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Blood Type Diet

 
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CombinedNSP
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Joined: 13 Dec 2006
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PostPosted: Dec Sat 16, 2006 8:37 pm    Post subject: Blood Type Diet Reply with quote

Blood Type Diet

OK - this is me going out on a limb here - but I have a bit of a problem with the blood type diets - I see them as being good in a general sense, but they break down a bit when you are talking about individual people - I don't think you can make a blanket statement that all (fill in the blank food) is bad for EVERYONE with (fill in the blank) blood type. I see 'A' blood types who barely exercise because they believe that they are not 'supposed' to exert themselves - people cut out entire valuable food sources because they are not 'supposed' to eat them based on generalities. Blood type may be a factor in metabolism and utilization of nutrients, but it is not the ONLY factor
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I am an 'O' blood type and in general, I do better with very little wheat and corn - but also very little meat, but I do need to include some - I don't do well on milk, but I do really well on raw cultured yogurt, which is a big part of my diet - and I eat avocados all the time and they are very beneficial for me - I do well on sprouted grains, but if I soak my whole wheat flour for 24 hours or more in cultured buttermilk before making bread or hot breakfast cereal, it is just fine in moderation - So I see the blood type diet as an oversimplification that can be taken too far, and doesn't even begin to address the many food preparation methods that change the way food is digested - though the general principles are good - am I missing something here? -Allison
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no - this is good I just wanted to start a discussion about this - that was why I asked Steven those questions - :-)

There are many ways of eating, this is just one, and one that NSP people seem to be using a lot, which is why there is so much discussion about it on this forum.

I am an O - but ate a microbiotic diet for 12 1/2 years which saved my life
(along with the herbs) so I don't think the BT diet is the end all. In fact I have been thinking about going back to a vegan diet as I so often forget to eat meat, having been vegan for so long it is easy to do.

I guess I was just hopefully thinking that all of our brains could work together to come up with a standard recommended diet for the majority of people - and I know that may not be possible - like I said, I am hopeful

I do think that our diet should most likely change depending upon how toxic we are, how sick we are, depending on the illness, etc. and I do think that we should listen to our bodies (most important) after we eat something to see how we feel after it. And of course eliminate the junk food, etc. that is a given.

Just trying my best to document the pros and cons of each food so I can present that info to my customers to help them come up with the good food choices per their body type, illness, etc.

as a side note - I have so many customers (that I don't even know) that do come in my store and tell me how good the BT diet has worked for them since they have been doing it.

I agree that everyone should eat differently and should honor what their bodies will utilize best and give them the best nutrients for their body at the time

Was just hoping we could have some intelligent discussion about it - I am very excited about the one book the Steven mentioned and am waiting for it to arrive so I can read it because it looks like it may give me some of this info I am looking to find.

In addition, I do know that people can be one BT on the service - but that they can be "carriers" (not sure if this verbage is right) of other blood types - and maybe that is why they don't fit the typical blood type mold and do well on the avoid foods.

Or it might also be because their body is depleted in certain things and so their body is craving those foods and feels it can get the best nutrients there.
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You know Karen, I'm glad you started this discussion because it is important. I don't think you can generalize about diets for everybody, period. For me, the blood type diet is a good starting place to screen for possible allergins that may be affecting a person's health, but I certainly don't adhere to it (or any other diet) religiously.

We are all biochemically unique. Also, our life circumstances, environmental influences, general health, etc. play a role in what is good for us. I encourage people to pay attention to their bodies and not eat by any book or philosophy.

The reason I really liked Nourishing Traditions was because it was based on what real people ate around the world as observed by Weston Price. I've always believed that Weston Price's work on nutrition was the most sensible because it was based on observing real people in real-life situations, not theoretical information based on research.

