Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight

Keeping all this in mind, this is a brilliant book! It's too hard for the average American to follow a vague rule like "Eat well and exercise." It slowly slips your mind like all the other New Year Resolutions. Oh yeah, I'm going to do more romantic things for my wife this year. But hey, a shiny red and white book just came out! Everyone's talking about it! It's got a catchy title, a new twist, scientific sounding explanations, and every food I should eat is listed for me. What fun! It's just like a game. Now feeding your extended family on Thanksgiving is like one of the logic puzzles you used to do in grammar school.

You know what foods to eat but your old recipes are mixing them all up? No fear, Dr. D'Adamo has a cookbook for you to buy. What if you just want a snack after yoga, swimming, skateboarding, bunjee jumping, or whatever your blood type desires? No fear, Dr. D'Adamo has energy bars for you to buy, idealized for your blood type. I don't mean to imply that he's just trying to make a buck with a bunch of bunk, as other reviewers stated so eloquently. I believe that he believes in what he's saying. Unfortunately, his belief seems to have escalated to faith. Not once do I remember reading "This is somewhat controversial, many respected nutritionists disagree with me, further studies may show that I'm wrong, I may need to shuffle the foods around a bit when new information arrives." Instead, he makes many controversial statements as if they were commonly accepted. Where are all the little numbers after sentences that allow me to go look up the sources and confirm his statements for myself? Either he believes his diet cannot be improved upon or else Dr. D'Adamo falls into the same trap that snares many respected scientists in all disciplines. To sell a product you have to downplay the unanswered questions and lingering problems and pump up the 'new information', the 'new discoveries', the 'new truth.' I don't doubt that there's a connection between blood type and nutrition. No aspect of your body operates alone. It's all connected. That's the nature of a biological organism. Perhaps Dr. D'Adamo's theory is some basic first step towards next century's diet, an individualized diet based on your own DNA. Even so, like all modern science, it is incomplete and should be presented as such.

On pg. 38 lies the statement "Anytime you see a new diet plan that claims to work the same way for everyone, be skeptical." I think it's reasonable to state it more simply. Anytime you see a new diet plan, be skeptical. Should you read the book? Yes! Go down to the library, check it out and find out what your neighbour is talking about. Should you follow the diet? Feel free, just keep in mind a few things. Your type O ancestors were eating meat from animals that lived free lives, ate natural foods, drank from clean water and weren't standing around in their own manure or crammed into cages. And perhaps they had no choice since plant foods were scarce. You have a choice today. Find out where your food comes from. For a better book on what to eat, I highly recommend John Robbins, 'Diet for a New America.' And whether you decide to 'Eat Right 4 Your Type', or just to 'Eat Well and Exercise,' stick with it but don't take it all so seriously. What's the point of living to be 100 if you're not having any fun?


Does it work?   January 24, 2004
Galen K. Valentine (Fort Worth, TX USA)
214 out of 245 found this review helpful

Let me get a few things out of the way before reviewing the book itself. I've been on the Blood Type O diet for 9 months now and have lost 30 lbs. To give you some background I started a new job in a new industry about 3 years ago and had gained nearly 25 lbs due to the long hours and free snacks and dinners (which I ate because I was working 60-90 hours a week) - in addition to the 20 lbs I had gained since getting married almost 7 years ago. Both my wife and I searched for a diet that would work for the both of us. My sister and her husband had some success with the Atkins diet, but it seemed too stringent for us. It was my wife who suggested this diet and I admit to being sceptical.

After reading the book I searched the internet for further information about Dr. D'Adamo's research. Not much came up other than the "official" website. Does this mean that Dr. D'Adamo is wrong or that his book is just another diet clothed in new language? Perhaps, perhaps not. And therein lies a caution I would give you: be careful not to glorify this diet or Dr. D'Adamo beyond it, or his, relative worth. I've met many people over the years who have tried a variety of diets with varying degrees of success. Many tend to dismiss the diet if it doesn't work for them and, on the other hand, present it as the one-and-only true diet if it does work.

My criteria for deciding whether or not to try the Blood Type diet was twofold: 1) is it a radical diet that emphasizes one or two types of food to the exclusion of all else or does it recommend a balanced intake of a variety of foods, which in my opinion is the right way to go and 2) is it something that I can incorporate as a lifetstyle change rather than being a fad. In my opinion, and my experience, the answer is yes to both. However, I would also say that your success with this diet may be different as I believe a number of psychological factors are also applicable, to any diet e.g. willingness to follow a regime and a recognition of when it is ok for them personally to "cheat".

