How to Eat Macrobiotic the Easy Way: My Weekly Menu and Grocery List

The easy way to eat macrobiotic is to skip the strict rules and keep the core: build most meals around whole grains, add a soup, beans and plenty of cooked vegetables, eat something fermented on the side, and cook grains and beans in batches so the week runs itself. Below are the habits I keep, a full week of macrobiotic meals with recipes from the blog, a grocery list, and the mistakes I made when I started.

I first went macrobiotic in 2013 and came back to it in January 2015, after a stressful year of eating badly. I’ve never been 100% macrobiotic, and I’m not today either. I still eat fruit every day (I’ll never give up avocados and bananas). But I have periods, a few weeks at a time, when I go back to brown rice, soups and gomasio, and I love how simple cooking gets when I do.

The short version

• Every day: a whole grain, a soup, beans or lentils, cooked vegetables, a little fermented food.
• Cook ahead: one pot of grains every two days, one pot of beans a week.
• Don’t overdo the salt: miso, tamari, gomasio and pickles add up fast.
• Take B12 if you eat few or no animal foods.
• Skip the extremes: no brown-rice-only “cleanses”.

Table of Contents

• The Macrobiotic Habits I Keep
• Cook Once, Eat for Days
• My Week of Easy Macrobiotic Meals
• Macrobiotic Grocery List
• Watch the Salt (and Get Your B12)
• What About Protein?
• Mistakes I Made When I Started
• My Free Macrobiotic Meal Plans
• More Macrobiotic Recipes
• The Studies and Sources Behind This Guide
• FAQ

The Macrobiotic Habits I Keep

These are the macrobiotic habits that stuck with me, the ones that make a difference without making life complicated. If you’re new to macrobiotics, read my macrobiotic diet guide first: what it is, the food list, the risks.

• A whole grain at every main meal. Brown rice, millet and polenta are my favorites, plus buckwheat and oats. I cook about 2/3 cup (125 g) of brown rice a day for the two of us and eat it at lunch and dinner.
• Soup once or twice a day. I make a big pot once or twice a week, so there’s always soup for lunch.
• Beans or lentils every day. Red lentils and chickpeas are my favorites, then adzuki beans.
• Mostly cooked vegetables. Cabbage, carrots, onion, broccoli, squash, root vegetables, stir-fried or steamed.
• Something fermented on the side. Sauerkraut, pickled cauliflower, a spoonful of miso in the soup.
• Gomasio instead of salt. Toasted sesame seeds ground with sea salt. It’s amazing on brown rice and on steamed vegetables.
• Chewing well and eating slowly. It sounds trivial, but it’s the habit that changed how full I feel after a meal.

And the macrobiotic rules I don’t follow: I eat fruit, tomatoes, potatoes and spinach, and I don’t count yin and yang.

Cook Once, Eat for Days

The trick that makes macrobiotic eating easy is cooking grains and beans in batches.

• Grains: cook a pot of brown rice or millet every two days and keep it in the fridge in a closed container. Cool cooked rice quickly and eat it within a day.
• Beans: at the beginning of the week I cook 500 g of dried chickpeas or beans, then keep them in the fridge (up to 3-4 days) or freeze them in portions. Soak them overnight first. A pinch of baking soda in the soaking water makes them softer and faster to cook; rinse them well afterwards.
• Soup: one big pot lasts two or three days.
• Gomasio: make a jar and it lasts for weeks.

With these ready, dinner is a 15-minute stir fry: vegetables in the pan, rice from the fridge, a spoonful of beans, a little tamari.

My Week of Easy Macrobiotic Meals

Here’s a full week of macrobiotic meals, built from recipes on the blog. Breakfast is usually something warm and simple; lunch is soup plus grains; dinner is a grain bowl or patties with vegetables. Add a spoonful of sauerkraut or another fermented vegetable to lunch or dinner.

Day	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Monday	Porridge with grated apple and walnuts	Creamy carrot soup with ginger + brown rice with gomasio	Macrobiotic stir fry with brown rice
Tuesday	Tofu scramble with carrots and parsley	Leftover carrot soup + brown rice	Chickpea patties + roasted cabbage
Wednesday	Porridge with pears and cinnamon	Vegan miso soup + leftover chickpea patties	Mushroom rice pilaf + steamed broccoli
Thursday	Millet porridge with stewed apples	Red lentil soup + rice	Soba noodles with mushrooms and miso-lime sauce
Friday	Tofu scramble with spring onion	Leftover lentil soup + millet with gomasio	Adzuki bean burgers + sautéed cabbage and carrots
Saturday	Vegan rice pudding (with rice syrup instead of sugar)	Clear broccoli soup + brown rice	Creamy mushroom polenta + a green salad
Sunday	Porridge with berries	Asian mushroom soup + brown rice	Warm rice bowl with beans, carrots, broccoli and tamari

Macrobiotic Grocery List

A macrobiotic grocery list is mostly dry goods that keep for months, plus fresh vegetables bought once or twice a week. I shop for the dry goods twice a month; it saves money and time.

