Dave,
If you want to explore the anti-pressure cooking direction to one of it's extremes, I recommend you visit Harold Kulungian's discussion site
MACROBIOTIC CRITIQUE http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/haroldkulungian/.
There are lot's of things that many macrobiotic people do that many not be healthy to do much in the long run, be it consume too much salt, too much baked food, eat too many desserts, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, watch tv, or spend more than 15 minutes a day in front of one of these computers, so why should eating pressure cooked food be any worse?
We all know that pressure cooking (pc) imparts a more yang energy onto food especially grain, so it's wise to eat less pc food during the hot times of the year, like the summer or in hot climates.
This summer, for instance, in our household, we are boiling our rice but we have pressured cooked it once.
Next winter we probably will pressure cook it often.
Also, if one is cooking on electricity, then pc cooked grain (especially in an Ohsawa Pot) might be more balanced than boiled.
But pressure cooking grain and beans for every meal all year around for most people is not healthy.
Thirty years ago many macros were consuming too much salt and oil, so a certain macrobiotic leader and others have devised dietary recommendations that have reflected an acknowledgement of these problems and have suggested much less salt, less oil, less baked flour products, less sea vegetables in miso soup, beans, and nishime, more leafy greans, some vegetable juice and even some nightshades like tomato for healthy people.
I find it interesting that some people who have decreased their pressure cooking and salt have returned to eating meat and dairy (like either The Atkins Diet or the Weston Price nutritional approach).
I (someone who works outside all year around) would rather eat more pc foods and a little more salt than meat or dairy which by the way are quite plentiful in many of the gourmet restaurants that I wash windows for!
What is your activity every day and what do you eat?
Regarding longtime leaders who died before their expected time, we don't know exactly why they died (especially what they binged on, privately) so why attribute it to any one thing?
Leaders are human beings with their own weaknesses.
Instead of dumping all the responsibilities of whether eating a certain way works on leaders (who represent a very small group of individuals), let's instead look to see how eating certain foods appears to affect the masses of people.
If great numbers of people are getting negative results from certain foods, style of cooking, or diet, then we can more easily come to conclusions about those practices.
Maybe those leaders died from "Leadership Disease" and since most followers are not leaders, there is less chance that they will be afflected by it.
One of the leaders fell to his death from a multi storied building.
Everyone who knew him or followed his example should now stay away from muli-storied buildings?
One famous macrobiotic leader has been reputed to often eat gourmet foods outside the home and teaches people that to heal unheathy conditions one must eat a simple non-gourmet diet.
Do we discard his teachings because he doesn't always eat a simple diet or do we instead let go of our attachment to what we believe he should be doing (non-credo), and instead seek what is the best way for ourselves?
Thank you, very much.
Bruce Paine