:48)

This week, I’m excited to welcome Steven Acuff to the podcast. Stephen is a nutrition consultant offering a holistic approach to self-healing health and wellbeing. He’s an expert in the field of the macrobiotic diet and his book, Eating the Wu Way, takes into account personal needs that otherwise often get overlooked with a common one-size-fits-all approach to food. In this episode, we discussed the principles of the macrobiotic diet, explore the acid alkaline balance and dig into the potential roadblocks that a modern day diet could present. Over to Steven.

Stu

(01:31):

Hey, guys. This is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and I am delighted to welcome Steven Acuff to the podcast. Stephen, how are you?

Steven

(01:39)

I’m well here at Stockholm, Sweden. The morning has started and I’m full of energy.

Stu

(01:44)

I was just mentioning, I’m kind of getting to the reverse end of the scale as we’re coming to the evening in Byron Bay in Australia, but all good. Thank you so much for offering some of your time today. But first up, for all of our listeners that may not be familiar with you or your work, I’d love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself please.

Steven

(02:03)

Well, it began, my journey with organic foods, in 1971 at the age of 25. Just out of curiosity, I had no health problems, but I was involved in the original environmental issues and it made sense to me to eat organic food. So I went to a lecture about macrobiotic food and decided I’d give it a try for a week. And so here I am, 50 years later, talking to you about it.

Steven

(02:33)

I’ve spent most of my adult life in Europe. I come from Oregon originally, but Europe drew me. I always had an affinity for it. I have four children and nine grandchildren here. Went to 1999 to Australia, met a lovely Aussie lady who came to our center to learn more about macrobiotics and we hit it off. So I came down there and it was love at first sight when I came to Australia. And had I not had all of my family already here, I would already be immigrated there. Australia’s the perfect place for me because it’s got that laid back quality of the US, and yet it’s got a sophisticated European nature to it also. So for me, it’s just like tailor made.

Steven

(03:22)

In fact, I remember one man I met at a UK summer camp, a health camp, was asking me about Australia and he said, “The Australians are interesting.” He said, “You know, basically they’re Californian with an East London dialect.”

Stu

(03:37)

Love it.

Steven

(03:37)

Anyway. Yeah. So I’ve written a book. I wrote a book in German that came out in 1989 and sold 50,000 copies, nine editions. And I found out later when I wrote my second book in English that I actually could call myself a bestselling author. I thought you had to be on the New York Times bestseller list to do that. I’ve been public speaking since 1980. I’ve lectured in 27 countries. And I lectured in east Germany and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.

Steven

(04:08)

And when the Berlin Wall came down and Germany united, I went to the former Stasi Headquarters, that’s the East German secret police. And I got the file they had kept done me and I was much more important to them than I actually deserved. But they thought I was a CIA agent because they kept coming over to east Germany. And I was just teaching people about healthy food. I was interrogated once by the Stasi, but I pretended not to speak German. It worked out. They gave up and sent me out. [inaudible 00:04:43] get out of here.

Steven

(04:46)

Then I started a health center called [inaudible 00:04:50], which in Swedish means [inaudible 00:04:52]. Just unlimited happiness in the Birch trees. And I’ve put on many summer camps. So I’ve got quite a background in this.

Stu

(05:03)

That is fantastic. Well, our listeners and myself and 180 Nutrition, I mean, we are certainly geared towards learning as much as we can about health, nutrition, human optimization, anything that we can do to live our best lives. And hence the conversation today, because we’re very, very interested in speaking to you about one of your books. But first up, you used the term macrobiotic and it’s a reasonably common term, but I’d like to hear your description of macrobiotic food please.

Steven

(05:35)

Yes. It’s a good question because it’s kind of had its heyday. The 80s was really the big time. We had once in Switzerland in an international European macro summer conference and 850 people came. It was a huge event. And I took part in a German online nutrition conference recently, and at the registration you were supposed to give them what kind of food program you do. And there were about eight or 10 different programs and macrobodies wasn’t one of them. I just [inaudible 00:06:09] to have other at other. I just clicked. So what actually is it? Well, what it is, it’s an understanding of food from an energetic point of view, rather than just biochemistry. It’s understanding the heating and cooling qualities of food, the expansive or contracting qualities. So the [inaudible 00:06:29] trying to create an energetic balance with his surroundings.

