I just read the book 4 Blood Types, 4 Diets, EAT RIGHT FOR YOUR TYPE, "the individualized diet solution to staying healthy, living longer, and achieving your ideal weight", by Dr Peter J. D'Adamo, with Catherine Whitney.

I bought this book only because it was $1 at a secondhand shop. What was contained in the book was highly interesting, but I'm dubious.

For one, I'm on the South Beach diet and if I were to do the blood type plan, I could make it work doing both but it would be very difficult. My blood type is O. For my individualized diet, they recommend a lot of meats, virtually no dairy and legumes/beans and no wheat products, and a lot of certain vegetables. Okay, well a lot of the stuff we eat on the SBD, such as chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans) and cauliflower is a no-no on the blood type diet. Whaat? According to the book, people with a type 0 have more sluggish metabolisms and stuff like chickpeas, cabbage, cauliflower, lentils, and mustard greens (all SBD staples) inhibit your thryroid hormone and makes you gain weight.

Huhhh?? But cauliflower is like, my newest favorite vegetable!!!

Stuff like corn and wheat gluten interferes with insulin efficiency and slows metabolic rate in people with O type blood.

Well we're not supposed to eat corn on the SBD and we're limited on wheat so that makes sense.

But lentils and cauliflower and cabbage will make me gain weight cause I'm a type O?

I am really not sure what to think here... just wondering if there has been recent studies pertaining to this and if I should be worried. Or if anyone has experience with this?

I'm not sure what to think...

I've heard of it, but ignored it. If anyone can provide any empirical evidence that there is any truth behind eating right for your blood type then I'm open to the idea. But from what i know at the moment, blood type shouldnt affect your weight to any huge extent. If the south beach diet is working for you, i'd stick with that.

But thats just my skeptical 2 pence

Never heard of it. Seems like an interesting read, but im not so sure i believe it

My friend bought this book. I read it and for my blood type, (A positive) it wanted me to eat lots of lamb....YUCK! I'll stick to my low carb diet but interested as well to see if anyone else has had success with this???

There is no evidence supporting this diet idea. If you have a plan that works for you, stick with it...I know of NO ONE who has had any success or felt better on this type of plan.

I did it in the '90s when I first heard about it. Got the books, made the foods within the recipe lists, got bored, went off it.

So, it could've been the most amazing, most successful diet on the planet but I couldn't stick within my blood type "plan" long enough to know for sure.

But I found the reading to be VERY interesting.

My mother (who was a different blood type from me) did it and had some success (lost 15 pounds or so). But her "change" meant going from a high-carb to a low-carb/high-protein plan and I think a 15 pound loss might be predictable with that sort of shift for anyone.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes for you if you end up doing it. I had no idea how controversial the plan was until much later (late '90s or perhaps even 2000), when I considered trying it again and did a little Internet searching about it first.

I've never heard of it until now but to me it sounded like a diet for Vampires.

I have never heard of anyone here having success on that plan, and I have been here for 7 years...

However, if you want to try it, I would recommend NOT doing South Beach with it. Do one, or the other. Different plans are structured very differently-and if you combine too many, it limits your food choices WAY too much.

I had heard about it and did a little on-line perusing but never committed to buying the book.

On a certain level it sounds sort of plausable since blood type has to do with body chemistry, and body chemistry could certainly effect how we react to what we put into ourselves but, as I understood it, the author was basing his theory on blood types originating clear back at the dawn of time. My argument to that would be that humans were (and still are actually) an amazingly migratory species so a bazillion years ago your ancestors could have originally started out in one part of the world with one climate and type of available food then, over a thousand years or so, moved along into a whole new climate and adapted perfectly well to food sources in their new homes. I might have been more tempted to delve further into it if it was based on a little more modern heritage like national origin (maybe going back a few thousand years instead of a bazillion) more than blood type.

At the very least though, it does agree with what 3FCers have been saying all along - everybody is different and what works for one of us might not necessarily work for all of us

I also think it's interesting, but I agree that trying to eat how we ate 100,000 years ago seems a little strange... I DO, intuitively, think there is some value to eating what your ancestors ate... meaning, your genes and chemistry is based on those of your ancestors so if you're of, like me, Italian origin, maybe you're predisposed to do well on a Mediterranean diet bc your genetic history has adapted for those foods.

I mean, I think THAT is an interesting concept, but I think the bloodtypes thing seems a little silly.

heh, heh - let's apply for a research grant