Zen diet main rule: The man must not hurt any being to feed himself, so meat is forbidden.

This is one of the many rules of the Zen diet, a diet which appeared with the Buddhist monks many hundreds of years ago.
Zen eating means guiding your meals after strict dietary rules:

1. Eat three times a day

In the past, the monks from the Zen monasteries ate only two meals a day, a very early breakfast and a lunch. In the cold winter evenings the monks used to place a warm rock, called “yakuseki”, on their rumbling stomachs to relieve their cold and hunger. In time, this practice was replaced with a real meal, but evening meal is still called “yakuseki” in Zen monasteries today.

2. Don’t kill creatures. Don’t use meat or fish.

3. The man must cherish everything he has, so all parts of an aliment must be used.

4. No food is left in the bowl.

5. The man must lead an ascetic life, to be satisfied with little, so don’t use strongly flavored food such as leeks, shallots, garlic, or onions, nor spices.

6. The food ingredients are either yin or yang, or a combination of these. Find the balance between yin and yang, so eat both yin and yang ingredients. Yin foods are considered passive, silent, cold and dark and must be carefully balanced. Yang ingredients are hot and active.

Fresh food is far more yang. Denatured, processed, refined, old, stale, wilted, or spoiled food is much more yin.

7. Prepare the Zen diet by matching the five tastes (hot, sour, sweet, bitter, and salty) with the five colors (green, yellow, red, white, and black) by the five ways of cooking (fresh, boiling, roasting, frying, and steaming).

8. Cereals must represent the foundation of every meal.

9. Do not consume liquids in excess because they are yin (especially black tea, coffee and juices).

10. Do not eat aliments treated with pesticides, fertilizers or preservatives.

11. Do not consume fruits or vegetables out of their season.

12. Do not eat products that contain flour, yeast or baking powder.

13. Eat slowly. Concentrate on every taste and texture. The food must be chewed at least 30 times to encourage and help its absorption by the intestine.

14. Drink a cup of green tea after each meal.

15. The food must be cooked with gas, because electricity and microwaves produce serious energetic storm in the body.

16. Exercise is an important part of a Zen lifestyle. Exercise makes the body more yang. Deep breathing also makes the body more yang, adding oxygen to the body. A half-hour walk or gentle workouts with a treadmill or weights several times a week are good exercises for a healthy, yin-yang balanced body.

If you will decide to follow the Zen diet as a lifestyle, it is important to consult a doctor first, because your diet will drastically switch to a simpler set of food sources. Start on the diet slowly, gradually taking it up a level, day by day. Eliminate meats slowly from the diet and concentrate more on foods that are abundant in minerals and vitamins.

Followed correctly the diet can cure a lot of health problems, cleansing your body, too.