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     Medical science is greatly in error when it recommends what young children should eat. Parents are often told that eating bananas and adzuki beans causes dysentery and advises that these these two foods should not be eaten by the young, but there is no reason for this advice. It just happens that somewhere someone probably ate these kinds of foods shortly before contracting dysentery, so the misinterpretation came about. I have instructed not only my own six children but also the many thousands of my followers on this matter, and so far, there has been no instance of anyone contracting dysentery. Actually, dysentery is easily healed through Johrei, so death from dysentery hardly exists among my followers.
     What is absurd is that there are often parents who do not feed their young children bean paste. I always tell the mothers of these households the same thing. That is, bean paste does have something that can cause adverse effects. That is, bean paste is beneficial for that such as constipation and beriberi, so there is nothing so good as boiling the adzuki beans and straining them with a cloth, adding sugar, and adequately boiling.
     When we try to think of the causes for such mistaken opinions, we should remember that medical science was created in the West, and that there are no adzuki beans in the West, so such a theory probably came about because adzuki beans were not mentioned in the medical books Japanese doctors studied. There are other such examples. This is quite obvious from observing the fact that the foods which doctors recommend to sick patients such as milk, meat-based broths, ice cream, oatmeal, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions, apples, and so forth are all Western foods. In recent times, Japanese doctors seem to have awakened to this fact, and that such as miso soup, natto have come to be recommended. Previously, I had condemned the practice of emphasizing Western foods.
     One time I had an interesting patient. She was a married woman of about forty years of age. She had heard that spinach was a medicine, so everyday she ate only spinach. This practice continued for about half a year, and over her entire body she developed rashes that resembled syphilis and surprised, came to me. Her condition was poisoning so it was easily healed, but as can be seen by the fact that the woman came to say that there was nothing as frightening as spinach and was not going to eat it for the rest of her life, care should be taken in such occasions. But whatever it is, when only one food is consumed in excess, food poisoning is easily contracted, so it is not like there is anything wrong with spinach. As far as food is concerned, one should eat what one wants in appropriate amounts. Thus, it is good to choose the foods one likes, leaning neither to the Japanese diet or to Western cuisine.

“Yōji no Tabemono ni Tsuite” appeared originally on the front page of Kyūsei, Issue 51, February 25, 1950. Although no translations are known to exist, “Yōji no Tabemono ni Tsuite” was reprinted in the anthology Igaku Kankei Goronbun Shū (Collected Essays on Medical Science) that did enjoy a limited circulation. Igaku Kankei Goronbun Shū contains no publication data, but internal evidence suggests that its editing stopped several months preceding Meishu-sama’s Ascension. Furthermore, since the book lacks publication data, whether the volume had Meishu-sama’s imprimatur or not is unknown, so details concerning this volume are probably impossible to research.