The macrobiotic sect: How to transform a diet into a mind-control cult

By Mauro Garbuglia

Five years of investigation by various Italian police forces have thrown light on a mysterious sect present throughout the country and abroad. Known to many as Un Punto Macrobiotico, it is an association recognised by the Italian Ministry of Solidarity for its benevolent social activity. But it was later accused of criminal conspiracy resulting in modern-day slavery and the hidden recycling of enormous amounts of money. But who is Mario Pianesi, guru and absolute boss of that psycho-sect? How did he create his own personality cult and an impressive personal fortune? How does the psycho-sect work? How was it born? How has it evolved? The author, who lived within this group for 25 years, gives a complete picture of the phenomenon.
When the authorities began to investigate Pianesi, more than 40 ex-members of the cult came forward to denounce him. They spoke of sexual abuse, techniques designed to destroy the personality of the members, and mysterious deaths among those who followed the guru’s ‘medical’ advice – and this was the man who claimed to be able to cure any type of illness with his Mapi diet.
How did a diet turn into a mind-control cult?
This is an important book because it explains the manipulatory mechanisms that were capable of entrapping the minds of hundreds of thousands of people. An awareness of such systems can help us to avoid the traps set by the thousands of destructive cults all over the world, and it can allow people to cast off the invisible chains which bind the victims of sects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edizioni Nisroch
• Release date: Aug 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9788831381970

Book preview

Mauro Garbuglia

The macrobiotic sect

How to transform a diet into a mind-control cult

ISBN: 9788831381970

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Table of contents

Preface

Prologue

Introduction

PART 1

Who is Mario Pianesi, really?

THE ORIGINS

Honorary Middle School Diploma?

The Secret of Mario Pianesi’s Macrobiotic Training

Mapi, usurper of Organics

Pianesi, the cure-all wizard!

A wolf in sheep's clothing

The Turning Point

A Prophetic Letter

Goodbye, Michio Kushi

Organising the Adepts

Herman Aihara and Mapi

Tomio Kikuchi and Mapi

Jacques De Langre: Certificates for Sale

French Macrobiotics and Mapi

Paris est toujours Paris

Muramoto and Mapi

Divide and Rule

The La Salvia Commercial Distribution Centre

Aztecs in Italy?

Fifty Years, but it didn’t Seem like it

Sexual Abuse. Mapi’s Alkaline Sperm

Summary Trials

The First Wife: A Mysterious Death

The First Glimmer of Truth

New Rules for the UPM Centres

The Mapi Gulag

Death by Diet

The Many Illustrious Promoters

The Levels of the Sect: The Pyramid of the Followers

Hidden Holdings:The Mapi way to personal enrichment

The Hard Life of a Franciscan

Mario Pianesi:

PART 2

Analysis of a Psycho-Sect

Recruitment

How to manipulate people

Mapi’s inquisition

Linguistic Manipulation

The work within the Psycho-Sect

Other Methods of Control

Mapi’s Polyculture: What is it?

Mapi’s Diet Recognised by Science?

The Diabetes Project

The delusions of the Transparent Label

When Macrobiotics became a business

National Initiatives

Mongolia, mon amour

Flight from Un Punto Macrobiotico

Destroy Mauro Garbuglia!

The Plot

Karma

Pianesi’s Perfect Society

APPENDICES

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Notes

Mauro Garbuglia

The Macrobiotic Sect

How to transform a diet

into a mind-control cult.

Recognising it in order to avoid it

EBOOK

Published by Edizioni Nisroch

Mauro Garbuglia : Worked for 25 years inside Un Punto Macrobiotico , with various roles and responsibilities.

Since 2012, he has been the president of the Associazione Cibo e Benessere , with which, for 5 years, he carried forward the experience of vegetarian catering, meeting with considerable appreciation and recognition.

In 2016, he founded Edizioni Nisroch and since 2019 he has also been the president of ‘ Édi.Marca-Associazione Editori Marchigiani ’.

He writes for various online magazines, such as ‘ Coaching Zone ’ and ‘ Innerbreathing ’.

Preface

14 March 2018. A Wednesday like any other if it hadn’t been for the fact that on that day the Procure of Ancona and Forli, in a joint press conference, communicated to the world that Mario Pianesi, his wife and another two members of his entourage had been advised of the ending of an enquiry.

An enquiry that had lasted for five long years.

The accusations were extremely serious: criminal conspiracy, reduction to slavery, abusive practice of the medical profession and tax evasion.

All of this against the background of the association UPM ( Un Punto Macrobiotico), a very well-known organisation in the field of macrobiotic nutrition.