Steven

(06:32)

When I first moved to Sweden, which is a cold climate as I’m sure many people have heard, the Swedes would ask me, “Why are you living here, this cold climate? We’re here because we’re Swedes, but you’re here voluntarily.” I said, “Well, it’s easy. I adjust my food. If I eat heating foods, I’m going to feel imbalance here, and I’m not afraid of cold weather.” Well, this is it’s called, the Yin and the Yang, using the oriental terms. But there’s nothing mystical about them, they’re just showing the opposites. Heat is Yang and cool as Yin. However, I’ve taken another turn in this because we’re Westerners and we need more than just energetic understanding. If someone asks me, for example, “Why don’t you eat potatoes?” If I tell them because they create a Yang deficiency in the body, that’s not going to impress anyone, you know? But if I tell them about how night shades affect the body, they’re very inflammatory, that’s something Westerners can understand. And so my whole thrust in this is with making it understandable to Westerners. So it’s like parallel two things. Macrobody is under understanding of biochemistry, making balance, and also the energetic balance. It can be vegan, but it doesn’t have to be. It definitely has one foot solidly in the vegan camp, for sure.

Stu

(07:50)

Yeah. And so what started the journey then with macrobiotic foods?

Steven

(07:57)

Well, the macrobio thing came from Osawa, a Japanese man who came to the west. In Japan it’s called [ Sukuru 00:00:08:07]. Sukuru means personal development through food, the way of personal development through food. And of course Sukuru was going to make a big impression the west. So he borrowed the term from a German doctor from the early 19th century, [ Christo Hufelant 00:08:24], who wrote a book Macrobotics or the art of making life larger. Macro bios or bios means, in Greek, large life, big life, great life. So he took that and the name Stuck, and so that’s what we call it. But what it is, it’s basically a whole foods based on whole grains and vegetables. And until recently, there was nobody having a real argument with that. But now in the low carb group, that’s come along, this has suddenly become a point of debate about what we should do.

Steven

(08:55)

And I’ll go in a little bit to that about why I think it’s a good idea to eat whole grains in spite of the say of the anti grain sentiment that’s a rife now at this time. And so it’s whole grains, vegetables, seaweed. A seaweed is a very important part because almost everyone is deficient in iodine. almost everyone. If you don’t eat seaweed, you really need to take iodine supplements or something. I prefer to take it in the ionic form that nature gives it to us, a seaweed. And I think one of the reasons I’ve seen so many dramatic recoveries over the years is that I’ve seen people normalize their iodine.

Steven

(09:41)

I worked in a German clinic for six years, mostly cancer patients, but also others, and we had amazing results. In fact, it’s still going today after 30 some years. This project is still going on in the clinic. And it’s very simple things. It’s giving the food what it needs to make itself healthy. So we got the seaweed then eating beans, pulses, legumes for protein because one of the problems that vegans have, I’ve discovered through experience, is that the importance of protein has not always understood. So they won’t have a real protein dish in their food, and it’s very easy to do that. You obviously don’t need meat, but if you have lentils or chickpeas, something that gives you that little more concentrated protein, it works fine.

Steven

(10:29)

What it does have though is also… The macrobiotic program has definitely got a Japanese slant to it. So miso for miso soup, then specialties like umeboshi. That’s U-M-E, ume, and then boshi, which now there’s even Aussie umeboshi from a company called [ Keo 00:00:10:49]. So you don’t just have to get Japanese products just like the miso is made in Australia as well. So, these are I ideas, but you’re not really eating just Japanese food, but I mean Japanese food is a good inspiration because they have the longest life expectancy of any highly industrialized country.

Stu

(11:08)

Fascinating. And so the principles of this then, the macrobiotic principles, will be outlined in your book, Eating The Wu Way. And these are the questions that we’ve been getting from our listeners as well. They want to find out more about this. What is the Wu Way and what could they expect from the book as well?

Steven

(11:30)

Yeah. The book is a collection of my 50 years of experience with macrobiotic food, as well as my 40 years of teaching and health counseling and coaching. It’s a book that really gives people a good guideline to follow. The book came out six years ago. And I noticed when I had the book to give people when they did health coaching stations with me, the number of successful results was much higher because the people could go in like, “What do you do with seaweed?” You walk away wondering, “Okay, now how am I going to do this? I’ve never eaten many beans before except out of a can. So, how do you do this?” Well, almost half the book is recipes by my co-author, Angie Bertacco who lives in Melbourne and anyone in the book can get it from her. I’ll give you the contact address later.

Steven

(12:27)

But the book is based on the Daoist principle of polarity. So Daoism is a philosophy of polarity, like the most obvious polarity is man and woman. I’m sure several people have noticed that this polarity creates attraction… at least one or two, I’m sure [inaudible 00:12:49]. And this attraction is part of the universe making balance with itself. The Yin and Yang are the opposite. So we create that with the food.