Category	What to buy
Whole grains	short-grain brown rice, millet, buckwheat, rolled oats, polenta (cornmeal), barley, soba noodles
Beans and lentils	adzuki beans, chickpeas, red and green lentils, tofu, tempeh
Vegetables	cabbage, carrots, onions, broccoli, squash, parsnip, celeriac, kale, leafy greens, mushrooms, ginger, spring onions
Sea vegetables	nori, wakame, kombu (small amounts)
Seasonings	miso, tamari, sea salt, brown rice vinegar, sesame seeds, tahini, sesame oil, olive oil
Fermented	unpasteurized sauerkraut, pickled vegetables in brine
Fruit and sweet things	apples, pears, seasonal berries, raisins, rice syrup, barley malt
Snacks	walnuts, almonds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, rice cakes
Drinks	bancha or kukicha tea, roasted barley tea

A note on fermented foods: only pickles fermented in brine and not pasteurized still have live bacteria. Pickles made with vinegar and pasteurized jars don’t, so if that’s what you want, look for the unpasteurized ones in the fridge section.

Watch the Salt (and Get Your B12)

Two things are easy to miss on a macrobiotic diet: too much salt and too little vitamin B12.

Miso, tamari, umeboshi, gomasio and sauerkraut are all salty, and they add up. 10 g of tamari has about 1.4 g of salt, and the WHO recommends less than 5 g a day in total. I use them as seasonings: a teaspoon of miso per bowl of soup, a few drops of tamari, gomasio instead of salt, not on top of it.

If you eat few or no animal foods, take a vitamin B12 supplement or eat fortified foods. Seaweed, miso and tempeh aren’t reliable sources. Vitamin D and calcium are worth a chat with your doctor too.

What About Protein?

An adult needs about 0.8 g of protein per kg of body weight a day, so around 50 g for someone who weighs 60 kg. On a macrobiotic diet, that comes easily from beans, lentils, tofu and tempeh, plus whole grains, nuts and seeds. If you train hard and want to build muscle, studies show the benefit levels off at around 1.6 g per kg a day.

I eat legumes, tofu and mushrooms almost every day, so I don’t worry about protein.

Mistakes I Made When I Started

When I started macrobiotics I made a few mistakes I wouldn’t make again. I’m sharing them so you can skip them:

• I started with the 10-day brown rice diet. I don’t recommend it: eating only grains caused malnutrition, scurvy and even deaths in the 1960s. Start with the varied, everyday version instead (more in my macrobiotic diet guide).
• I drank warm water with lemon and baking soda every morning. There’s no proof it does anything, and a teaspoon of baking soda has more than half of the daily sodium limit.
• I chewed raw brown rice “against parasites”, an old Ohsawa tip. There’s no evidence it works, and raw rice can carry bacteria. Parasites need a doctor.
• I didn’t take B12. Now I know better.

My Free Macrobiotic Meal Plans

Want a ready-made week? I made two free one-week macrobiotic meal plans with recipes and a shopping list: a gluten-free one and a vegan one. Leave your email and I’ll send you the one you want.

More Macrobiotic Recipes

You’ll find all my macrobiotic recipes in the macrobiotic recipes category and on my macrobiotic recipes Pinterest board. For more legume ideas, see my lentil recipes and chickpea recipes, and if you’re cooking on a budget, my cheap vegan recipes. For desserts without refined sugar, try my vegan sugar-free desserts.

The Studies and Sources Behind This Guide

• Cancer Research UK. Macrobiotic diet and cancer (reviewed 2022).
• Council on Foods and Nutrition. Zen macrobiotic diets. JAMA 1971. PubMed
• Miller DR et al. Vitamin B-12 status in a macrobiotic community. Am J Clin Nutr 1991. PubMed
• Watanabe F et al. Vitamin B12-containing plant food sources for vegetarians. Nutrients 2014. PubMed
• Marco ML et al. ISAPP consensus statement on fermented foods. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 2021. PubMed
• Al-Abri SA, Kearney T. Baking soda misuse as a home remedy. J Clin Pharm Ther 2014. PubMed
• Morton RW et al. Protein supplementation and muscle mass: a meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med 2018. PubMed
• EFSA. Dietary Reference Values for protein (2012).
• World Health Organization. Sodium reduction (fact sheet).

FAQ

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