Host of 'Christina Cooks' teaches diet she says saved her life

[Guest guest]

February 9, 2000

Web posted at: 11:26 a.m. EST (1626 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2000/FOOD/news/02/09/cancer.diet.ap/index.html

 

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Christina Pirello's knifeflashes as students stream into

her classroom.Piles of cabbage, kale and carrots are reduced to slivers and

chunks.

 

The students, mostly women, many seriously ill, are excited. They've come to

learn Pirello's secret to life. They've come to watch Christina cook.

 

By all rights, she shouldn't be teaching. Pirello, 43, was supposed to die 17

years ago. She had leukemia and two months to live.

 

She credits her restored health to the grain- and vegetable-based macrobiotic

diet introduced to the United States 40 years ago by Michio Kushi. He maintains

that the energy of natural foods can be used to balance the body and restore

health.

 

The macrobiotic diet

 

Macrobiotics is a term often incorrectly applied to any regimen of grain- and

vegetable-based foods, but Kushi teaches the curative powers of a well-defined

diet of organic foods.

 

Pirello, with a nationally distributed TV cooking show, " Christina Cooks, " and

two cookbooks to her credit, is dedicated to bringing so-called whole-foods

cooking to dinner tables everywhere.

 

" When I first started teaching, most people were here because they were sick, "

Pirello said during a recent interview. " Now what I'm finding is people are here

because they don't want to get sick. "

 

A macrobiotic diet consists mostly of organic whole grains and steamed

vegetables. Most animal products are shunned, as are refined flours and sugars

and anything with chemicals or preservatives.

 

And it isn't only about what to eat; it's also about how to prepare it. Gas is

the preferred cooking method, as electric ranges and microwave ovens are

considered damaging to food's energy.

 

The diet isn't new. Hippocrates wrote about it around 400 B.C., and it was

popularized during the 1960s at the inception of the health-food movement. Now

interest is surging again.

 

New energy for eating

 

Wendy Esko of Becket, Massachusetts, author of more than 20 macrobiotic

cookbooks, attributes that to Pirello, saying she has pushed the diet past the

notion that it's boring and only for sick people.

 

" For the average person, the choices are actually quite wide, and Christina has

put that through in her television show and cookbooks. "

 

Kushi, one of the fathers of the movement, is 73 now and lives in Brookline,

Massachusetts. He estimates that roughly 3 million people worldwide follow his

traditional macrobiotic diet.

 

Kushi maintains that illness is caused principally by poor eating habits and

blames the rise in degenerative disease on diets laden with animal products and

processed foods.

 

But people don't need to eat tofu and whole grains to feel better, Pirello said.

The key to recovering from illness, or preventing it, is to avoid unhealthy

foods.

 

" It's more what you've stopped doing than what you are doing, " she told her

class.

Numerous scientific studies warn

of the dangers of fatty foods and support claims that diets high in whole grains

and vegetables can help in maintaining health. However, no studies have

addressed macrobiotics directly, and no studies have been conducted on whether

it can actually reverse disease.

 

The American Cancer Society acknowledges that macrobiotics, like other low-fat

diets, may help prevent some forms of cancer. However, the organization does not

endorse macrobiotics for cancer patients, citing concerns that the limited diet

may not provide sufficient nutrition.

 

Pirello's story

 

For Pirello, the diet-disease connection is obvious, and her recovery is as much

a love story as it is a survival story.

 

Pirello says she discovered macrobiotics when she was 26, one day after learning

she was dying. Told that nothing could save her, she prepared to quit her job as

an advertising designer and travel Europe until she died.

 

But before she left, a friend insisted she meet a man who followed a strange

diet that claimed to cure cancer.

 

" I remember saying, 'Yeah, that's right, just what I need, a date, " ' Pirello

said.

 

But she got more than a date. Instead of bringing her flowers, the man cooked

her a macrobiotic feast, emptied her cupboards of forbidden foods, and asked her

to give him and the diet a month.

