Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution [Hardcover]

 

 

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Let me get a few things out of the way before reviewing the book itself. I've been on the Blood Type O diet for 9 months now and have lost 30 lbs. To give you some background I started a new job in a new industry about 3 years ago and had gained nearly 25 lbs due to the long hours and free snacks and dinners (which I ate because I was working 60-90 hours a week) - in addition to the 20 lbs I had gained since getting married almost 7 years ago. Both my wife and I searched for a diet that would work for the both of us. My sister and her husband had some success with the Atkins diet, but it seemed too stringent for us. It was my wife who suggested this diet and I admit to being sceptical.

After reading the book I searched the internet for further information about Dr. D'Adamo's research. Not much came up other than the "official" website. Does this mean that Dr. D'Adamo is wrong or that his book is just another diet clothed in new language? Perhaps, perhaps not. And therein lies a caution I would give you: be careful not to glorify this diet or Dr. D'Adamo beyond it, or his, relative worth. I've met many people over the years who have tried a variety of diets with varying degrees of success. Many tend to dismiss the diet if it doesn't work for them and, on the other hand, present it as the one-and-only true diet if it does work.

My criteria for deciding whether or not to try the Blood Type diet was twofold: 1) is it a radical diet that emphasizes one or two types of food to the exclusion of all else or does it recommend a balanced intake of a variety of foods, which in my opinion is the right way to go and 2) is it something that I can incorporate as a lifetstyle change rather than being a fad. In my opinion, and my experience, the answer is yes to both. However, I would also say that your success with this diet may be different as I believe a number of psychological factors are also applicable, to any diet e.g. willingness to follow a regime and a recognition of when it is ok for them personally to "cheat".

The book itself provides information about the different diets and, in general terms, why they work. Dr. D'Adamo doesn't provide details of his research - though he does describe some case studies, again in general terms. While that isn't the purpose of the book the fact that you virtually can't find the information if you wanted it is a little disconcerting. It provides a few recipes, but you should buy the supplemental recipe books if you have trouble creating them on your own. The first three chapters cover general information about Dr. D'Adamo's approach and the next four cover diets for each blood type. Chapters on the individual diets give some background information and then a list of foods categorized as Highly Beneficial, Neutral, and Avoid. At least for the Blood Type O diet a list of the foods that encourage weight loss and a list of foods the contribute to weight gain are also given.

I gave this book 3 stars for a couple of reasons. The lack of further detailed information about the research leading to his conclusions and the contradictory categorization of foods that are beneficial, neutral, and to be avoided throughout the "series" of Blood Type books. The end results is that I have lost 30 lbs and have been able to keep it off. But I must also give myself some of the credit for being able to make the lifestyle change necessary to make it happen.

Some of the concepts in this book are not fully scientifically supportable, but the diet may still make lots and lots of people feel a whole lot better and attain a much greater level of health! These two things are not mutually exclusive.

Reasons the claims made about the scientific merit of the exact food lists provided for each blood type are unconvincing (on the whole) to me include:

1. I have read more than half a dozen detailed and methodical explanations of why the scientific concepts in the 'Blood Type' books are based on sketchy and incomplete science. While some of the theory makes sense, they found holes in the theory and the way the food lists have been compiled big enough to drive buses through. These were not in books which deny the validity of anything that is not 'mainstream' - quite the opposite in fact. These were by some of the best health and nutrition authors around. Their arguments were very compelling (although I don't have the time to go into them here). There are also numerous articles online that contain this information which you can find by Googling. The general consensus is that the author has part of his theory right, but the way it is being presented as a complete theory with all questions answered is not correct.

2. Even if it's true that our blood type has an enormous amount to do with what we should eat, the concept of biochemical individuality would still mean that there would be just as many differences between what people with the same blood type would eat, as similarities. People are remarkably individual on a biochemical level as the book Biochemical Individuality explains.

3. Family members with the same blood type often do well on very different diets. This illustrates the above principle, and also the concept that different diets suit you at different times of your life in response to all sorts of bodily changes, disease processes and so on.

3. The topic of this diet comes up now and then in chat groups and I have only very rarely heard it discussed favourably - perhaps by a single person? Most say very clearly that it didn't help them and was a waste of time and effort.

The book The Body Ecology Diet: Recovering Your Health and Rebuilding Your Immunity explains that the blood type diet books provide valuable clues about which foods may suit us best, but that it should be considered a theory still in development. The author points out that:

- The research has not been adapted for those with Candida issues, acidic conditions or other serious immune disorders.
- The blood type diet does not emphasise the importance of eating cultured foods. For example, type Os are advised to cut out brassica vegetables such as cabbage entirely as they affect thyroid function. This may make the diet needlessly limited. But all that is needed is for these foods to be cultured, and they pose no problem! (That is a MASSIVE MASSIVE oversight for those of us with already very limited diets!)
- No protein guide is given for vegetarian type Os and Bs.
- Food combining is ignored.
- All blood types are advised to avoid apple cider vinegar, which is highly medicinal, aids digestion and is alkalising.
- Food preparation methods are not discussed which can make some foods well tolerated. (Soaked almonds and cabbage made into sauerkraut are very different to raw or roasted almonds and plain cabbage, for example.)
- Lots of foods that feed yeast are recommended on the diet.
- Unfermented soy is recommended, despite the fact this is difficult to digest and unhealthy.
- Dairy is given undue importance and over recommended.
- Wheat may cause problems for all blood types yet it is recommended on this diet for some blood types.
- The blood type diet advises avoiding coconut oil, and supports many of the myths surrounding this excellent food as explained in Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol.
- No distinction is made between refined and unrefined oils.
- Many of the fruits and vegetables on the allowed lists and the avoid lists for each blood type do not seem to tally with the author's experience with patients and for the most part, all the blood types do well eating the same fruits and vegetables (with the exception of tomatoes).

