George Ohsawa (born in Japan as Yukikazu Sakurazawa 1892-1966) introduced many Europeans and Americans to macrobiotic eating. Macro means ‘great’ or ‘long’ and bios means ‘life’, so macrobiotic can be translated directly in to long-life. Read his book Zen Macrobiotics: the art of rejuvenation and longevity.
Ohsawa’s diet is based on 10 increasingly restrictive stages leading to a point where the practitioner only consumes water and a brow rice, due to the ideal yin-yang balance the combination provides.
Later one of Ohsawa’s students, Michio Kushi, popularized a more moderate version of the diet in his book The Cancer Prevention Diet. Kushi-san based the diet on the assumption that our body is contantly being composed of, and sustained by Ki (Chi in Chinese, Prajna in India, and Lung in Tibet), our vital energy running through the meridians. Modern macrobiotics is focused on making a connection between our diet, and the energy principle found in eastern contemplative traditions.
Kushi-san’s book is not available as free pdf but can be found on Amazon.