Steven

(12:59)

And I’ll just show you the cover of the book here to give you an idea. With this Eating The Wu Way… when I went online to look for a cover photo or picture, I found hundreds of symbols of Yin and Yang, and this was the only one I liked of all of those hundreds because it shows motion. You can see that this isn’t a static thing, but everything’s in motion. I was just lucky I only had to pay $10 to the rights to use this. So this is it. It’s just dynamic quality. Now Wu Way is actually a play on words because we have the English word way like the way out. but it’s actually… Wu Way is the way we write Chinese with Western letters W-E-I, wei.

Stu

(13:52)

Right. Okay.

Steven

(13:54):

Which is not according to international phonetics. So Wu Wei, the basic principle of Daoism is not doing. It’s sometimes translated as without effort. In other words, we have a very deep, innate connection to our natural origin and the natural order. And we should just get out of the way and let ourselves be part of that nature, that natural order. But we don’t do that, we have our… I mean the extremes like smoking, like excess alcohol, these throw us out of balance. So by eating food that is in harmony with the Yin and the Yang, because we’re all microcosms of this Yin and Yang natural order, we just make ourselves harmonious. We just thrive with it rather than going against it. Because the natural order, which is called dao is much greater than we are, and it will just crush us if we try to resist it. So we go with the flow in other words. So I just change Wu Way to Wu Way. And when I lecture and present my book, Eating The Wu Way, if someone chuckles, and I know this is someone who has read Daoism because no one else gets the joke.

Steven

(15:09)

So some people said, “I don’t think it’s such an exotic title,” but I thought, “Well, with all the books out on eating food for better health, I want to have an exotic title because you just need something that kind of stands out.” And it seems to work well. People like that. So Eating The Wu Way is getting a little bit of introduction to Daoist philosophy. And chapter two is actually my favorite because I describe the seven levels of judgment. In other words, we go through life, developing ourselves from basically mechanical beings like, “I need something to eat. Where is something? Where’s food?” To the seventh level, which is called statutory or enlightenment, which is where we just see ourselves as heart of everything.

(15:52)

And so we’re all on that journey. And unfortunately, most of us get Stuck at level two or three level. Two is sensorial like if it tastes good, I’m going to eat it. Level three is emotional. So we’ve always had ham for Christmas, and so we have to have ham this Christmas too, you know? That kind of thinking. And very few people even really get grounded in level four, which is analytical. Analytical means if the pork is going to make my body toxic, then I’m not going to eat it. I don’t care if we’ve always had that for Christmas, you know?

Stu

(16:24)

Right. Yeah.

Steven

(16:26)

Yet I do. And so, we’ve all got some amount of our consciousness in level four, but it’s really being grounded there, where that is really where we’re going from. So it’s a bit of a philosophy and macrobiotics encompasses much more than food, of course. It’s like understanding how we live in harmony with the world. And I’m still fascinated by it today because I actually teach two things. I teach food and health and I also teach facial and body diagnosis. I teach courses here in Stockholm. There’s an institute for natural healing where I’m part of the curriculum, and I teach a course in how you can look at someone’s outer appearance and be able to make estimations. This is not a medical diagnosis, but an estimation of what the inner condition is like, which organs need to be strengthened. You’re not going to tell someone they’ve got a two centimeter kidney stone, but you can certainly see when the kidney function needs to be strengthened.

Steven

(17:28)

And so looking at people, I can really see that what I discover by chance 50 years ago was the greatest luck I could have because here I am now, 76 years old. Now, if I lived in the US right now, I would be the average life expectancy. It’s like, “Get your will in order because it is over.” And in reality I’m not even slowing down. There’s no difference to what I do now than what I did before 20 years ago. And I know that I have a very good chances of reaching a hundred, which… I mean, my grandmother was 105, so there is some genetic thing there. But she was a Quaker and Quakers are very simple. She drank a glass of warm water every morning, and I learned that from her. Since then, I’m trying to do what my grandmother did, oats porridge for breakfast, you know?

Steven

(18:18)

And so my whole experience has shown me that this is really just an amazing thing that I’ve got full life quality. And if I may just take a second to tell you last year I left my beloved Oz and was on the last flight from Melbourne back to Europe. I stretched it out, the last schedule flight, let’s say. Stretching it out as long as possible. So I got to the airport, which is now everything’s in lockdown and I got to the airport and I’m standing at the gate with 200 people. And we get it on this little metal container, and now we’re going to sit for 20 hours altogether, nobody was wearing masks because they hadn’t come that far yet. And it would be a joke anyway, like 200 people sitting in this metal container all with a mask.