It is in this context that Mauro Garbuglia’s book has been written, a book whose language is rough, even harsh at times.

Perhaps it could not have been different, bearing in mind that the author has dedicated almost an entire lifetime to that association. Twenty-five years, to be exact.

In that association he worked full time, in that association he got married and in that association, he brought up his sons.

It is in that association that Mauro Garbuglia thought he had found the purpose of his existence, a ‘High Ideal’ to which it was worth committing himself body and soul, without holding anything back, without thinking of his own future or that of his family. In the end, his future would be ensured by the goal that UPM set for itself. And that said it all. At least, that was what he believed.

This, then, is not just a book of denunciation, but a life condensed into a few lines, narrated in a direct, genuine style that does not seek to hide anything or anyone. A book where the pain of he who has sacrificed everything is mixed with a request for justice. Justice for himself, for his wife and their sons, and for the friends who, like them, came out. A book written with the impetus of he who now says ‘I am a free man’.

Doctor Patrizia Santovecchi

(President of the Osservatorio Nazionale Abusi Psicologici, ONAP)

Prologue

I am in a room where some fifty heads of centres are on their feet, shouting, clapping their hands together, crying ‘ Mario!’ ‘Mario!’ ‘Mario!’

I’m there too, also clapping, trying to imitate them. But gradually my lips refuse to open. At the centre of the room, I can see the man we are praising, a saint, perhaps a god. A humble smile is stamped on his face. Then, a moment later, as the clamour increases, I see those eyes, his eyes, hidden behind thick glasses. They are alight with ambition.

His smile reveals a gap-toothed mouth, which becomes coarse. The teeth become sharpened and his shadow side is revealed in all of its cruelty.

I open my eyes with a start. I am bathed in sweat. I sit down on the bed, gasping. It’s only a dream, a painful nightmare that for several years has been disturbing my sleep, my waking life even.

How could it have happened. It seemed like Paradise on Earth, ‘the hope of a better humanity’, a practical example of an ideal group: supportive, fraternal, fair, non-judgemental, positive, social, almost like a family. And yet..and yet…it was anything but.

When I left, it took little to discover that there was something rotten inside Un Punto Macrobiotico and behind its undisputed leader, Mario Pianesi.

I looked around me. I had spent 26 years of my life helping to create and sustain a monstrosity! I had brought up my sons in a macrobiotic gulag, under the illusion that it was ‘freedom’.

I came to know Mario Pianesi when, at the age of 22, I was diagnosed with an ‘incurable illness.’ I was operated on at the Ospedale Maggiore in Bologna, sewn back up again, and sent home with a prognosis of just a few months of life.

My family, in their desperation, entrusted me to the care of Mario Pianesi, self-taught and with no higher qualification than an honorary middle school diploma, who defined himself as a ‘ pioneer of Italian macrobiotics’. But at the time no one knew him and for me it was the final hope.

I made drastic changes to my diet and life style, and after undergoing a difficult period of adjustment, began my journey in the world of macrobiotics.

During that journey, I discovered many wonderful things but many ugly ones as well, and with the passing of the years everything deteriorated noticeably.

The fine principles, the splendid words were revealed as a fiction; everything was overturned. New doctrines, new dogmas, new rules created more and more of a context which I now recognise as sectarian. Yes, a sect because in its original sense ‘sect’ is synonymous with ‘separation’ and Un Punto Macrobiotico means separation both from society and from one another.

An incessant process similar to the brainwashing in Chinese and Russian labour camps leads the individual to a complete depersonalisation, helped by a diet designed to eliminate every defence, every glimmer of individuality.

From outside I review my life, being careful to distinguish the good from the bad, the wise from the dishonest, the positive from the baldly manipulative.

I think back to my final moments inside that organization: a meeting for the centre leaders of UPM ( Un Punto Macrobiotico ) that was the final straw. I can still feel my pain. No! It’s inhuman!

My reaction was a letter, sincere or perhaps naive, provoking a reply that was intended to make an example of me. Whoever challenged Pianesi’s ‘magic circle’ (the faithful who managed the empire on his behalf) deserved neither pity nor mercy.

I was a senior officer of UPM, first secretary of the National Association from 1987 to 1994, publisher on its behalf up to 2003, director of centres, member of the National Committee of regional managers, president of the probiviri (board of arbitrators) for the Marche Sud region. In the opinion of those gentlemen, I had suddenly gone mad, casting doubt on the secretariat and thus on the very divinity that presided over it, Mario Pianesi.