 

" I thought that if I didn't die of cancer, I'd die of boredom, " Pirello said.

But the will to live won out.

 

" When I was sick, I didn't care if I ate brown rice or pizza, " she said. " I

couldn't imagine life without chocolate, but I figured if I die, I'm not going

to eat it anyway. "

 

Thirteen months and heaps of millet, tofu and seaweed later, Pirello's doctors

found no sign of her illness.

 

Occasionally, patients who seem to be dying of cancer suddenly get better.

Doctors, at a loss to explain it, call it " spontaneous remission. " Patients tend

to find their own explanation in whatever it was they were doing -- often

prayer, positive thinking or special diet.

 

To Pirello, the explanation seemed obvious.

 

" I said, 'Wait a minute. You can wrap your mind around a miracle, but not that I

took an active role in changing my health?' I was furious. "

 

She also was in love, both with macrobiotics and the man she says saved her

life. She and Robert Pirello were married five years later.

 

While she regained her health, Pirello couldn't return to advertising.

 

" There's a whole world dying of cancer out there, " she said. " I'm supposed to

care whether your ad gets to the paper? "

 

So she gave up her $80,000 salary and took a job cooking for $7 an hour at the

deli of a natural foods store. Before long, she was teaching cooking classes in

her kitchen.

 

" Then, about five years ago, Rob comes walking into the kitchen and says I

should be doing this on television, " Pirello said. " After I stopped laughing, I

said, 'OK, tell me when you've got it arranged. " '

 

Two years later, he had. In October 1997, " Christina Cooks " began airing on

public television in Philadelphia. The show now is available to some 50 million

homes on about 150 public TV stations. And it has been a success, earning

Pirello a mid-Atlantic Emmy in 1998.

 

" It absolutely amazes me that the show is such a hit, " Pirello said. " I'm not

exactly teaching Philly cheese steaks. "

 

Cookbooks and culinary classes

 

Her first book, " Cooking the Whole Foods Way, " has sold 60,000 copies and

includes recipes ranging from traditional macrobiotics like miso soup to

all-American desserts like apple pie (minus the refined sugar, of course).

 

Her second book, " Cook Your Way to the Life You Want, " came out in November. In

this one, Pirello shares the nuts and bolts of macrobiotics -- balance, or yin

and yang.

 

Macrobiotics uses the energy in food to create balance in the body, Pirello

said. The wrong foods throw the body out of balance, and that leads to sickness,

she said.

 

" The law of nature is the law of harmony, " she said. " When you break down

'disease,' you get 'dis-ease.' You are not at ease. You are out of balance. "

 

But people no longer respect food, or view it as an essential part of

themselves, Pirello said. That's why they don't see the imbalance in eating

fatty or sugary foods.

 

She's making progress. Her weekly classes draw as many as 80 people, she's

designed a macrobiotic curriculum for The Restaurant School in Philadelphia, and

she has been asked to write a third book.

 

The notion that people are what they eat makes sense to Dr. George Blackburn, an

associate professor of surgery and nutrition at Harvard Medical School. But that

doesn't make following macrobiotics easy.

 

" The body is renourishing and redeclaring itself every day, and for that it

needs healthy exercise, and a healthy diet. And certainly if you're skilled

enough, macrobiotics is a choice, " he said.

 

While the diet may be nutritionally sound for maintaining health, Blackburn

cautions that its claims to reverse cancer and other diseases have not been

medically established.

 

" Now that we do have proven scientific treatments for most diseases, one

wouldn't want to use an unproven one in the absence of being informed about the

treatments, " he said.

 

Macrobiotics doesn't advocate that, Pirello said. Many people use conventional

treatments in conjunction with the diet because they believe macrobiotics helps

their body use the treatment and deal with the illness.

 

" It's slow, but those who choose it do well with it, " she said. " If you choose

this, this is not the easy path. You have to go back in the kitchen and cook

it. "

 

 

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