Steven

(19:03)

And so I flew back to Europe and never once did I have any fear, never fear. Now I’m at the age, which is considered a risk group. I should have been fearful. Why wasn’t I? Because it’s not just a matter of microbes. It’s a matter of whether the body is vulnerable to the microbes. And I was absolutely sure that I wasn’t. And as it turned out now, a year and a half later, I’m still doing just fine here in Sweden, there masks, no lockdowns. I mean, if I didn’t see a sign in the supermarket saying, “Be sure to keep distance,” I wouldn’t even know that there’s anything going on here because [inaudible 00:19:41] looses things. Of course Australia’s become notorious in the world for the opposite of US.

Stu

(19:48)

Yeah. Yeah. You may want to think twice about getting on the airplane and coming the other way at the moment.

Steven

(19:51)

Exactly. I’m holding back at the moment [crosstalk 00:19:56].

Stu

(19:55)

Yeah. I’ll do that. That’s excellent. So, a question that springs to mind and it’s actually a common question that we get asked from our audience is that they want to shift to a more plant-based way of eating. But oftentimes they want to do it in the right way by a means of organic food. Now, organic food over here, it’s not as readily available as the myriad of vegetables that you find in the supermarkets, and it’s definitely more expensive. So should we be worried about chemicals and pesticide herbicides, et cetera, if we are not buying organic or non-organic produce?

Steven

(20:39)

Well, this is the crucial question of our time. And we should actually be here on the 7:30 report or something on TV because everyone would benefit from this. But we should indeed be concerned… Australia, like most other countries, is contaminated with glyphosate. Glyphosate is, I’m sure most people know, a new kind of pesticide herbicide. But it’s more nefarious because it actually goes into the body and it disrupts metabolic channels. For example, we have a very effective way of getting rid of mercury. Mercury is 10 times more toxic than any other heavy metal. Imagine, something 10 times more toxic than lead or cadmium. And that’s because mercury vaporizes, which the others don’t. But the body is very good at getting rid of it, especially if you’ve got enough selenium, which most people don’t.Bbut if you eat seaweed, you get all the selenium you need.

Steven

(21:45)

So, you take this glyphosate in and now of the mercury detox channel is disrupted by glyphosate and the enzyme pathways are disrupted. So you keep back and your body can’t get rid of it. You can’t wash it off, it’s inside the food. But if you eat organic as much as you can… Now I eat as much as I can, but as you mentioned it’s just not practical that we’re all going to eat 100% organic. Yeah. And unfortunately, glyphosate is so widespread that today it’s in the rainwater, we breathe it, you can’t get rid of it. They’ve done urine Studies and found that everybody tested shows glyphosate and that’s just the way it is. So what do you do about it? Well, you eat organic food as much as possible. And of course this means also you’re not getting chemical additives.

Steven

(22:38)

The average person eats four kilos of chemical additives a year. We’re talking about additives, not glyphosate. Then there’s the heavy metals that are along here too. It’s a disaster for humanity. And then you have the problem with the glyphosate now on top of that. So it disrupts all these body processes and then you think, “Okay, what can I do?” And then comes the answer, and that is fermented foods.

Stu

(23:13)

Right.

Steven

(23:13)

And that means really fermented to not things like vinegar, pickles. These are naturally fermented foods. And when I first went to Australia in 1999, it was very difficult to get them. And today it’s like the land of milk and honey, if I may use that expression.

Stu

(23:29)

Yeah. They are popular, absolutely popular.

Steven

(23:33)

And so the acidic acid created by the fermentation, and it’s also in an organic apple cider vinegar, unpasteurized. The acidic acid actually breaks glyphosate and everybody should take it. I eat pickled vegetables, fermented vegetables at every meal, even breakfast, because my breakfast is not… Well, I’ll get to that in a second, but my breakfast is not some kind of wheat mix or… So I’ve got a totally different program going. And so I eat sauerkraut or others, cucumbers, beatroot. I do a lot of eggs and as a hobby, I make my own. And when I first came to Australia and it was so hard to get them, I actually would spend a lot of time doing that with that wonderful weather that you have there. I would sit out in the garden. Instead of just basking in that good weather, I would be out there grading the carrots and beatroots and getting them all ready for my production.

Steven

(24:34)

And so you get this pickled food and the acidic acid and then you can actually break glyphosate and get through it. And maybe this is a bit exaggerated, but my feeling is we’re going to see in the future, basically those who really survive to old age will be those who understand what I just said. Glyphosate right now is creating dementia, which is the greatest horror [inaudible 00:25:00]. It’s worse than the fear of COVID because people no longer know what their name is, they don’t know what a toilet is for. It’s a very unworthy way to die. And glyphosate attaches to aluminum and makes it able to pass through the blood brain barrier. So you get it into the brain and it’s found in the plaques, the amyloid plaques that create Alzheimer. So, this is very serious business and like the work you’re doing and I’m doing the people who are really trying to create more sanity in the world, it’s like we’re really icy as those who are saving the human race from a epidemic of illness, early death. It’s just a disaster.