That same Mario Pianesi who had in my eyes become a father figure (my father had died of cancer in 1987, the very year when I myself was ill), a person I had thought of as ‘friend’, ‘brother’, ‘master’, a kind of ‘earthly perfection’, who instead concealed a mountain of lies.

Why? What sense did all of that have? Those questions tormented my mind and gradually a scenario completely different from that which I had visualised within UPM opened up before me.

It was as if I was waking up from a daydream (or rather, a nightmare) to find reality, a sad reality: unworthy behaviour, unmentionable secrets and skeletons in the wardrobe.

I began to study systems of mental manipulation, the methods most characteristic of sects or psycho-sects, and every piece slotted into place.

In this book I would like to inform those who are unaware of it, how such strategies work.

The problem is not Mario Pianesi or UPM. There are thousands of organizations, large and small, that use such systems for selfish reasons or to acquire power, destroying the freedom of the individual.

Unfortunately, in Italy there is a legal vacuum that we hope will soon be filled. There is an urgent need to care for the millions of victims of abusive cults, to offer help in the form of specialised psychological treatment, once they have found the courage to leave.

In these pages we will see what was hidden behind a façade seemingly more than honourable, behind principles that seemed more than just.

The selfish purposes of a leader are the end of every good idea.

It is said that ‘the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.’ On the road to Hell, a new sign has been affixed showing the initial good intentions of Mario Pianesi and Un Punto Macrobiotico.

From there, began the journey that led directly to the pits of Beelzebub.

Introduction

For long years I lived in a closed, sectarian world, fulfilling roles of considerable responsibility, thanks to which I had access to special, little-known internal information.

All the same, I only came to know the truth about my experience when I decided to leave. Only then could I see the overall picture of a system that now seems to me diabolical and criminal. The lack of a global vision led me to justify the unjustifiable, bear the unbearable, for more than 25 years.

With this book I am keeping faith with a commitment that I have made.

For years Mario Pianesi, guru of Un Punto Macrobiotico , urged me to write down his deeds, recording his glorious accomplishments as he conquered the world. So, I collected a great deal of material. Once I had decided to find the way to freedom, that material took on a completely different appearance - bitter tastes, unpleasant smells, all contrary to what it had meant to me before.

In any biographical work, created by serious writers, there is a light side and a dark side of the story of an individual or a group, but above all there are grey areas without which everything is incomprehensible, misleading, unreal or invented.

The material entrusted to me by Pianesi has now been enriched by the testimony of so many people who managed to emerge from UPM; people who suffered because of the doctrines of Mapi (the acronym of Mario Pianesi), the abuse, the verbal, mental and spiritual violence, the lies, the omissions, the selfishness of a false, manipulative person.

Sometimes those people have even had to flee abroad, tired of being stalked by the followers of Pianesi. Often, they have had to sign papers committing them to not revealing their experiences or not saying, in cases where they have developed serious physical conditions, that they had followed the macrobiotics of Mapi.

However, to guarantee the serenity of some of those people, the material they provided was delivered to two lawyers in different locations, and in the event of false accusations or personal attacks, those papers would immediately be surrendered to the courts.

There is a profound fear in whoever has been inside UPM, such that, even when they have distanced themselves from the organisation, it continues to haunt their personal nightmares.

My own personal experience is evidence of this modus operandi , which is typical of any destructive sect: scorched earth policies, stalking , defamation, threats, attacks and more!

Above all, anyone who has lived for many years inside a sect, having lost contact with reality, with relatives, with former friends, with normal jobs, with normal food, lives in a state of constant trauma once they have emerged. There is a desire to reject the non-life of Mapi’s macrobiotics, but often there is the risk of not having the support to reconstruct oneself.

One emerges from UPM because it’s no longer possible to put up with the ‘normal’ daily violence, the complete renunciation of even the slightest independent thought, (given that independent thinking is the greatest sin), the constant internal informing, the betrayal imposed on couples, on families, between partners, between followers.

In reality, it’s only an intuition of the truth, a flash of awareness, that can lead a person to choose freedom. There is no overall vision, we know nothing of Pianesi & Co, just a repeated litany of information intended to create the cult of his personality.

Who is Pianesi? What is Un Punto Macrobiotico ? Are there skeletons in the cupboard to be discovered? Can a worthy individual like him have a dark side? Can an association of free, hard-working individuals reveal itself as something completely different?

Here we will give the replies. To use terms beloved of Pianesi, here we are giving ‘counter-information’, with certain precise truths and many questions. We will see the overall picture, hitherto lacking to all, kept hidden by Pianesi, except from his family members and closest collaborators, who make up the ‘magic circle’, or rather, the group of accomplices, who are aware of the crimes and misdemeanours.

