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Info / News Items / Announcements / Re: Cordain Newsletter Criticising Blood Type Diets
« on: February 10, 2011, 06:48:01 am »
Tyler,
"You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law."
That is the first sentence of the user agreement on the Raw Paleo Forum, as you might or might not remember upon registration. I believe your post about the Blood Type Diet is precisely that - False, defamatory, inaccurate, and hateful.
It sounds to me like you've never actually read Eat Right for Your Type past the first chapter. If so, you would understand that the basis of the blood group diet system is the fact that there are hundreds; even thousands, of peer-reviewed scholarly articles that show a definite connection among the blood groups and various diseases. It's been known since the 1950's that As get more heart disease than any other blood type, and that type Os are more prone to ulcers. Breast cancer is statistically higher in type A, and certain autoimmune diseases are found more in B. So what doctor D'Adamo did after discovering this connection is what any good scientist would do - he discarded his "gut" impression that his father's idea was nonsense (much like you believe), and began doing more research.
The scientific method follows that ideas and correlations need to be repeatedly tested in order to come to a logical conclusion about a hypothesis. These tested and proven hypotheses then become theories. What Dr D'Adamo has done since the 1980's is test his hypotheses about blood group and digestive discrepancies, based on information from medical literature, and put them to the test. He has clocked countless hours of laboratory research with food-bourne lectins and how they interact with the oligosaccharide chain of the ABO antigens. The effect of selective RBC agglutination could be observed over and over again with a microscope. But it wasn't even D'Adamo who figured this out in the first place. First it was Hermann Stillmark in 1888, and then William Boyd of the Boston School of Medicine in 1945. Both scientists observed the effects of food lectins, and found that they cause red blood cells to "agglutinate" or bind together. It just happened to be Dr D'Adamo who put the pieces together and realized that this agglutination is unhealthy for humans.
http://www.dadamo.com/science_boyd_discovery.htm
For the next twenty years, Dr D'Adamo was applying his research in his clinic with his patients. Time after time he found that people of blood group O do better by eliminating wheat, corn, peanuts, potatoes, and dairy from their diets. While Bs get better by avoiding chicken, sesame seeds, artichokes and tomatoes. These blood type-specific food lectins lead to inflammation and gastrointestinal disturbances, weaken the immune system, and etc. The issue with who eats steak and who doesn't has to do with gastric acid production, and subsequently the activation of pepsin. Os get more ulcers because Os produce more stomach acid, which is what turns pepsinogen into the meat-digesting enzyme. So it makes sense that Os do better on high protein diets.
The manner in which you presented the Blood Type Diet to the readers on the forum began factually and well-researched. But then it turned into a mud-sling where you tried to disprove the man's credibility because of a few discrepancies of human evolution. Since Dr D'Adamo's research and advocacy of selective food choice was not based in human evolution, you ended up entirely missing the point. Your Straw Man attack on the Blood Type Diet is evidence that you haven't taken the time to properly examine the premises of D'Adamo's work, which not only makes you a poor researcher, but also inhibits other people from investigating what could possibly benefit them and their health.
I know you like your diet system, and it works well for you. I also understand that it's much easier to think of people in terms of "one-size-fits-all". Ergo when somebody comes along with a claim that requires more depth of understanding, it's much less work just to shrug it off as you have done. You appear to be an intelligent person who appreciates good science & research. What you have done is not science, but an appeal to ignorance.
I hope you will re-consider your remarks after doing a little more reading into the blood group diet system. I am willing to provide references and links to scholarly articles if interested. Thank you.
"You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law."
That is the first sentence of the user agreement on the Raw Paleo Forum, as you might or might not remember upon registration. I believe your post about the Blood Type Diet is precisely that - False, defamatory, inaccurate, and hateful.
It sounds to me like you've never actually read Eat Right for Your Type past the first chapter. If so, you would understand that the basis of the blood group diet system is the fact that there are hundreds; even thousands, of peer-reviewed scholarly articles that show a definite connection among the blood groups and various diseases. It's been known since the 1950's that As get more heart disease than any other blood type, and that type Os are more prone to ulcers. Breast cancer is statistically higher in type A, and certain autoimmune diseases are found more in B. So what doctor D'Adamo did after discovering this connection is what any good scientist would do - he discarded his "gut" impression that his father's idea was nonsense (much like you believe), and began doing more research.
The scientific method follows that ideas and correlations need to be repeatedly tested in order to come to a logical conclusion about a hypothesis. These tested and proven hypotheses then become theories. What Dr D'Adamo has done since the 1980's is test his hypotheses about blood group and digestive discrepancies, based on information from medical literature, and put them to the test. He has clocked countless hours of laboratory research with food-bourne lectins and how they interact with the oligosaccharide chain of the ABO antigens. The effect of selective RBC agglutination could be observed over and over again with a microscope. But it wasn't even D'Adamo who figured this out in the first place. First it was Hermann Stillmark in 1888, and then William Boyd of the Boston School of Medicine in 1945. Both scientists observed the effects of food lectins, and found that they cause red blood cells to "agglutinate" or bind together. It just happened to be Dr D'Adamo who put the pieces together and realized that this agglutination is unhealthy for humans.
http://www.dadamo.com/science_boyd_discovery.htm
For the next twenty years, Dr D'Adamo was applying his research in his clinic with his patients. Time after time he found that people of blood group O do better by eliminating wheat, corn, peanuts, potatoes, and dairy from their diets. While Bs get better by avoiding chicken, sesame seeds, artichokes and tomatoes. These blood type-specific food lectins lead to inflammation and gastrointestinal disturbances, weaken the immune system, and etc. The issue with who eats steak and who doesn't has to do with gastric acid production, and subsequently the activation of pepsin. Os get more ulcers because Os produce more stomach acid, which is what turns pepsinogen into the meat-digesting enzyme. So it makes sense that Os do better on high protein diets.
The manner in which you presented the Blood Type Diet to the readers on the forum began factually and well-researched. But then it turned into a mud-sling where you tried to disprove the man's credibility because of a few discrepancies of human evolution. Since Dr D'Adamo's research and advocacy of selective food choice was not based in human evolution, you ended up entirely missing the point. Your Straw Man attack on the Blood Type Diet is evidence that you haven't taken the time to properly examine the premises of D'Adamo's work, which not only makes you a poor researcher, but also inhibits other people from investigating what could possibly benefit them and their health.
I know you like your diet system, and it works well for you. I also understand that it's much easier to think of people in terms of "one-size-fits-all". Ergo when somebody comes along with a claim that requires more depth of understanding, it's much less work just to shrug it off as you have done. You appear to be an intelligent person who appreciates good science & research. What you have done is not science, but an appeal to ignorance.
I hope you will re-consider your remarks after doing a little more reading into the blood group diet system. I am willing to provide references and links to scholarly articles if interested. Thank you.