Stu

(25:45)

Yeah. Crazy times, indeed. Now, so you were talking about the acidity from fermented foods like Sauerkraut, et cetera. Do we then need to rebalance that with something more alkaline if we are going to start increasing our consumption of acidic fermented foods?

Steven

(26:04)

Well, that’s an interesting point you bring up because actually the metabolism of fermented vegetables is alkaline. So left with an alkaline, as it’s called, alkaline… In the breakdown, you get this breakdown into carbon dioxide and you expel the carbon dioxide out. It’s very acidic. Of course, if you’re wearing a mask, you’re not going to expel as much out. So the best mask are the ones that got plenty of holes on the side because you got some oxygen in. I mean, I’ve never worn one, so I don’t know. But from what I’ve read, there’s a lot of retention of carbon dioxide. When we want to get rid of that… Well, every time you breathe out, you get rid of acidity and that’s the best way to get rid of it. Do deep breathing, take a walk somewhere in a park, in a forest away from streets and you’ll get rid of that acidity. So the most important thing is just a breakdown. And the breakdown even happens with things like citric acid that’s in lemons.

Stu

(27:07)

Right.

Steven

(27:08)

So, if you drink lemon water, which is something I do in the morning. I drink warm water and put just a dash of lemon in it. The lemon actually metabolizes into alkalinity, and that’s what we have with the sauerkraut too. That’s why… I went to Germany as an exchange Student when I was a young man, and this was before I changed my food and I went to the German beer festivals, the October Fest and that… What a time that was like to live my life all over again, but next time with better food. Anyway, I went to the beer festival I saw they had these really greasy sausages people would eat and they would just had this pile of sauerkraut on them. And then when I tried that, I realized that sausage was so heavy, so oily and when I ate the sauerkraut, suddenly, everything felt okay and had the balance.

Steven

(28:00)

And that’s basically what macrobiotic food is. If you eat heavy food, you eat so something light to make balance. And this is what we have with that idea of balancing both the Yin and Yang and balancing the biochemical, the acid and the alkalinity. Because obviously sausage is extremely acid forming, sauerkraut is alkalizing.

Stu

(28:20)

Interesting. Fascinating. Now I picked up on something earlier in the conversation, you were talking about potatoes and am I right in thinking that you weren’t that keen on the potato as a vegetable because of lectins, perhaps? And that prompted me to think about a question, which is a common phrase nowadays, which is the toxicity spectrum of plants and vegetables. Where some vegetables offer a myriad of nutrients, others do the same things but there are different chemicals in the guise of lectins, salicylates, octalate, oxalate, et cetera. Do you have an opinion on that or should we not be worried about that at all?

Steven

(29:06)

No. It’s a very important point. And it actually brings us back to something you ask about problematic foods. I went into this detail about milk, but actually there are two other things we could even take up in this context. And that is the nightshades and gluten. I would say these are the three major factors that are problems. And nightshades are very inflammatory. If we look up at the question: What is illness? Illness is basically inflammation, anything… High blood pressure is inflammation, diabetes is inflammation. So anything that promotes inflammation is bad news for the health.

Steven

(29:43)

Now, nightshades have in common something with milk, and that is that people think they’re good for them, and especially with tomatoes. I would say the most resistance I get when I tell people about the food that it’s going to make them healthier is that they should not eat tomatoes because as a nightshade, they are inflammatory. They’re one of the most allergy-provoking foods, and yet everyone’s heard about the lycopene, the antioxidant lycopene is so good for us.

Steven

(30:10)

Now in the book, I wrote that I’ve gone in and looked at it. There is no scientific evidence to prove that. And I gave actually the Study where they looked at 5,000 and men with prostate cancer and with their tomato consumption. There’s absolutely no connection at all. I mean, basically cancer is not a matter of one thing, obviously. So the nightshades are at several levels of problem. Looking at them from the Yin-Yang point of view, they weaken the Yang, so you get a Yang deficiency. The night shades, the night is Yin and day is Yang. But aside from that one, if we look at it at the biochemical level, which is what most people want to do, we have something you mentioned, which is the lectins.

Steven

(30:53)

Now, the lectins and potatoes are particularly toxic to blood type Os, which is my blood type. And it’s the most common blood type in Australia. So already there… And this is not just a theory, you can actually do endocrine tests to find out how much bowel toxicity you have. And if you take potatoes as a type O, you will also, as a type a which are the two main blood types in Australia, it does raise bowel toxicity. There’s that, but then another thing is the glycoalkaloids. Glycoalkaloids are substances. They’re actually called a defense mechanism. They’re anti-nutrients, so they are there to protect the plant from being eaten. We as animals, we can have sharp claws or hard shells, we can run fast, plants just have to stand there and take it. So what they do is they have created toxins so that they don’t get eaten up, because if they didn’t have them, they would’ve been long gone.