The book itself provides information about the different diets and, in general terms, why they work. Dr. D'Adamo doesn't provide details of his research - though he does describe some case studies, again in general terms. While that isn't the purpose of the book the fact that you virtually can't find the information if you wanted it is a little disconcerting. It provides a few recipes, but you should buy the supplemental recipe books if you have trouble creating them on your own. The first three chapters cover general information about Dr. D'Adamo's approach and the next four cover diets for each blood type. Chapters on the individual diets give some background information and then a list of foods categorized as Highly Beneficial, Neutral, and Avoid. At least for the Blood Type O diet a list of the foods that encourage weight loss and a list of foods the contribute to weight gain are also given.

I gave this book 3 stars for a couple of reasons. The lack of further detailed information about the research leading to his conclusions and the contradictory categorization of foods that are beneficial, neutral, and to be avoided throughout the "series" of Blood Type books. The end results is that I have lost 30 lbs and have been able to keep it off. But I must also give myself some of the credit for being able to make the lifestyle change necessary to make it happen.


ER4YT? I tried it.   June 12, 2001
Jim Matthew (Los Angeles)
170 out of 197 found this review helpful

Of course, it entailed getting a blood test to find out what my type was. The anthropological premise in the book is ludicrous , but I figure maybe he's got the diet part right, after all, he says he's got 15 years of history trying these diets on thousands of his own patients with great success. Why not give it a try?

I found the diet difficult to adapt to, there were many normal, healthy foods which were to be avoided. Unusual, hard to find foods were to replace these. These new foods ended up being more expensive due to low supply like spelt flours, the odd grains (quinoa, amaranth), organic and free-range meats, etc. I did a LOT of food preparation, you buy almost nothing on this diet pre-made, but have to cook it all yourself from scratch. I gained weight, but was more concerned with achieving the health benefits claimed in the book. After a whole year on the diet, my blood testing turned up many negative effects even though I had followed the diet very closely for THAT WHOLE TIME. My cholesterol level had risen dramatically, I had started to have acid reflux and had to be put on medication, among other things.

Why are so many foods on every blood type's 'Avoid' list? The author says its because of lectins for the most part, those little proteins in the foods which are going to 'agglutinate' your blood cells and cause all sorts of diseases for you. I started investigating lectins to see if this was true. The 'Handbook of Plant Lectins' is a good source for this information, in fact, Dr. D'Adamo cites this book regularly. What I found amazed me. Most lectins in foods agglutinate ALL or NO blood types, there are very few which are specific to only one ABO blood type. Most of the plant lectins which ARE specific to ABO type are NON-FOOD plants, like ornamentals, trees and weeds! Don't take my word for it, you can read it for yourself.

After that, I started checking into the other parts of the 'blood type diet theory.' There is the matter of different ABO types having different digestive capabilities, therefore supposedly requiring very different diets. There are recent studies indicating there is no difference between people of different blood types for stomach acid production. Way back before it was discovered that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacteria (Helicobacter pylori) it was thought they were caused by too much stomach acid. H. pylori does affect people of blood type O more often than others, but that's not caused by too much stomach acid! There are just as many As on medication to lower stomach acid levels as there are other types, there are many people with O blood type who have low stomach acid levels and must take hydrochloric acid to improve digestion. The author's theory seems to be based on old research before the true cause of ulcers was found....

If you look at the books, you'll see that Dr. D'Adamo has made quite a few changes as time goes on. Why is this, since he claims so much success with his own patient population using the diets? For instance, A blood types are told they can eat 30-55 servings of grains/breads/pasta a week, which works out to 5 to 8 servings a day in his best-selling 'Eat Right for Your Type.' This is pretty close to the Standard American Diet plan for grains. However, in Live Right, the author has suddenly changed the allotted grains/breads/pasta servings to 5 to 7 a WEEK for As, with no explanation of why he has made this change. He must have noticed that in the real world, people using his bulletin board were not losing the weight they wanted to, in spite of his claimed success with his patients using this method for 15 years or more.

