I am precariously perched between my old American Commercial Fast-Food Diet and my new macrobiotic life. Be kind and call this the transitional phase. Today’s lunch was at one of those restaurants where you build your own salad and partake of an array of pastas, potatoes, breads and muffins, and fruit and other dessert items. Carefully I picked my way along the line and along the many offerings. Finally seated at the table with my plate and soup bowl artistically arranged before me, I was so happy… until I took a cold, critical inventory of my meal.

Tomatoes and potatoes in the soup. Sugar in the whole grain and bran muffin. Greens limited to romaine lettuce and a sprinkling of fresh spinach. I imagined the “standard macrobiotic diet” percentages pie and realized my proportions were off.

But hey. At home I was working on the same pot of lima beans that I started four days ago. Brown rice has become my primary snack and staple. I can correctly spell the names of five more types of seaweed – er, sea vegetable – than I even knew existed a month ago. There is no caffeine, no chocolate, no sweet temptation in my cupboards to scuttle my little macrobiotic raft.

Is it always like this? Never 100% correct, but pretty close? Is there a macrobiotics ideal that chains the faithful to their kitchens and fringe health food restaurants?

Out there in the macrobiotic ocean, I’d like to think that there is a fast food Lifesaver – someone’s bean burrito or tostada, or a drive-through veggie burger, or even a fruit or salad snack.

Because I can’t imagine packing along a Zip-Lock™ baggie full of cold lima beans and wakame as a snack!