But this blood type diet book can still improve your health possibly, because:

1. It advises cutting out junk food.

2. It advises choosing higher quality *organic* vegetables, fruit and meats and eggs.

3. It advises upping your vegetable intake.

4. It advises lots of people to cut out foods such as dairy, grains and legumes - which are some of the most common food allergens, which most people have no idea they are allergic to. The lectins in grains and legumes also cause a lot of problems for many people.

5. It advises lots of people to cut out foods such as grains and legumes - which are very high carbohydrate. This will lead to easy weight loss for lots of people.

Considering these 5 factors alone, almost anyone would benefit from going on this diet. These are 5 pieces of simply excellent advice! But you would also get many of the same benefits from following any healthy whole food eating plan or at least any which avoided recommending grain and legume consumption, as all the Paleo diet books do.

If you do have allergies or a problem dealing with carbohydrates, or a need for lots of fat and protein in your diet, you better hope you are a type O though. The basics of the type 0 program happen to fit me well by chance (though it doesn't at all fit family members of mine that have the same blood type) but I bet lots of others that aren't Os do poorly eating such a high carb diet so high in grains and legumes! (This must be why the author has revised down the amount of grains it is okay for non-Os to eat, in more recent books.)

The author's belief in the blood type diet concept seems to have escalated to faith, as one reviewer said.

It cannot hurt to try this diet for a short time, probably. But there are far easier ways to go about getting healthy and losing weight that are nowhere near as enormously complicated, or as needlessly restrictive, potentially. You might start with a simple book on nutrition and eating real food such as Real Food: What to Eat and Why or, if you desire to lose weight as well as improve your health, Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats.

If you suspect that you may have an issue with grains and legumes (and/or want to lose weight while getting healthier), then you might want to read some of the books on the Paleo diet and try this diet for a while. There are lots of good books on this topic including The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy (Primal Blueprint Series) as well as lots of free information online.

If you suspect you have food allergies you may want to have ELISA testing done, do some pulse testing, go on an elimination diet and then a 4 day rotation diet. You may also want to look into issues surrounding having a 'leaky gut' which is one of the main causes of food allergies. Suspect leaky gut if you have been a heavy user of NSAIDs, aspirin, ibuprofen etc. Books such as No More Heartburn: Stop the Pain in 30 Days--Naturally! : The Safe, Effective Way to Prevent and Heal Chronic Gastrointestinal Disorders can be helpful in treating this condition.

To read about the fats we all need you may want to read Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol and Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food.

All of these books have a solid scientific basis. Eat real food, consider that you may have hidden food allergies and try to find the diet that suits YOU as an individual, I say!

At best this book promotes a very incomplete and flawed theory that only explains one small part of the science of what we should each be eating and why, rather than the whole answer. Unfortunately the issue relies on many other factors in addition to blood type and is far more complicated.

I quite enjoyed finding out what blood type I was finally! I'm an O negative blood type. It always felt weird that I didn't know this.

The three stars in this rating are for the 5 excellent diet tips included in this book, as listed above.

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

Of course, it entailed getting a blood test to find out what my type was. The anthropological premise in the book is ludicrous , but I figure maybe he's got the diet part right, after all, he says he's got 15 years of history trying these diets on thousands of his own patients with great success. Why not give it a try?

I found the diet difficult to adapt to, there were many normal, healthy foods which were to be avoided. Unusual, hard to find foods were to replace these. These new foods ended up being more expensive due to low supply like spelt flours, the odd grains (quinoa, amaranth), organic and free-range meats, etc. I did a LOT of food preparation, you buy almost nothing on this diet pre-made, but have to cook it all yourself from scratch. I gained weight, but was more concerned with achieving the health benefits claimed in the book. After a whole year on the diet, my blood testing turned up many negative effects even though I had followed the diet very closely for THAT WHOLE TIME. My cholesterol level had risen dramatically, I had started to have acid reflux and had to be put on medication, among other things.

Why are so many foods on every blood type's 'Avoid' list? The author says its because of lectins for the most part, those little proteins in the foods which are going to 'agglutinate' your blood cells and cause all sorts of diseases for you. I started investigating lectins to see if this was true. The 'Handbook of Plant Lectins' is a good source for this information, in fact, Dr. D'Adamo cites this book regularly. What I found amazed me. Most lectins in foods agglutinate ALL or NO blood types, there are very few which are specific to only one ABO blood type. Most of the plant lectins which ARE specific to ABO type are NON-FOOD plants, like ornamentals, trees and weeds! Don't take my word for it, you can read it for yourself.