If you have allergies, better hope you are an O blood type. This diet contains the fewest allergens of the whole group. And Dr. D'Adamo does say he thinks Os as a group are the most allergic. That must be why he set up the O diet as he did. But this premise is entirely wrong, a person of any blood type can have allergies (not to mention that one can have genetic makeup that predisposes one to any number of diseases, regardless of your ABO blood type).

The best thing that can be said about these books is that the author tells every blood type to stay away from processed foods and eat more vegetables and fruits. Could that be the real reason anyone gets improvement from these diets?? Isn't eating more fruits and vegetables the same thing you hear from your own doctor? How is one gene, for ABO type, going to account for the vast differences in population susceptibility to different diseases? Even if you add in Lewis blood type (which comes up in his next book --by the way, you have to pay him about ... for a test to find out what yours is or you won't even be able to use that book), that's just two genes out of your total makeup to determine your entire health, longevity, diet, 'psychological' perspective. Are we talking science here? or science-fiction?

Serious scientists and researchers must be cringing at the way their work has been twisted and misquoted for use in these books. If you try this diet for fun, go ahead (and be prepared to spend a lot of time in the kitchen). You have the odds of it working for about 1/3 of people, no effect at all for another 1/3, and about 1/3 of the people get worse, about the same odds as 'chance.'

Eat Right for Your Type - a Fairy Tale; Live Right for Your Type - The Fantasy Continues.......


Try it yourself   January 20, 2001
147 out of 156 found this review helpful

Two of us have been following this plan for over 1.5 years. My partner lost about 20 pounds in the first few months, without counting portions or calories, and has maintained his ideal weight without effort. His energy returned to a level not experienced for several years - one of the keys was putting MODERATE amounts of organic beef back into his diet. Eliminating wheat, dairy products and foods with problematic lectins, while emphasizing beneficial foods such as leafy dark-green vegetables also helped. Since he's Type O and I'm Type A, the protein part of our diets differs somewhat, but we've quite easily found ways to cook together. We both noticed much clearer sinuses after just a week. He eliminated asthma symptoms and my allergies improved. I no longer suffer from PMS. I lived with knee problems since childhood, but these have now disappeared, as did the stiffness in my fingers and back in the morning. Digestive problems and stomach aches, a major problem for me since childhood, eased greatly in the first couple of months and are still improving. My complexion cleared and my heart stopped "skipping beats" - I could go on and on.

I have been interested in nutrition and have kept abreast of various schools of thought for the last 25 years. When I first heard of Eat Right I dismissed it as a fad diet that was not based on scientific evidence. Before reading Eat Right I consumed what I believed were "healthy" foods for many years: whole grains, little or no meat, lots of fresh vegetables, fruit, legumes, "good" fats, spring water. Very few additives, prepared or fast foods or medications. However, some foods that were healthy according to the literature and research were healthy for other blood types but not for Type A. When I eliminated these foods and ate more of the beneficial foods I immediately saw results.

I just read most of Live Right 4 Your Type and highly recommend it. Eat Right 4 Your Type was a great introduction, but it's several years old and much research has taken place since then. For someone new to the eating plan, reading both books would be helpful. The information in Live Right is more current, more specific for individuals and a little more technical. Beyond food recommendations, Live Right's information about cortisol and stress was very useful for me.

Read the reviews of people who have actually tried the eating plan, then try it for a month and decide yourself!


It's not just another nutrition book.   July 4, 2000
78 out of 82 found this review helpful

I have to disagree with the customer review that stated that this book was just another way of saying, "Eat better and exercise, and you'll lose weight." I have type O blood, and one of the many helpful recommendations Dr. D'Adamo gives is for type O's to avoid wheat, which is quite contrary to most health recommendations. I've tried all my life to eat whole wheat products because health experts recommend it. Little did I know how hindering it was to my body and my weight loss efforts to eat wheat. I also found that not all people benefit from strenuous exercise. For some blood types, yoga and tai chi can be more beneficial than strenuous aerobics. The whole point of this book is that people cannot follow the same diets and exercise programs to get the same results, and I completely agree. If this wasn't true, people who are trying to follow traditional health recommendations for exercise and eating wouldn't be finding themselves overweight and unhealthy, despite their efforts. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to lose weight, reduce stress, and increase their overall health. I have lost weight, but more than that, I am more healthy than I've ever been in my life. I don't believe Dr. D'Adamo would have done such strenuous research, nor would people be doing so well on the diet, if it was just another way of telling people to eat right and exercise.