Dietary needs can change seasonally and special diets may be helpful for special health problems, but I find in general, the most sensible advice is to eat foods as natural as possible and free from chemical additives. This means excluding processed grains, sugars, and oils from the diet (which is hard in an of itself). Also, just because the food is organic (i.e., chemical free) doesn't mean that it is optimal for health, because you also have to have good soil to grow good food. I definitely think pastured animals (who are able to feed on grass) produce healthier animal foods (dairy, meat and eggs) than animals which are fed in feed lots. There is growing research to back this up.

I laugh when I see the organic "vegetarian fed" chicken eggs at the grocery store because I know that chickens aren't vegetarians. I've raised them and they love bugs and meat scraps. And, when they get bugs the eggs are better, too. Also, as Nourishing Traditions points out, no mammals are completely vegetarian. Even cattle eat bugs in the grass they are chewing on. An interesting point they made was the vegetarians in India (who did just fine on the diet there), started to get sick when they moved to England and continued their same diet. Why? Because India has such poor sanitation that there were lots and lots of insect parts in the vegetarian food they were eating. When they ate the same foods in England (which were free of the insect and rodent parts) they developed B-12 deficiencies and anemia. (I found that really interesting.)

If we were living off the land, we would have to eat whatever Mother Nature put on the table for us at different times of the year. We couldn't eat the same foods all year long. We also couldn't afford to say, "oh, that's not right for my blood type (etc.)." We'd just eat what was available.

Here's an interesting thing I learned from these books that I'm anxious to try. Apparently nearly all the people Weston Price observed ate or drank fermented foods of some kind. They used lactoferments. This not only included fermented dairy foods like yoghurt, but sourdough breads, fermented vegetables (like raw sauerkraut and kim chi) and natural beers. The natural beers they created were about 1/2 percent alcohol, took just a few days to make and were unpasturized. All of these foods were loaded with lactobacteria and enzymes. Even Kim will tell you that taking enzymes will allow your body to handle avoids without problems. Since these people consumed these fermented foods very regularly, they were getting regular doses of enzymes and lactobacteria which would have kept their digestive tracts healthy and allowed them to eat almost anything.

I've ordered some keifer starter, which is one of the things you can use to make these natural beers and I'm going to start experimenting with fermented foods. I'm going to start by making a batch of ginger beer.

I've already added the whey from some yoghurt to some corn meal cereal and allowed it to soak for 36 hours before cooking it. That worked very well. I'm also going to get a sourdough start going again. (I used to have one years ago.)

Again, the reason this stuff made so much sense to me is because it isn't based on theory. It is based on what extremely healthy people were eating all over the world in their traditional diets. -Steven H. Horne
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It isn't about "good" or "bad" here. It is about reaction in chemical sense. There are antigens that agree or disagree making the blood sticky or not. When it is sticky for "too" long a period of time then you get a subclinical marker for most diseases which is chronic inflammation. I use the Blood type info but alter it to incorporate the zone diet and the acid/alkaline values. So if you use the charts I did for TOL, you use one red, three green, one blue, one purple (which a blue or purple should be your first bite) and avoid the brown category even though they are listed as beneficial for some. This follows the glycemic index as well and reduces activity chemically for the subclinical markers for disease. -Kimberly D. Balas
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Yes - but I suspect that sometimes those antigens do not reach the blood in the same form or concentrations for all people - making a definitive antigen reaction unpredictable - depending on other factors such as the chemical makeup of the digestive soup (enzymes, bacteria etc.) to the preparation or changing of the food from it's original form before it is ingested etc. -