Steven

(31:52)

So potatoes and tomatoes, and also a capsicum, chili, and tobacco, those are all nightshades and they all contain some form of nicotine. Like the solanin, which is the glycoalkaloids in potatoes and tomatoes is actually a cousin of nicotine. And I suspect that’s why people love it so much is they’re basically… And I found in the clinic where I worked that people were most nervous about that when they came to the clinic. They weren’t going to get potatoes. You know about Germans eat potatoes. Well, the potato didn’t come to Europe until the middle of the 18th century. It’s not like… It’s come from South America. It’s not an original European food.

Steven

(32:37)

So when you take these glycoalkaloids, they’re actually neurotoxins and they affect the nervous system very much like biochemical warfare. Like if you hit the enemy soldiers with biochemical substances, you incapacitate them. And what happens is the brain now… I won’t go into this very complicated biochemical thing, but it unhooks the brain from its normal processes and they get disoriented. So obviously when you eat potatoes, you’re not going to be disoriented like an enemy soldier, but in small amounts, what it does is it creates a bit of, let’s say, mental unclarity or maybe the word fuzziness would be good. Being American and looking at the USA from abroad, as I always do, I have found the development of the US of the last years, politically, both on the left and the right, shows that something’s happened to the nervous systems of people there that it’s not, let’s say-

Stu

(33:38)

They’re eating a lot of potatoes.

Steven

(33:41)

Exactly. Its fluoridated water, which creates mental issues. Of course, the food… You can go down the whole list of the EMFs, but this is just one more little bit that makes it. And that is that eating as much as they do have potatoes and tomatoes are a big part of people’s food program. One of my hobbies is when I go around supermarkets is to look at what people have in their shopping carts, you know? And you can see… I saw this man recently standing in front of me to check out and he has two big liters of milk in front of him, and then a bag of tomatoes, and a bag of potatoes. And he had obviously Parkinson’s as he was shaking as he was trying to get his money out. He had trouble getting the money out of his wallet. And, I wanted to say, “Hey, let me talk to you for a second,” you know? “You’re doing exactly what you shouldn’t do.” But of course, you know, it’s tricky. You don’t jump in the situation. But in any case, it’s a nervous system issue as well as a physical issue. And so nightshades are something to avoid. And coming back to something I said before, remember, inflammation is the basic illness.

Stu

(34:57)

Interesting.

Steven

(34:57)

One more thing is gluten. Stay away with even gluten. Now the time is short, so I won’t go in too much to gluten, but it’s enough to say I recommend everyone to stay away from wheat. Wheat gluten is bad. I don’t eat wheat gluten. I do take rye and spelt because I don’t have any gluten issues, but I do personal counseling sessions with people. It really works well with the Zoom now that we can’t meet people personally. And I find some people even have to cut out the rye and the spelt because the weak gluten has so damaged their intestinal tract that we could say relatively harmless kinds of gluten will also trigger something. The wheat we have today was developed in the 60s, introduced in the 70s. It’s called alpha gliadin, it’s a special kind of gluten and it is really rough on the intestine. It actually just creates small rips and tears in the mucosal protective barrier in the gut. So that nightshades and milk, those three, those are things to stay away from.

Stu

(36:06)

So, so tell me a little bit then about your typical daily diet. And then I think we might be able to get a little bit more of an understanding of the foods that are definitely on your green list, for a lack of a better word?

Steven

(36:18)

Right. I start the day with a miso soup. Now in the Melbourne summers, I may not make a meso soup because a miso soup is very warming. but Melbourne, usually in the morning, is cool enough that even then… But in the middle of the summer, you can’t as it’s a hot weather there’s though. Because it’s a warming soup, it fits well here. So you make a vegetable soup and you season it with a bit of miso, maybe a teaspoon or a tablespoon. And that gives it a bouillon kind of taste.

Steven

(36:49)

That’s my start off. Now in Chinese medicine, soup is healing for the spleen, which is the governor of the digestive system. So we should all have a soup. Now, depending on where we are like Northern Queensland, you probably would need a lot of miso soups there. But you can have other soups, do other seasonings like natural seasoning, some kind of vegetable bouillon. And that warm liquid is to the way to start off your meal. That prepares your body for digestion. So that is the way I start. It’s got vegetables, seaweed, and beans or lentils chickpeas.

