Book Review by Marilyn Holasek Lloyd
PUBLISHED IN THE FREE LANCE STAR, FREDERICKSBURG VA.

Cook Right 4 Your Type is a sequel to the book Eat Right 4 Your Type which was written two years ago.  This way of eating is the lifes work of  Dr. Peter DAdamo and his father who are both naturopathic physicians.  Dr. Peter DAdamo who I call Dr. D proved his fathers theories while in medical school. He went on to a successful medical practice in Greenwich and Stamford Connecticut treating his patients according to their  blood type.  Dr. D wrote the original book Eat Right 4 Your Type to educate the masses, and to allow
people to take control of their health, lose weight (which is a natural process of eating the right diet for your blood type), and try to prevent those illnesses that are more prevalent with each blood type.

He has years of medical research and references which back up his work along with the clinical research.  However, he also has a list of critics who do not bother to study this research, but criticize it anyway.   Other critics get lost in what they perceive to be an evolutionary theory of blood types.  But, if  you one can get past all of that and try his blood type diet, the results speak for themselves.  Dr. D has a website which supports people using his dietary strategies and often answers peoples questions directly.

So what is The Blood Type Diet?  This way of eating is based on the four blood types:  O being the oldest, followed by A and then B and lastly AB.  In studying the science of blood, one finds antigens with their own special chemical configurations.  Each blood type has its own surface sugars which cause chemical reactions between the blood and the food one eats.  We know this because of a factor called lectins.  Lectins are abundant and diverse proteins found in foods.  They have agglutinating-gluing or sticking-properties that affect your blood.  When you eat a food containing protein lectins that are incompatible with your blood type antigen, the lectins target an organ and begin to agglutinate blood cells in that area.  In effect, lectins gum up the works, interfering with digestion, insulin production, food metabolism and hormonal balance.
 
This lectin theory forms the basis of what foods to avoid, what foods are neutral to your blood type, and what foods are compatible and beneficial to your blood type and ultimately your health.  Dr. D using this knowledge plus the knowledge of what illnesses occur more frequently with each blood type in forming an eating plan which celebrates human diversity.
 
So the big question is what is good and bad for the each of the blood types To briefly summarize it,  here are the basics of the different eating plans:
 

Type O blood types  respond best to a high-protein diet, including meat, poultry, fish and a variety of fruits and vegetables.  Many grains, legumes, and dairy products are incompatible with your blood type.  Some of these are wheat, milk, and corn.

Type A blood types thrive on a primarily vegetarian diet, including soy sprouts, beans and legumes, grains, vegetables, and fruits, with small portions of fish.  With this blood type being most prone to heart disease and cancer, it makes a lot of sense to follow this diet if you are type A.  This part of his books is scary when he says that his  research shows that breast cancer specifically is A like and hides in the immune system of A people.  He offers, however, special recommendations for As to follow to help themselves. He claims that his A patients with breast cancer live twice as long as their counterparts.

Type B blood types has an optimal diet which includes game meat like rabbit and  venison as well as herd meats, such as lamp and mutton.  However, Type B should avoid chicken.  Unlike Type O and Type A, Type B benefits from a variety of dairy products. Some grains, beans, and legumes cause problems for Type B, but there is a wide selection of vegetable and fruits avoidable.  In almost every respect, the Type B Diet is the most varied.

Type AB has a diet that is more complex--a combination of Type A and Type B. Type AB can eat most of the foods that are good for these blood types, but most avoid or limit most of the food that agglutinate them.  The best diet for Type AB consists primarily of vegetarian fare, with modest supplements or meat and dairy.

The purpose of  Cook Right 4 Your Type  is a major guide to the preparing and cooking according to your blood type.  Many of the avoids for each blood type make buying products off the shelf impossible.  So one needs guidelines. For example vinegar is an avoid for Type A.  Almost every salad dressing on the market contains vinegar.  Therefore, it is very helpful to have a cook book such as this to follow in making ones own salad dressing.

Dr. D features food lists and shopping guides to help you set up your kitchen for any blood type diet.  The tricky part is when you have several blood types living and eating in one family.  He gives guidelines for that too.  Recipe charts in this book also help with that.  The book is full of blood type recipes and thirty day eating plans for each type. In the original book there is a list of herbs and exercise plans which also complement your blood type.
 
Although Cook Right 4 Your Type was written as a follow-up to Eat Right 4 Your Type, and serves as a more detailed roadmap on the road to wellness, Dr. D expresses it best on why you should do it:   When you choose your diet based on a comprehensive understanding of your blood type and all its ramifications you will find--and perhaps to your amazement--that you have not chosen a diet
at all.  The truth is, the correct diet has already been chosen for you. . .

You can buy this book now through the Swallows bookshop