I find the acid/alkaline values to be a little more reliable and useful for general guidelines- color coding is a cool idea - I'll have to see one of these charts - -Allison
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I agree that no one "eating program" is going to be the be-all and end- all for every person. The BT program is a good place to start, in my opinion. Sometimes I can tell by what people like to eat (or not) what the blood type most likely will be when they don't know it. For example, A's rarely love eating beef and don't crave it at all, while O's usually do. Sometimes a raw food diet is appropriate or vegetarian or vegan. There are many ways to structure eating programs to benefit an individual at any given point is his/her life. Most of the time it is a matter of educating people to try to eat real food as opposed to things out of boxes and bags. Explaining that what sells for milk in the grocery store does not even resemble what comes out of an organically fed cow. Teaching about cold pressed oils, sugar, grains, whole food, etc. can be a real revelation to some. I teach a seminar on the "Standard American Diet." I have divided foods into five broad categories: oils, meats, sugars, salt, flour & grains. I teach them about the processed items they have been buying and how to make better choices. Starting with this and easing them into a better way of eating seems to work well. The only time I encourage a very restrictive diet is in the case of severe acute or chronic illness or health crisis of some sort. Who's next? -Ann Jones
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BT diet

Kasara, I like your comment about carriers and not fitting the blood type mold. That explains things perfectly to me!

My MIL loves this diet and feels that it has been so beneficial to her. I have always been sceptic of it. She and I are both O's and while she cannot drink milk or eat wheat, my body is fine with these things (we muscle tested different items on the O list of beneficials and avoids). My body craves vegetables, so to go on a meat-exclusive diet would be so very hard. I also found some inconsistencies in the diet such as avoid yogurt, and then the next column of the chart would say something like, can have yogurt 2-3 times in a week. How can you avoid something, but still be able to eat some of it?

So if a person were a carrier of a different blood type, how would you figure what the carrier type was?

But since we're talking about diets and food combining and things, I found something interesting (to me, anyway). I love chocolate and each morning (until recently), I would fix some hot chocolate for my breakfast. I make it from scratch, so it has very, very little sugar in it (2 T cocoa, 1 T sugar, 2 c milk). My fingernails have gotten very brittle, so I started taking calcium supplements, but didn't see any difference. I stopped fixing the hot chocolate and my nails are suddenly much, much stronger. There must be something in chocolate that sucks out calcium just like there is in soda. -Sharon Baldwin
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You could only be a carrier of an O recessive since that is the only recessive chromosome. And even though you may feel okay on these items have you done a phase contrast of the blood to see what is happening? -Kimberly D. Balas
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answers below

My MIL loves this diet and feels that it has been so beneficial to her. I have always been sceptic of it. She and I are both O's and while she cannot drink milk or eat wheat, my body is fine with these things (we muscle tested different items on the O list of beneficial and avoids). My body craves vegetables, so to go on a meat-exclusive diet would be so very hard. I also found some inconsistencies in the diet such as avoid yogurt, and then the next column of the chart would say something like, can have yogurt 2-3 times in a week. How can you avoid something, but still be able to eat some of it?

by eating it in moderation - or eating it with foods that are beneficial

So if a person were a carrier of a different blood type, how would you figure what the carrier type was?

as Kimberly said there is only one of those (see her previous post)

But since we're talking about diets and food combining and things, I found something interesting (to me, anyway). I love chocolate and each morning
(until recently), I would fix some hot chocolate for my breakfast. I make it from scratch, so it has very, very little sugar in it (2 T cocoa, 1 T sugar, 2 c milk). My fingernails have gotten very brittle, so I started taking calcium supplements, but didn't see any difference. I stopped fixing the hot chocolate and my nails are suddenly much, much stronger. There must be something in chocolate that sucks out calcium just like there is in soda.

Milk pulls calcium OUT of your body - this has been proven over and over again. It isn't the chocolate, it is the dairy most likely. Try some cocoa with stevia and/or agave as a sweetener - with some oat, rice or soy milk - see if you notice a difference. -Kasara
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Also I am an O - but a non secretor- so my list changes there are foods O's shouldn't have - but which are beneficial to me- avocado(I LOVE THEM!!- or an avoid that are now neutral- like pinto beans or foods that are neutral but become beneficial to me - like carrots or normally neutral for O's that are avoids for me- brussels sprouts, and cabbage ( which I love) -Nora Weigl
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