Blood type diet

‘As I see It’ Topic For 5 September 2002
In search of the Postmodern Diet
This week’s Time magazine featured a slightly overweight figure holding
two plates of food out to the camera. The plate on her right contained
pasta, a sprig of parsley, no sauce, and a few slices of red and yellow
pepper. The plate on her right contained what appears to be a 16 ounce
porterhouse steak. Above the plates of food the title slug read: “What
REALLY makes you fat?” while underneath the picture the subtitle
promised “the latest science on how your body handles carbs and fats.”
Unfortunately, like the steak, the Time article was all sizzle and about
as unsatisfying as the plate of pasta without the sauce. Far from
getting ‘the latest science’ on what makes us fat, we are again treated
to the Atkins versus Ornish, both of whom are beginning to have that
comfortable feel about dissing each other that reminds me of the golden
days of Siskle and Ebert.

In his ‘case for low fat,’ Dean Ornish, sounding more like a politician
with every swing of the pendulum, now agrees with the high protein
advocates that ‘is it wise to eat fewer simple sugars, such as sugar,
white flour and white rice.’ However, anyone remembering Ornish’s
earlier books will nowhere encounter this sort of caveat. His approach
was and is fat-phobic, and the high carbohydrate approach advocated by
him and other health writers such as the NY Times Jane Brody drew no
real distinction between simple and complex carbohydrates (as did the
original USDA Food Pyramid.) Ornish (and increasingly the American
Dietetic Association) now pay credence to the insulin resistance
consequences of high carbohydrate diets.
However, Atkins has only embraced the insulin resistance stance within
the last few years - largely as a patch to his earlier, fundamentally
unsupported, ‘ketosis theory’ (the notion that switching to burning
ketones instead of sugars caused rapid weight loss.) The success of
other books embracing high protein diets, such as The Zone also brought
insulin resistance to the fore and Atkins was quick to incorporate the
concept.
Readers of my books will note that many carbohydrate food sources are
also high lectin containing foods. Many dietary lectins interfere with
insulin metabolism, and approximately 60% of dietary lectins have some
ABO blood type specificity. Thus it is not simply a matter of ‘carbs
versus fats’ as the media so likes to portray as the issue, but rather
that certain foods interfere with insulin metabolism in certain people,
and that genetics, including the genetics of the ABO blood groups, can
be used to predict this. ABO types also differ by virtue of digestive
enzymes which can influence their ability to thrive on either a low-fat
or low-carb diet.
What I found interesting about the article (other than the fact that the
Atkins Diet seems to have passed the ‘hundredth monkey’ phenomenon) was
the complete lack of interest on the part of the Time editors in any of
the genetic aspects of weight gain and loss. They also seemed to have an
inability to comprehend the basic fact that both the low-fat and
low-carb approaches have value and it will be extremely unlikely that
one theory will completely disprove the other. Unless we use an approach
that recognizes the genetic components, such as blood type, that can
allow this type of scientific duality to exist, I’m afraid that we will
not soon see the end these sorts of nutrition controversies.
Like the steak the sizzle can be expected to sell many magazines, and
like the pasta there will be enough unfulfilled readers to guarantee a
‘re-evaluation every 5-6 months or so.
Peter D’Adamo

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