Fact of the Day .CA

One of the beautiful things about working for a gym is the hefty influx of diets that get brought to my attention.  Some of them help me learn somerthing useful.  Most of them are just good for fine-tuning my brain’s nonsense detector.  One such example was someone who told me they’re going on something called a blood type diet.  I couldn’t come up with a more comically absurd way to describe it if I tried, so I now defer to Peter D’Adamo, author of Eat Right 4 Your Type.  Don’t let his inane babble throw you off, he’s a hip guy, as evidenced by the use of the number in his book title.

“Blood type is the key to the body’s ability to differentiate self from non-self.”  

See what I mean?  Inane babble.  Blood type is based on the presence or absence of antigens on the surface of red blood cells.  The antigens can be made of pretty miuch anything, depending on the blood group system.  And it is in no way in control of or affected by your diet.  Your diet should be determined by your caloric and nutritional needs, with compensations for any dietary limitations imposed by your body or your own choice.

 The real explanation is pretty boring, huh?  Let’s go back to the crazy guy.

• Blood group O is  the hunter, the earliest human blood group. The diet recommends that this blood group eat a higher protein diet.  O blood type was the first blood type, originating 30,000 years ago.   (Yeah, and 30,000 years ago, people also lived a maximum of about 30 years, in large part because their diets were awful.)
• Blood group A  the cultivator ,  a more recently evolved blood type, dating back from the dawn of agriculture, 20,000 years ago. The diet recommends that individuals of blood group A eat a diet emphasizing vegetables and free of red meat, a more vegetarian food intake. (Get it?  People started growing food around this time, so your antegens need more vegetables today.)
• Blood group B is the nomad, associated with a strong immune system and a flexible digestive system. The blood type diet claims that people of blood type B are the only ones who can thrive on dairy products and estimates blood type B arrived 10,000 years ago. 
• Blood group AB, according to D’Adamo, the enigma, the most recently evolved type, arriving less than 1,000 years ago. In terms of dietary needs, his blood type diet treats this group as an intermediate between blood types A and B.  (So do you eat dairy or don’t you?  Peter D’Adamo doesn’t say)

We (me) here at Fitness Myth Monday, try to be objective.  So let’s look at the D’Adamo’s clinical trial record for his blood type diets.

• In his book, he mentions being in the 8th year of a 10 year study.  The book came out in 1997, and the results of the study were never published.
• In his other book, about curing arthritis with blood type diets (?!?!?!), he assured us that a clinical trial was pending, and he just couldn’t wait for his claims to be backed up by fact before subjecting all of us to them.  The results have never been published.
• A self-reported internet survey with 6627 respondants conducted by D’Adamo’s website reported that people following the Blood Type Diet for a period of one month or more, in 71-78% of cases, had improvement in a variety of health conditions. The most common reported improvement was with weight.  These results are self-reported and there’s no reference to how this information was gathered.  And, in a 1990 Gallup poll, 67% of Americans said they’ve been able to use ESP.

Here’s the purpose of  all those bullet points.  If your diet is actually working and effective, you’re getting those results published immedeately.  You’re not mentioning studies and then not telling people how they ended.   A withholding of results is an indication thart he doesn’t want them to be seen.

This diet preys on a weak point that is the carcass to the fad diet’s vutlure; something that people have heard of but actually know nothing about.  Everyone knows their blood type, but very few know what it actually means.  And the answer to how different it makes people is, not much.  And the answer to how it relates to what you should and shouldn’t eat is, not at all.