false 11104 039914255X 9780399142550 229 67 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166427539m/11104.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11104.Eat_Right_4_Your_Type_The_Individualized_Diet_Solution_to_Staying_Healthy_Living_Longer_Acheiving_Your_Ideal_Weight 7236 Peter J. D'Adamo 385 115 1 3 false Sat May 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 19 18:31:12 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 19 18:31:35 -0700 2008
Basically, D’Adamo says that your blood type determines (or is at least the primary influence on) your metabolism and your ability to digest specific foods, and follows with a rather detailed rundown on how you should be eating. He backs this edifice up with his personal clinical experience (presented as a series of anecdotes dispersed throughout the text) and some extremely dodgy anthropology that reminds me of nothing so much as the Jakeskin from Templar, AZ. In terms of references to peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the mechanisms he postulates, well, not so much. (And he lets slip once or twice that he advocates homeopathy. Red flag!) So I was skeptical. But honestly? I found myself wanting to believe what he was saying. Mostly because of this feeling that ABO blood types have to be good for something besides transfusion complications and manga character taxonomy. Really, why shouldn’t the, you know, very makeup of your humours affect your digestion? And this, friends, is probably why the book managed to become such a big hit.

Anyway, like I said, I checked it out. Apparently, as a Type O (The mighty hunter(/gatherer)! Roaming the African Plains in search of MEAT! Never mind that most of the protein in the appropriator diet seems to have come from bugs), I should be eating approximately the diet that my Type A (The vegetarian farmer! GRAAAAIIIIINNNZZZZ!) sister eats, while she in turn ought to be craving the pseudo-vegetarian diet that comes naturally to me. Reductionism and uninstinctiveness aside, I still couldn’t, at the end, see any reason to be eating the diet he advocates — it’s all just his word, with nothing concrete to back it up, and the outlook gets even worse when you google “blood type diet” to find out what holes the critics have been poking in D’Adamo’s research/lack-thereof. The plural of “anecdote” is still not “data.”

Unsettlingly, there was a whole bunch of what seemed like genuine insight interspersed with the arrant nonsense—Type Os are supposed to have a particular affinity with broccoli and kales, and boy howdy do I ever—but I ultimately have to write it off as a cognitive artifact. The brain wants patterns, and it will damn well have them, whether or not they’re there at the start.

No, I didn’t actually try the diet. For all I know, it may really be the key to a happy and healthy life. I’m still calling this book a loss.

On the other other other hand, it did provide some inspiration to try giving up wheat for a few weeks, which seems to have caused me to get noticeably thinner with no further effort. So there is that.

(Wait, do you still have an other hand free? In the tiny blood type fortune-telling section at the end of each division of the book, he refers to some historical personage as “the penultimate gambler.” Mister, I am pretty sure that does not mean what you think it does. Just saying.)]]>