Steven

(37:28)

Now, I cook the beans and the seaweed together so that I have this in a pot. I put it in the fridge and I just take it out as I need it. So I cook maybe one to two times a week. I cook beans and I eat those in my soup until that’s done, and then I take the next ones. I prefer darker beans because they have a higher nutrient density like adzuki beans, black beans, dark lentils. But I like to have also others because broad spectrum selection of your food gives broad spectrum of the gut bacteria, which is a basic requirement for help. So that’s for the soup.

Steven

(38:04)

Then sometimes I add the sauerkraut to the soup, but I do that at the table because I don’t want that temperature to go over 40 degrees. I want the enzymes to still be there, so I never add it to the pot. But I may add it to the soup and then I get a lemonade kind of sour taste, which I love. But that’s only the start off, you don’t get full from that. Next comes oat porridge, which I make from whole oats rather than rolled oats. Rolled oats are oxidized, whole oats aren’t. So I roast them first, get better flavor, then I soak them 24 hours. Now, because the phytic acid blocks mineral absorption and oats are high in phytic acid, I add a tablespoon of vinegar to the soaking water. I’ve mentioned all this in chapter four. that’s the most important chapter. What do you do with the food?

Steven

(38:51)

But so I do this and then I cook up the oats the next morning with fresh water now, and now what do I do with that? I’ve got the oat porridge. You can make it as watery or as firm as you want to have it. I add a splash of coconut milk. I add seeds and nuts, now these have been soaked and dried before because nuts are high in enzyme inhibitors. So they will block your pancreatic enzymes unless you do something about it. So you soak them in salt water ahead of time. You can find all this on the internet. And then I put that on and then I add a special thing, it’s called umeboshi. Now, this is a special pickled fruit which you can get it in Australia, but most of them still come from Japan. Ume is the fruit and boshi means basically it’s been pickled. So I add a teaspoon of that because that’s just good for overall health, and it just adds a nice flavor to the whole thing. So I got, and that’s my breakfast. Sometimes I may have a slice of bread with something else on it for variety, but that’s what I do, maybe twice a day.

Steven

(40:05)

Next meal would be dinner. I like to have like brown rice, some kind of whole grain quinoa. In the winter, maybe some buckwheat, some warming kind of grain. I go with two kinds of vegetables, things that grow up, the more Yin, and things that grow down, more Yang or the pumpkins that are compact. So something from both ends. I have some kind of raw food. I usually have the raw food early in the day like I have a salad with breakfast because if you eat after 4:00 PM, salads actually tend to ferment. I learned that from Dr. Mayr, Franz Xaver Mayr from Vienna. He was the greatest nutrition expert of the 20th century, started something called the Mayr Clinic in Austria. And he said, “After four in the afternoon, don’t eat salads.” But what you do is you eat pickled vegetable. They’re still raw, but the pickling has broken them down some.

Steven

(41:01)

So now back to the evening meal, I’ve got vegetables. I’ve got either tempe… I prefer tempe that’s non-soy. So Australia now’s got their [inaudible 00:41:11] tempe is excellent, great Stuff. And there are other ones too, black bean tempe. The imagination is taken over. Or I do eat fish sometimes. Fish is the animal food that I prefer. It doesn’t change the bacteria in your gut as meat does, it’s neutral. And of course, Australia’s got plenty of good fish. So I’ve got some kind of animal protein or plant protein, and then I have a course pickled vegetables again.

Steven

(41:43)

Now the main thing is I don’t eat snacks. It’s important. Don’t eat snacks if you want to have a healthy gut. And I do two times a day, so I do what’s called interval fasting, which means I go a longer period of time not eating and I feel good with that.

Stu

(41:58)

That is fascinating. And, and I’m sure when our listeners delve into your book as well, they’ll be presented with 101 different recipes and ideas to be able to prepare their own vegetables and choose their favorites and optimize their health that way. So we’re just coming up on time, but I have a question that I would like to ask you, which is really focused around your daily non-negotiable. So you’ve clearly got your nutrition and your diet dialed in to perfectly suit your lifestyle. But what other daily non-negotiables do you practice? And it may be sleep-related, it could be movement-related, mindset-related. What practices would you do to ensure that you absolutely crush that day?

Steve

(42:47)

Yeah. What I love to do and I’ve been doing this since I was young into this, is I do something called Okido. Okido is a Japanese form of yoga, and it’s a bit more dynamic. Yoga is a quieter, more meditative kind of thing. Okido has more movement. It’s like a combination of Japanese physical exercises and yoga. It’s also called Okido Yoga sometimes or Okido. So I do that in the morning stretching. And people ask me, “How do you wake up without coffee?” I say, “Well, I just open my eyes and get out of it and feel great,” you know?

