Eat right for your type?

[mrkelley]

I just read a book about eating according to your blood type. i.e. A blood type is pretty much a vegatarian, O is a meat eater. In the book it describes a lot of studies and such, I was just wondering what the medical community thinks of this “diet” (so to speak). Is it valid and does it work? I would just like another oppinion from a reputable source that is not in some way advertising something. The book is called “eating right for your type” if you need something interesting to read. Thanks in advance for your help!

Mike

[Wikkit]

The closest book I could find is Eat Right for Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight: 4 Blood Types, 4 Diets. The fact that there are two subtitles and a big 4 on the cover immediately makes me dislike the book, but I’ll ignore that for now. The second review also looks bad. The website for the book is http://www.dadamo.com/

The whole idea is, well, stupid. One good rebuttal, Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Blood Type Diet has Serious Flaws, says:

So, on purely chemical foundations, eating by blood group is essentially totally useless. Its a wacky way of streamlining food intake in the direction of a lower calorie intake, though if you look at some of the blood type diet recommendations the calorie intake for day plans veers all over the place. Additionally, the Eat Right 4 Your Type diet recommended for type O, the commonest group, is not so far removed from the Atkins-style diets, and these are diets high in saturates which are not in the best interests of the cardiovascular system and have links to strokes and some types of cancer. So the nutritional thumbs down says the “blood type” diet is just another fad diet and a bad one at that.

The conclusion of the article states it pretty well.

It’s even on Quackwatch: http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/NegativeBR/d’adamo.html

[Daerlyn]

If you want to eat by body types, look for a book by a Dr. Abravanel. It’s based on dominant glands, rather than blood types. I’ve read the book, and it seems to make a fair amount of sense. Caveat: IANA dietician, I might be wrong.