These Were A Few Of My Favorite Things

I have embarked upon a fairly momentous course, namely, changing my eating habits. The impetus is not solely from a weight loss basis, I’m a firm supporter of the Stupid Diet – eat less, exercise more. It’s a plan that works! Rather it’s an experiment to see if I can improve my overall health, which is admittedly pretty good.

There’s a book out (actually a series) by Dr. Peter D’Adamo, ND, called Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type. He ran an extensive series of allergy tests versus food to watch for allergic reactions directly in blood. He was continuing work started by his father, who worked at a German health spa and made an observation. Everyone at the spa was fed identical meals. Some people did really good on the diet, some people did really poorly, some it didn’t affect much one way or another. The father started investigating this and the son continued and developed this nutrition system.

I don’t consider it a diet in that it isn’t a “the pounds will melt away” thing. He does have a section for each chapter saying that these foods will help you gain weight, these will help you lose, and these will maintain, he also tells you why. He discusses the evolutionary history of each blood type and why it is biased towards or against certain foods. For example, I have very good blood, I’m an A+. According to this system, the ideal system for me would be as a vegetarian with almost no meat in my diet. I can mostly have any seafood and tons of fruit and vegetables. I’m also very open when it comes to spices and seasonings. Beverages are a little on the restricted side, though any juice from a fruit or vegetable that is not bad for you is fine. One thing that I do like about the recommendations for my type is something that aligns with my personal biases against olives and mushrooms, they’re not recommended.

The book has a chapter for each blood type. It breaks down 500 foods into various groups: meats, sea food, fruits, vegetables, juices, etc. Each group is divided into three sections: highly beneficial, neutral, and avoid. The avoids have very negative reactions with your blood, and thus should be, you guessed it!, avoided. The chapter then goes on with recommended vitamins, suggested meal plans and recipes, and exercise programs. For example, he recommends Tai Chi/Yoga-type exercises for an A.

It isn’t an “absolute” system, he suggests staying on it 80% of the time. I think the more sensible systems have a bit of a fudge factor (no pun intended, but a good one nonetheless) built-in to take care of occasional indulgences. The book continues with chapters on blood type and disease, cancer, things like that.

And it has the standard disclaimer that this book is designed to inform people so that they can work better with their physician and is not intended as direct medical advice. Pretty much standard, so if his lists say that prune juice is highly beneficial and you go on a prune juice diet to the utter exclusion of all other foods and die, it was your own stupidity that killed you, not his book.


I bought this book a long time ago, and initially I did a little tuning of my intake, but I never tried to follow it diligently. The recent impetus for me reopening this book is my girlfriend, Russet. She mentioned it as something she was interested in, so I dug out my copy and started reading.

Then the database junkie in me stirred. I ended up creating a database that lists each food, how good it is for you, and spans it across for each type. Russet is a type B, so I then wrote a query that pulls every food for both of our types and knocks out all the foods that is an Avoid for either of us, the resulting list having every food that is a Neutral or Beneficial for both of us with zero avoids. For example, Russ has been an avoider of beef products for a long time, preferring chicken. Type Bs apparently have a genetic bias in favor of meat but chicken is an Avoid for her. Me, as an A, can have chicken, Cornish hens, and turkey as they’re all Neutrals, everything else is an Avoid. But she is an Avoid on the first two, two of her favorites. She is also a Neutral on turkey, so it is the only meat/poultry that is Neutral or Beneficial for both of us. Fortunately she likes sea food and we have a huge list of things we are common in that group.

The basic concept here is that at some point we’ll likely be married and it would be a good idea to have a plan for groceries because the closest decent grocery store is about 30 miles away, so it’s not a drop-kick to pop off to the corner groceria for something, we have to plan for it.


So the first thing I’m working on is dairy. For an A, whole milk is an Avoid and soy milk is a Beneficial, Russ is Neutral on whole and soy but Beneficial on 2% or Skim milk, for which I’m an Avoid. So I’ve started buying soy milk. It takes a little getting used to as it seems to have a bit of an after-taste. I can’t stand skim milk, the soy milk is about the same density but tastes better once you’re used to it. Reducing beef isn’t a problem as I’ve always been a chicken fan. There will be a lot of other adjustments, the main one being fruit and vegetables. I have no problem with veggies, I just have no experience preparing them. Fruit has always been a downfall for me, I just don’t buy the stuff. My addiction is towards crackers and such for munchies, this is simply something that I’ll have to re-tune and get in the habit of buying more of. It isn’t just the buying of fruit, it’s the sincere eating thereof. I have gone on phases where I’ll buy more fruit, but I just won’t be in the habit of eating it and a lot of it will end up thrown out.

So lots of adjustments, but I think it’ll be worth it.

There is another reason for doing this, and that is energy. I’ve often had a problem with my energy level after meals, and as I’ve started working again recently, and typically five hour shifts (only 19 hour weeks) I need to be more mindful of this. I have to make sure I get some calories into me before my shift starts as I’m walking constantly during my shift throughout the computer lab, looking for people to help. So tuning my diet towards foods that won’t provoke such an insulin response should be very beneficial.


One other thing that I ought to adjust to is drinking coffee. I’ve never been a coffee addict, though in my latter year or two with the police department I developed a fondness for iced mochas from Brueger's. Of course it was normally accompanied by a bagel, but that was about the only way that I could stand coffee – iced and with chocolate and whipped cream to kill the bitterness. Well, coffee, either decaf or full octane, is strongly recommended for type A. Apparently we have a bit of a sensitive stomach (and a propensity towards stomach cancer) and coffee helps at a variety of levels. That is going to be a major adjustment.


There are critics of D’Adamo’s work, just as there are critics of everything. They have valid points to raise that blood is a lot more complicated and has more classifications than the classic A, B, O, AB breakdowns. I think they are missing the point, and that is that whenever he states “X is bad for you” he always has alternatives to provide anything beneficial that removing X from your eating habits would provide you. Everyone has a common sense filter, it’s just that most people don’t choose to use it. This is not a system that promotes extremes – “eliminate X from your diet OR YOU WILL DIE!” It seems pretty sensible, which passes the Occam’s Razor test.


Oh, one last thing. I’m going to be putting the database online so that if you have a mixed blood type relationship like Russet and I, you can pull down a list of foods to help your nutritional planning. It should be up by the end of the year, I have the database ready to go but I will have to put it into MySQL, write a PHP front end, and get it up on a dedicated domain, not to mention making sure I don’t run afoul of D’Adamo’s copyrights etc.