Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 9, Number 10, 1 October 1992 — ʻAi pono e ola [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ʻAi pono e ola

Eat right and live well

by Dr. Terry Shintani

Kalo — the key to a nation

Can a pnneipal food such as kalo (taro) be a key to the stability of a nation? In previous articles I have focused on kalo (taro) as a food that means many things to Hawai'i and its people. As the brother to the first man on Earth in the cre-

ation mythology of Hawai'i, it has spiritual meaning. As the healthful suple that ean help lower cholesterol, it has a central role in the health of the people. In this article, I will suggest how prineipal foods such as kalo ean have an important impact on a nation. Let us consider the role of principal foods in the great civilizations of history. In Europe it was wheat; in pre-Columbian North and South America, it was maize and corn; in Egypt it was millet and barley; and in most of Asia, it was rice. Japan has the oldest government in the world and the most stable modern

I civilization. It is the only nation that ean trace its reigning monarch's genealogy back to its absolute origin (the sun goddess, Amaterasu Omikami) thousands of years ago. Rice has I always been Japan's principal food.

In the early 1 900s, Japan started to change its diet to a more Westernized diet and away from its principal food, rice. In 1937, a book was written by a Japanese writer, N. Sakurazawa, who predicted that if Japan did not improve its diet, it was heading for war and that it would lose such a war as a result of the Westernization of its diet (whieh he considered to be based on faulty Western nutritional theory). He believed that Germany had lost World War I as a result of its diet, based on such a faulty theory, and that China had fallen under foreign

control because its leaders forgot the ancient laws of proper diet. Having gradually adopted a Western diet, he believed that China's leaders became both too aggressive and lacking of the neeessary intuition and judgment to continue their reign. The prediction was right. Japan lost a major war for the first time in its long history. We ean only speculate if bad diet had something to do with Japan losing the war. However, this idea may not be as far-fetched as it may seem. For example, we now know that diet has an impact on health, behavior and performance. Perhaps some of the key leaders in Japan died young from diet-related disease. Perhaps the high animal food content of the Western diet eonsumed by their leaders made them more aggressive and even imperialistic. Perhaps the higher sugar eontent made their thought processes scattered or erratic. Perhaps the fat content made them ever so slightly

slower in their thought processes and easily fatigued. (How do you feel an hour after a fatty luneh?) How does this apply to Hawai'i? Because of the Westerxiization of our diet, some of Hawaii's strong spiritual, cultural, and political leaders have died young, even in recent times. Kalo may be important in helping to restore the health of the Hawaiian people as demonstrated on Moloka'i and in Wai'anae. Perhaps returning to the principal foods of Hawai'i may also help to increase the vitality, energy and intuition of its people, who are now working towards a cultural renaissance to help ensure its success. It may also help provide the spiritual consciousness that contributes to the lōkahi (unity) of the Hawaiian people. Thus, kalo and other principal foods may provide the key to the survival of the Hawaiian civilization for centuries to eome as it did for the great civilizations of the past.