This book will reveal the true story of Pianesi and UPM.

Is it possible that a virtuous citizen of Le Marche (though born in Albania), a self-made man who has done good to ‘millions’ of people, who has ‘cured diabetes’, a benefactor of poor countries, an honorary ‘professore’, is really a swindler and a criminal?

It is necessary to give an accurate overview of a chain of cause and effect, a succession of events that makes clear the line of action of what, in effect, went from a free association in the early years of the 1980’s to a cruel sectarian group operating at various levels, scarcely acknowledged or completely unknown to the majority of people.

The accusation mounted by the Public Prosecutor’s offices in Forlì and Ancona created quite a stir. An enquiry lasting 5 years, from 2013 to 2018, gave rise to serious imputations: criminal conspiracy, reduction to slavery, personal injury and tax evasion. Is that possible?

There is a court that intends to find out. Certainly, the accusations of the magistrates are very worrying.

Why am I talking about Mapi’s macrobiotics? About UPM the sect? Because the theory proposed by Pianesi is a complete negation of the original macrobiotics. He took whatever suited him from Ohsawa, Kushi, Riviere, Levy, Aihara and others and turned everything upside down, following his own precise plan.

Not by chance, for more than 20 years, inside UPM macrobiotic awareness was denied, simplified, and reduced to a simple slogan: ‘If you are ill, you have eaten the wrong things and you haven’t done what Pianesi told you to do.’

Denying even the slightest awareness of the real macrobiotics was fundamental to Pianesi; as was criticising schools, public and private, burning books, demonising the Internet and much else. Because the purpose of his personal communication was to make of his truth the sole, unchallengeable truth.

The following chapters explain why entering UPM, even only to work occasionally, in a semi-voluntary capacity, participating in their internal meetings or their conferences and initiatives, and even investing money to open one of their centres, could represent a real danger.

Pianesi is an atheist, antireligious par excellence, a materialist in every sense, and as has happened before with others of this type, he decided to deify himself, convincing himself that he was the only god. The uncritical cult of his person is the most sinister factor in this sect.

The accounts of various witnesses speak of a common ordeal, experienced in different ways: pain, continuing trauma, abuse and violence.

For my part, I say this:

‘ I don’t regret the moments when I have suffered. I carry my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a price as high as that of slavery. The only difference is that you pay with pleasure and smiles, even when those smiles are bathed with tears. ’ [¹]

Further reading:

Nella Setta’ – Gazzanni-Piccinni – Edizioni Fandango 2018

‘I culti distruttivi e la manipolazione mentale’ – Santovecchi – EDB 2004

‘Combating Cult Mind Control’, S. Hassan, pub. Freedom of Mind Press, 2015.

Any other text on abusive cults and mental manipulation.

PART 1

Who is Mario Pianesi, really?

This is an account of the ‘mysterious story’ of Mario Pianesi, autodidact, acclaimed doctor, teacher, engineer, creator/founder and president of the National and International Association UPM, Un Punto Macrobiotico .

He was the guiding force behind an organisation spread throughout Italy and abroad consisting of:

1 International Secretariat

3 Commercial Distribution Centres

2 Publishing Houses

78 shops

50 restaurants

1 university refectory

2 Tearooms

1 Hostel

8 Bakeries for the production of bread and cakes

6 Food production workshops

1 Workshop for the production of natural cosmetics and hygiene products

1 Workshop for the production of natural footwear

1 Workshop for the production of natural clothing

1 Workshop for the production of natural woollen accessories

1 Workshop for the production of natural furniture

1 Workshop for the production of natural pictures

1 International Centre for Juridical Studies. [²]

This Association was recognised in 2006 as Ente Nazionale con finalità culturali e assistenziali (Non-profit making cultural association) and in 2016 had 78,395 registered members. [³]

With a dense network of ‘illustrious’ acquaintances and an excellent pedigree , Pianesi has received more than 180 acknowledgements, nationally and internationally [⁴] , including:

Official medal from the President of the Republic, the Hon. Giorgio Napolitano

Knight of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy

Solemn commendation by Unesco

Honorary citizenship of dozens of towns and cities in Italy and abroad

Commendations and written declarations from public and private bodies in the sectors of science, technology and the environment, in Italy and abroad

Citizen of the year in Le Marche, 2017

In his infinite modesty, this personage presents himself thus:

‘ BY MY WILL’

The Movement of UPM Centres

is a collection of people who, though

diverse in cultural, social, political

and religious extraction,

stand together for the achievement of a

common dream:

the dissemination of a natural,

balanced diet and

the diffusion of a philosophy of

respect and love beginning with

the air, the water, the earth, plants

animals and all native peoples.’ [⁵]

The list of his honours and recognitions is impressive: he has met Pope Francis, the Mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, and the President of Coni (Italian Olympic Committee) Giovanni Malagò, and he is also the man who, according to him, ‘cured’ Fidel Castro.

