By Taylor Breckles (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 15, 2014
Your blood holds the key to weight loss and health, and foods can either benefit or damage your health based on which ones correspond with your blood type. This is what is preached in Eat Right for Your Type by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo and Catherine Whitney.
It doesn’t sound like too bad of an idea, right? Wrong. For my blood type, you can barely eat anything, much less anything good.
In the introduction, they explain why eating for your blood type is good for you and how the science of it works, signing off with: “At first glance, the science of blood type may seem daunting, but I assure you that it is as simple and basic as life itself.”
To me, that seems more like a deterrent than anything, since life is neither simple nor basic. Still, I gave this book a chance and took the mature route in figuring out if this diet was right for me, by skipping to my section: AB positive.
My blood type is rare; I know this and have always been proud of my uniqueness. In this book, however, having a more common type is definitely a plus.
Right off the bat, the book states that “most foods which are contraindicated for either Type A or Type B are probably bad for Type AB.” Wonderful.
This diet takes all of the enjoyment out of eating because type ABs are supposed to stay away from red meat (including beef, any pig byproduct, chicken, veal, and turtle), kidney beans, lima beans, seeds, corn, buckwheat, and wheat, among many, many others. This means no bread, no steak, no corn on the cob, no pasta, and essentially no fun.
All blood types have similar restrictions, although they aren’t as dramatic. Type Bs, for example, get to avoid pretty much all of the strange foods like bitter melon, bulgur wheat flour, and beluga. Yes, the whale.
Type As avoid yucca, type Bs steer clear of whales, and type Os don’t go near spirulina. I haven’t even heard of two of these foods before, and the whale option is generally avoided in North America.
Maybe this diet would work for more common blood types, but for me, it’s a no-go.
At least this book provides you with recipes and meal plans for each type in order to get you started. None of which really turned on my taste buds, however, from reading them.
For me, reading the book was enough exposure to this diet that I didn’t even try it. My mom bought the book to try, and I believe she tried one or two weeks of eating according to this plan before she gave up, too.
I’m sorry, but you just can’t make me quit pasta and meat, especially not cold turkey.
