Blood type diet.
 

Anyone hear about this? It sounds way too simplistic. Seems to be based on the idea that people with certain blood types have evolved at different speeds. O type blooded human are the oldest strain basically based on what our hunter ancestors ate. AB type blooded humans are the most recent strain and reflect what should be eaten by city dwellers.

You are supposed to eat stuff on what is good for your blood type which is based on evolutionary strains. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_diet

Cannot really buy this reasoning. Has all the scientific validity IMHO of those people who used to gather information on bumps on heads and then give medical advice based upon the shape of the cranium.

I've read a couple of articles about the blood type diet and there isn't a whole lot of research to back it up.

That seems true. There are some best sellers on it but they look more like junk science than real science., i.e. something that can be disproven in a lab or other such experiment. Eat Right For Your Type :: The Official Blood Type Diet ® Site

The 4 blood types also look much older than the proponents of blood type medicine contend.

I seem to remember this book being released about 15 years ago, and lots of people jumping on the bandwagon. I think it was just another short-lived fad.

Sounds like it is revisiting now. Some people at Doggie Doo Run Run were talking about it this morning. Seems there is some speaker pushing it here in the Villages.

I read the book and was thinking about following it but then decided against it since I didn't like the food I was supposed to eat! I did wonder about it, though.

I tried this diet a few years ago. It made me so tired it took me six months to regain my strength.

I was just looking at the 96 page list of clubs in TV and there is a club "Eat Right For Your Blood Type" in case anyone is interested.

I looked into it and decided I'd have to throw out everything in the house and start over. Also, as someone else mentioned here the food I'd "get to" eat doesn't sound appetizing to me! This "diet" has been around the block and I did hear about it some years ago. Haven't actually known anyone who did it and if they did adhered to it.

Anything that's restrictive will eventually cause one to fall off the wagon due to it not being sustainable.

Anyone can write a book. Sigh, there is no scientific backup for this particular "diet" plan.

not a fan liked atkins better cause it simple

All foods contain lectins. And the author, D'Adamo, claims that if a food is incompatible for your blood type, your immune cells will attack the particular lectins in that food. Your immune cells will attack the lectins as a foreign invader. This is supposed to put an unnecessary burden on your immune system and cause a distraction from hunting down the real villains like cancer cells etc..

He claims he has tested all the blood types with all the different lectins from various foods. Evidently, lectins can be purchased especially for research purposes. So, if you put a drop of type O blood with a pinch of certain lectins under a microscope you will see clumping if the two are incompatable.

It sounds valid but I don't know of any doctor who has published any scientific paper on this finding.

Although many people claim to feel better on his diet, it could be because his lists of acceptable foods are mostly natural whole foods. He doesn't have any fast foods on his lists. So if you just came off of a junk food regimen, you are likely to feel better eating natural whole foods.

This seems to challenge the blood type diet claims.
 

Lectins in Edible Foods & ABO Reactions | Owen Foundation Website

There was no difference in blood type re-actions based on samples from various lectins in foods.

It may be likely that it will take years of research to gain any validity in this theory. It would certainly explain why some people suffer badly from auto-immune diseases and not others. My wife is AB and the results of her blood tests have consistently registered a false positive due to the fact that her LDL's are so low and her HDL's so high. I intend to see open to this issue and see what develops over time

Do you happen to know who sponsors the Owen Foundation Website? I'm courious because in the past I have read other articles against the blood type diet but none of them were ever signed by anyone. D'Adamo may be selling wrong information to people, but at least he has the courage to attach his name to it.

FYI, my blood type is "O" so I'm supposed to eat meat but I'm doing very well as a vegan. I did eat meat prior to 2006 and did well on that too.

Website is owned as follows

S. Owen Foundation
Sharyl Owen
533 Vista Del Campo
Camarillo, CA 93010

Thanks, but I still wonder: Who is Sharyl Owen? Is she a scientist? Student? Who does she work for? Who pays for her website? Does she get funding from industry?

Everything on her website seems scientific, but the same can be said about D'Amato's book, "Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type". At the end of his book in appendix C, he has a long list of references. Among them are papers he had published. I'm not sure what those papers prove, but I'm not sure what Owen's papers prove either.

So I wonder: Who is the pure scam, D'Adamo or the Owen Foundation?

We are at a big disadvantage because we can't gain access to scientific papers published in journals. A while back I called the Lady Lake library to see if I could get some journal papers. Essentially, I was told I couldn't. You have to be a doctor to gain access, and you would have to go to a medical library.

That's a good question. I cannot find the credentials of Sharyl Owen. I did find this which is interesting. Do not know the writers' various qualifications either:
Cordain Newsletter Criticising Blood Type Diets

Oh Darn It!
 

I checked the diet for my blood type, and donuts were nowhere to be found! No chocolate, no mac 'n cheese, no ribs, no corn on the cob! :icon_hungry:

You must be B......no corn for me either,,,,,,not a chance, especially since discovering how good it tastes when cobs are cooked in the microwave!!!

Admitting my personal bias-- I really do not like this diet because I am a AB- and it limits severely what I should eat.

Now if I cut out all the foods that this AB diet recommends, I probably would be a lot healthy and weigh less but the same can be said of any diet that cuts out these various foods. http://www.ehow.com/about_5505941_di...-ab-blood.html

You should read "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell. After reading it I can't help but think that animal protein is the wrong way to go, especially for those of us who are in our older years.

Many diets like Atkins, Zone, Paleo and D'Adamo vocus on the short term effect of weight loss to the near exclusion of the long term effect of preventing cancer and other degenerative diseases. Cavemen ate animal protein to great benefit because they needed the concentrated energy to live their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. And they didn't have to worry about cancer and many other degenerative diseases because they didn't live long enough to get any of them.

But now that the average life expectancy in the U.S. is about 78.37, we need to shift the focus to the prevention of degenerative diseases. And I think the way to accomplish that is by eating a vegan diet. That's why I recommend reading "The China Study".

Of course there will be many who say they can't do it. Well, I guess that means I'm recommending it for those who can.

Peter D'Adamo, N.D. has recently published a popular book in which he motivates an eating plan based on his interpretation of the ABO system groups and health. This system kind diet plan theory motivates daily consumption of animal flesh by people of system kind O and system kind B.

There just isn't enough interest by other researchers/doctors on this theory, probably because because of the disbelief.

Called a scam or invalid in several sites, two

Before reading or following this "wing nut" theory.

You should read "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell. as suggested by villagePL

Thanks for the recommendation, VillagesPL and jimbo2012. ::: THE CHINA STUDY :::

Lectins are pretty ubiquitous and not just in foods. Symptoms associated with consumption of high levels of lectins are gastrointestinal where they screw up cell repair and may affect gut immunity. One of 'em is even used in biological warfare. The lab experiment of clumping of blood cells is contrived and irrelevant to real life. Put blood cells in water and they lyse (explode) - so we should not drink water? The diet is based on the presumption that since high levels are a problem - any level is dangerous and that's not validated. As the founder of toxicology said - the poison is in the dose. We're exposed to all sorts of bad stuff - for example, grains and nuts (esp. all peanuts and peanut butter) include aflatoxins - these are liver toxins and carcinogens. Manufacturers of foods at risk keep the levels to what is considered by science and the government to be say is "safe."
Lack of interest in such theories is more apt to be attributed to the fact that they exaggerate what's known beyond what's reasonable.

Anyone can write a book, selecting what they want as support .

(Posted by FoPaa's grumpy scientist husband :grumpy:)

and you can find scientific papers on google scholar and pubmed. Problem is that the entire paper may not be available but the summary ("abstract') almost always is.