The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [52]
Just playing or doing nothing at all, children are happy. A discriminating adult, on the other hand, decides what will make him happy, and when these conditions are met he feels satisfied. Foods taste good to him not necessarily because they have nature's subtle flavors and are nourishing to the body, but because his taste has been conditioned to the idea that they taste good.
Wheat noodles are delicious, but a cup of instant noodles from a vending machine tastes extremely bad. But, by advertising, remove the idea that they taste bad, and to many people even these unsavory noodles somehow come to taste good.
There are stories that, deceived by a fox, people have eaten horse manure. It is nothing to laugh about. People nowadays eat with their minds, not with their bodies. Many people do not care if there is monosodium glutamate in their food, but they taste only with the tip of the tongue, so they are easily fooled.
At first people ate simply because they were alive and because food was tasty. Modern people have come to think that if they do not prepare food with elaborate seasonings, the meal will be tasteless. If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.
The first consideration should be to live in such a way that the food itself tastes good, but today all the effort goes instead into adding tastiness to food. Ironically, delicious foods have all but vanished.
People tried to make delicious bread, and delicious bread disappeared. In trying to make rich luxurious foods they made useless foods, and now people's appetites are unsatisfied.
The best methods of food preparation preserve nature's delicate flavors. The daily wisdom of long ago enabled people to make the various kinds of vegetable pickles, such as sun-dried pickles, salt-pickles, bran-pickles, and miso-pickles, so that the flavor of the vegetable itself was also preserved.
The art of cooking begins with sea salt and a crackling fire. When food is prepared by someone sensitive to the fundamentals of cookery, it maintains its natural flavor. If, by being cooked, food takes on some strange and exotic flavor, and if the purpose of this change is merely to delight the palate, this is false cooking.
Culture is usually thought of as something created, maintained, and developed by humanity's efforts alone. But culture always originates in the partnership of man and nature. When the union of human society and nature is realized, culture takes shape of itself. Culture has always been closely connected with daily life, and so has been passed on to future generations, and has been preserved up to the present time.
Something born from human pride and the quest for pleasure cannot be considered true culture. True culture is born within nature, and is simple, humble, and pure. Lacking true culture, humanity will perish.
When people rejected natural food and took up refined food instead, society set out on a path toward its own destruction. This is because such food is not the product of true culture. Food is life, and life must not step away from nature.
Living by Bread Alone
There is nothing better than eating delicious food, but for most people eating is just a way to nourish the body, to have energy to work and to live to an old age. Mothers often tell their children to eat their food—even if they do not like the taste—because it is "good" for them.
But nutrition cannot be separated from the sense of taste. Nutritious foods, good for the human body, whet the appetite and are delicious on their own account. Proper nourishment is inseparable from good flavor.
Not too long ago the daily meal of the farmers in this area consisted of rice and barley with miso and pickled vegetables. This diet gave long life, a strong constitution, and good health. Stewed vegetables and steamed rice with