After that, I started checking into the other parts of the 'blood type diet theory.' There is the matter of different ABO types having different digestive capabilities, therefore supposedly requiring very different diets. There are recent studies indicating there is no difference between people of different blood types for stomach acid production. Way back before it was discovered that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacteria (Helicobacter pylori) it was thought they were caused by too much stomach acid. H. pylori does affect people of blood type O more often than others, but that's not caused by too much stomach acid! There are just as many As on medication to lower stomach acid levels as there are other types, there are many people with O blood type who have low stomach acid levels and must take hydrochloric acid to improve digestion. The author's theory seems to be based on old research before the true cause of ulcers was found....

If you look at the books, you'll see that Dr. D'Adamo has made quite a few changes as time goes on. Why is this, since he claims so much success with his own patient population using the diets? For instance, A blood types are told they can eat 30-55 servings of grains/breads/pasta a week, which works out to 5 to 8 servings a day in his best-selling 'Eat Right for Your Type.' This is pretty close to the Standard American Diet plan for grains. However, in Live Right, the author has suddenly changed the allotted grains/breads/pasta servings to 5 to 7 a WEEK for As, with no explanation of why he has made this change. He must have noticed that in the real world, people using his bulletin board were not losing the weight they wanted to, in spite of his claimed success with his patients using this method for 15 years or more.

If you have allergies, better hope you are an O blood type. This diet contains the fewest allergens of the whole group. And Dr. D'Adamo does say he thinks Os as a group are the most allergic. That must be why he set up the O diet as he did. But this premise is entirely wrong, a person of any blood type can have allergies (not to mention that one can have genetic makeup that predisposes one to any number of diseases, regardless of your ABO blood type).

The best thing that can be said about these books is that the author tells every blood type to stay away from processed foods and eat more vegetables and fruits. Could that be the real reason anyone gets improvement from these diets?? Isn't eating more fruits and vegetables the same thing you hear from your own doctor? How is one gene, for ABO type, going to account for the vast differences in population susceptibility to different diseases? Even if you add in Lewis blood type (which comes up in his next book --by the way, you have to pay him about ... for a test to find out what yours is or you won't even be able to use that book), that's just two genes out of your total makeup to determine your entire health, longevity, diet, 'psychological' perspective. Are we talking science here? or science-fiction?

Serious scientists and researchers must be cringing at the way their work has been twisted and misquoted for use in these books. If you try this diet for fun, go ahead (and be prepared to spend a lot of time in the kitchen). You have the odds of it working for about 1/3 of people, no effect at all for another 1/3, and about 1/3 of the people get worse, about the same odds as 'chance.'

Eat Right for Your Type - a Fairy Tale; Live Right for Your Type - The Fantasy Continues.......

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4.0 out of 5 stars eat right 4 your blood type
Happy to get the book and it is in good shape. The delivery time took a long time (almost a month)to get from the U.S. to Canada. Read more

Published 7 months ago by susan

4.0 out of 5 stars Hey, This Just Might Work!
I commiserate with all those who found the science sadly lacking in this book, but for someone like me who is looking for a reasonably healthy eating plan that they can actually... Read more

Published on Sep 16 2008 by SusannahReads

5.0 out of 5 stars Was I surprised
When I first heard about this blood type diet, I thought it was nothing but a scam. Boy was I wrong. Read more

Published on Jan 5 2007 by C. Wentz

5.0 out of 5 stars TRY IT- YOU won't be disappointed
I am nearly 63 years old. I have followed many DIETS throughout my life time because for most of my life I have been fighting all those extra pounds. Read more

Published on Dec 26 2005 by carridesigns

5.0 out of 5 stars Life and Health Improving
I had been a vegetarian for a few years, and my energy level was low. I also was having digestion problems, specifically acid reflux. There were some other problems also. Read more

Published on July 10 2004 by rsowles

5.0 out of 5 stars This stuff really works
I recently finished Eat Right for a second time to be sure that I was selecting the right foods for my blood type and to understand more about the D'Adamo research. Read more

Published on Jun 7 2004 by Diana Wilson

5.0 out of 5 stars No More Zits!
I eat milk/cheese/corn --> I get zits; :-(
I stop --> They go away. :-)

I eat wheat --> I get hemorroids. :-(
I stop --> They go away. Read more

Published on May 21 2004

1.0 out of 5 stars Misleading
There are two huge problems with D'Adamo's books.

First, he forgot to check scientific data. His whole theory is based on the history of the origin of blood types. Read more

Published on Mar 26 2004 by Al

4.0 out of 5 stars Are you a Secretor or a Non-secretor?
These terms may mean nothing to you before you have read this extremely helpful book. But there's a test to take (a saliva test) that will give you the next level of information... Read more

Published on Feb 15 2004 by amarouk

5.0 out of 5 stars Going to give it a try...
I've been trying to optimize my diet for years and I think the theories put forth by Dr. D'Adamo may be plausible. Read more

Published on Jan 21 2004 by GW

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