The blood type diet, propounded by Dr Peter J. D’Adamo in his book ‘Eat Right For Your Type’ revolves around the premise that the inherent food habits of people depends on their blood type. All you have to do to lose weight is eat according to your blood type!
The Blood Type diet has caught the imagination of many Hollywood biggies including Courtney Cox, Martine McCutcheon and Liz Hurley.
It is a highly popular book with many good reviews. Currently, it enjoys a 4 star average rating with hundreds of detailed reviews on Amazon.
Blood Type Diet Overview
The principle behind the diet is simple: how each person deals with different foods depends directly on their blood type. Each blood type has antigens (chemical substances) and digestive enzymes unique to that type. When you take in certain foods, these antigens react with the nutrients leading to acidity and other health problems.
So, what is the solution? The blood type diet suggests that each of us must base our diet on the food taken in by our ancestors when that blood type was first discovered.
What this means is that Type O (which, according to Dr D’Adamo was the first to be discovered) must eat protein rich food that has high meat content. Group A must follow a vegetarian diet. By the time Blood Group B was discovered, our ancestors were moving around a lot. So, the ideal diet for B Type is a varied diet consisting of dairy, meat, grains and vegetables. AB was the last group to be discovered. They can eat a mixture of foods that are recommended for A and B Types. Each blood type also has certain recommended patterns for exercising too.
Blood Type Diet Review
Dr D’Adamo tries to back up his rather farfetched theories with convincing arguments, but in the end, the diet just does not hold water. For one thing, the diet plan has no scientific facts. There is no evidence that diet and blood type is correlated. What’s more shocking is the suggestion that followers eliminate lots of healthy food items simply because to their blood type.
According to experts, any weight loss achieved by following this diet is accidental and due to calorie restriction. This is achieved through one of the many low calorie recipes included in the book. Also, the author encourages followers to cut down on refined and processed foods.
Pros
- Advocates a healthy lifestyle
- Improves overall wellbeing
- Ensures weight reduction through calorie reduction
- Plenty of low cal diet plans
- The author is an authority on the subject even though there is much controversy regarding the effectiveness of the plan
Cons:
- No scientific backing
- Restrictive and rigid
- Limits food choices
- Involves extensive cooking
- Social eating becomes hard
- Requires almost 100% compliance rate
Here’s a video which includes a criticism of blood type dieting:
Conclusion
The Blood Type diet has a large question mark hanging over it because there is little by way of scientific evidence to back it up. But, readers must also remember that this book made it to the list of New York best sellers and won its author an award in 1999.
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