Steven

(43:28)

And one thing I do is I do the plow, which is you throw your legs over the back as a well known the yoga pose. But the Okido is a bit dynamic with what you do with the knees then. But when I do that, I can feel this rush blood come to my brain and that’s all I need to be ready to go for the day. That’s that’s number one for what I do.

Steven

(43:52)

Another thing I do is I take time every day for meditation. And what I do is I like mantra meditation. I’ve tried quiet meditation, but I have such an active mind, I always start thinking about something. And when you can focus your thoughts on a mantra, then that’s all you do. There’s no space for thinking about what you’re going to have for lunch or what you have to take care of in the afternoon. You just focus on the mantra, “Om [inaudible 00:44:20],” or just om if nothing else just doing om. So I go in the forest. I’m lucky here, I live on the outskirts of Stockholm. So if I go in one direction, I go to the city, if I go in the other direction, I’m into a nature reserve with a beautiful forest mountain lakes. And I go… You can guess which way I go every day for my walks. And when I get into the forest, I actually do mantra meditation. That’s always interesting when people walk by and see me doing this. It’s a good opener for conversation.

Steven

(44:50)

Those are a couple of things I do. And one important thing for health is that our parasympathetic nervous system works well, because that’s what allows us to digest the food. And many people are so wound up in stress. Stress means that your parasympathetic shuts down on because stress just gets you into what you do right now to survive. If you got to watch out crossing the street because there’s a lot of traffic, you’re in a total sympathetic state there of surviving. And because the way people live today, they’re shutting down their parasympathetic and then you’re not going to digest the food properly because digestion has nothing to do with survival. Survival is just at the moment getting through it.

Steven

(45:36)

So by taking the time for mantra meditation, and also the Okido does the same thing. I can feel how my parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated. And just one quick tip for your viewers, one of the quickest ways to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system is to have a pause between in and out breath. So you breathe in for the count of four, hold your breath, then count of six or seven, whatever feels right, and then out breath, which is usually seven but until you have no more breath. So that pause between in and out breath activates immediately the parasympathetic, so that’s also a good way to start. If you don’t have time for meditation, you can do it that way.

Stu

(46:21)

Perfect. I think everyone has time for a few mindful breaths during the day. That’s for sure. That is excellent. So fantastic nuggets of information there. I am really excited about showing this with our audience as well. But just before we go, what’s next? What have you got on the radar?

Steven

(46:46)

Well, I’m almost finished with my German translation of the book. Now the book has 150,000 words. You can imagine how long that takes, but the translation is just the beginning. Editing the text is just… it wasn’t in English, you know? I edit it probably 50 times. You always find something to change when you go through it. So I’m almost done with the German, and when I get that done, then the other thing is I become much more of a vaccine advisor now. It’s everyone’s choice what they do about that. What I do is I have people saying, “Because of my work, I have to do it.” What can I do to minimize, to reduce any possible injury? Because the spike protein vax is definitely riskier than conventional vaccines from before. So every day…Well, not every day, but I say five, six days out of a seven day week, at least one person contacts me from somewhere in the world with this question: What can I do to reduce that? So I think looking at the future and vaccine mandates, I think I will probably spend much more time explaining to people what they do to reduce their risk of injury if they have to take this.

Stu

(47:55)

Got it. Got it. Fantastic. And for all of our listeners that want to find out more about you and your work, grab a copy of the book, and dive into that, where can we send them?

Steven

(48:07)

Okay. Well, I’ve prepared a paper here and I’ll show you. First of all, I’ve got my website, it’s Stevenacuff.org. It’s all one word there. Or you can also contact angiebee11@hotmail.com. She’s in Melbourne and has the book, she can send it to you. You can also get the ebook, which I can send you or you can call her at Melbourne, 039-772-8469. Not only to order the book, but if you’d like to just have more information, call her and talk to her because she’s actually part of the unvaxxed minority and she doesn’t get a lot of visitors these days, so she’s always happy to talk to people. If you’d like to have a conversation with someone who is really into the way I am and has a lot of experience with the recipes… In fact, one of the things I miss most is her coconut ice cream. It is so good. It’s absolutely the best ice cream you could reimagine, much better than these commercial ones, of course. And I’m looking forward to being able to come back down under and try that again.

Stu

(49:19)

That is fantastic. I’ll put all of the links that you’ve, that you’ve spoken about in the conversation today in the show notes. But Steven, thank you so much for your time. Much appreciated and I look forward to speaking to you in the future.

Steven

(49:33)

Thank you, Stuart.

Stu

(49:34)

You take care.

 

 

 

 

Steven Accuff

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