A reference to him was inserted in a volume of the series ‘ Misteri italiani Newton ’. In 2013 Maria Paola Cancellieri and Marinella Minelli published ‘ Misteri, crimini e storie insolite delle Marche’ (Mysteries, crimes and unusual stories of Le Marche). Alongside crimes, femicide, magicians and satanic sects, the authors speak of this ‘innovator who has reinvented ancient Chinese dietetics,’ and who ‘in 2012 was proposed for a Nobel Prize by the President of the Tunisian Society of Natural Science.’ [⁶]

In fact, Pianesi is one of the most inexplicable mysteries of this new millennium. It’s not by chance that it is said in the East, ‘The bigger the front, the bigger the back’.

The more one creates a ‘clean’ image, the bigger the suspicion that there is also a hidden part, the notorious ‘skeleton in the wardrobe that can overwhelm even someone of such calibre.

I knew him well.

This allows me to recount his ‘dark side’.

THE ORIGINS

Mario Pianesi was born in Tirana, Albania, on the 24 th of April 1944, during the war.

In all of his lectures (more than 20,000 according to information updated by him in 2017) he spoke about the difficulties experienced by his family during those tragic years. In particular, he said that his father, who had the same name as him, was blocked in Albania after the 8 th of September, when Italy lost the control of the country that it had gained in1939.

Mario Pianesi Senior went into hiding and was sought by the Germans. He hid in the house of a young Montenegrin woman. She was already pregnant and later recounted that the Germans threatened to shoot her if she didn’t reveal the whereabouts of the Italian.

Mario Pianesi described his father as ‘powerful, though not more than 175 cm in height, brave and resourceful’ , so much so that once, when captured, he even managed to avoid being shot by leaping down from a high wall, together with another prisoner.

Once free, he returned to find the young woman, who in the meantime had given birth. He then took her to Italy. Out of gratitude, she gave her son the same name as his father, so the child became ‘Mariuccio’, a diminutive that would be significant throughout his life, and a trauma that would provoke conflicting feelings and a contorted and controversial psychology.

When the war ended, the Pianesi family found themselves back in Corridonia (Macerata), where they made a living by trading at various local markets. The father was also a lorry driver.

The most important figures in Mario Pianesi’s youth were his father, certainly, but also his uncle.

Mariuccio Pianesi politely described his uncle Feliziano as a ‘sciupa femmine’ (womanizer). He was a decisive man who, after the attempted assassination of Togliatti, it is said, was ready to set fire to the Church in Corridonia. He later became a successful businessman, creating a furniture business.

In substance, in the mind of the young Mariuccio, his father and his uncle were ‘two giants, unreachable’, very different from him.

The young Pianesi was tall, thin and gangling, and he lived in a constant state of tension. He was also very different from his sister, a blonde girl in whom the Slavic characteristics of his mother were very marked.

His relationship with his father was very difficult. He never managed to be accepted by his father; he sought his approval, but it was never forthcoming. His father was often away, driving his lorry, and at home his attention was mainly lavished on his daughter.

This tension exploded during Mariuccio’s first year in the Scuola Media , when he provoked a quarrel with an old school caretaker. He was expelled and never resumed regular studies again.

However, he worked with his parents at the markets and from them he learned the art of selling, studying each potential client and finding the right words to sell them something.

He didn’t have many friends. He’d always had a haughty, arrogant attitude. He always wanted to be right and many people disliked him.

During his period of national service, he contracted viral hepatitis, as a result of an injection.

Both before and after his period of military service, he did various jobs. He described himself as a ‘great worker’, quick, precise, a champion of the weak. The opinion of those who knew him was different; they spoke of an individual scarcely cut out for physical work (capable of being lazy and crafty) much given to dialectics – a rural form of dialectics, but still effective.

Fascinated, as many were in that period, by the idea of ‘communist revolution’, he was a fervent listener to Radio Tirana.

At that time, Radio Tirana was the most extreme voice of the communist vision. The government in power in Albania was that of Enver Hoxha, a harsh dictatorial communist regime, which lasted for more than 40 years