Eat Right Your Type

Summary: Avoid foods which are detrimental to one's blood type. Even before looking at a blood type food chart, it is a good idea to go ahead and limit foods which are not good for most people including the nightshade vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers), wheat, and oranges (especially orange juice). Blood type Os, the most common type, should not be vegetarians and should consume a moderate quantity of red meat, poultry, and a good deal of fish on a regular basis. Blood type As, the next most common type, should lean toward a vegetarian diet and exclude red meat from the diet, but occasional poultry and fish is fine.

Eat Right 4 Your Type is a book that was written by Peter D'Adamo. It states that people ought to eat foods that "agree" with their blood type, be it O, A, B, or AB. He bases this on testing the lectins found in foods on the different types of blood. Lectins which are harmful to the blood cause it to coagulate quickly and have other undesirable traits. Foods which are beneficial cause it to become more "slippery" and transport nutrients and oxygen more effectively. Foods which are neither beneficial or harmful to the blood are neutral - they are "just" food. Keep in mind that these suggestions are only based on lectin testing and not other factors which could still cause problems. See Problems with Soy as an example.

I think that the lectin-based food suggestions are important. However, he bases most of his recommendations on herbs and other supplements based not on their lectin content but on his theories. And he follows conventional medical "wisdom" for these, believing, for example, that "autoimmune" disorders are common, instead of the complementary view that so-called autoimmune disorders are almost always the body's reaction to an undiagnosed pathogen or toxin. I have seen a large number of people get better taking supplements which were supposedly harmful to their blood types (again, based on his theories of blood type and supplements, not on lectin testing.) So I discount these while endorsing his food recommendations.

ER4YT appears particularly helpful for many disorders, especially inflammatory conditions and chronic digestive and skin problems as well as for low energy levels.

When I first starting studying complementary medicine and how people fared under it, I just knew there was some important dietary factor that I was not taking into consideration. I saw how The Zone Diet could improve many conditions a great deal, but not everyone did well on it. The missing factor was the lectins in foods, which is thorougly explained in Eat Right. Eating right for most people follows zone principles pretty well by discouraging consumption of most starchy carbohydrates. If one completely avoids wheat, potatoes, and the grain type of corn, for example, weight loss will quickly follow.

It is also valuable reading for those who think they are being healthy by being vegetarian when they are blood type Os. This is a recipe for chronic fatigue. The person may not realize it since it may take months of eating too little protein for it to manifest itself, so they may not suspect that their diet is the problem. After all, they felt great for the first few weeks of following it. This is not to say that all blood type Os should start consuming massive amounts of red meat. This can also have detrimental effects. Small portions are all that is necessary. Conversely, blood type As tend to not be able to digest a lot of meat, especially red meat. They tend to get constipated and sluggish. There are many beneficial fish and other protein sources for them to eat, though.

Blood type B's and AB's can choose from the widest variety of foods. They do well on many dairy and wheat products, unlike types A and O. They tend to be thinner because of this (if they get a decent amount of protein).

The ER4YT food charts below detail foods which are beneficial, neutral, or harmful to each blood type. One will be surprised at some of the findings. I find that the bean, nut, meat, and nightshade vegetables suggestions are some of the most important. Just for fun, I looked at one of the charts below to see which foods were highly beneficial for all blood types: Cod, mackerel, sardines, olive oil, essene and ezekial breads, beet leaves, broccoli, collard greens, kale, parsley, parsnips, plums, ginger, and rose hips.

New Chapter is a supplement line based on the ER4YT principles. I once recommended them due to their excellent food-based formulas, but after smelling isopropyl alcohol on a few of their tableted products, quickly withdrew my recommendation. See Toxins in Supplements for more information.