Blood Group Diets – Peter D’Adamo

Adherence to the Type-A diet was associated with lower BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, serum cholesterol, triglycerides, insulin, HOMA-IR and HOMA-Beta. Adherence to the Type-AB diet was also associated with lower levels of these biomarkers except for BMI and waist circumference.

Adherence to the Type-O diet was associated with lower triglycerides. Matching the ‘Blood-Type’ diets with the corresponding blood group did not change the effect size of any of these associations. No significant association was found for the Type-B diet.

Adherence to certain ‘Blood-Type‘ diets is associated with favorable effects on some cardiometabolic risk factors, but these associations were independent of an individual’s ABO genotype, so the findings do not support the ‘Blood-Type’ diet hypothesis.

Blood type O has a very well-developed ability to digest meals that contain both protein and fat. Simple carbohydrates, especially from grains, are more easily converted into fats and triglycerides.

Blood type A can be traced to the struggle for survival long ago, when there was a rapidly dwindling supply of hunting game stock. Having exhausted the great game herds of Africa, humans pushed farther out from their ancestral home into Europe and Asia.

Low levels of hydrochloric acid in the stomach and high intestinal disaccharide digestive enzyme levels permit the more efficient digestion of carbohydrates. These are also the very factors, along with low levels of intestinal alkaline phosphatase, that make it difficult for Type As to digest and metabolize animal protein and fat.

Blood Type B developed in the area of the Himalayan highlands, now part of present day Pakistan and India, pushed from the hot, lush savannahs of eastern Africa to the cold highlands of the Himalayan Mountains.

Blood type B first appeared in India or the Ural region of Asia among a mix of Caucasian and Mongolian tribes. This was characteristic of the great tribes of steppe dwellers. They swept northward, pursuing a culture dependent upon herding and domesticating animals – as their diet of meat and cultured dairy products reflected.

Blood Type AB is rare. It is the “newest” of the blood types. Until ten or twelve centuries ago, there was little to no Type AB blood type. Type AB is sometimes A-like, sometimes B-like and sometimes a fusion of both.

The A, B and O versions of the gene differ only slightly.

We show that instead the remarkable distribution of ABO alleles reflects the persistence of an old ancestral polymormorphism that originated at least 20 million years ago and is shared identical from descent by humans and gibbons as well as among distantly related Old World Monkeys. The O type cropped up later – still long before chimpanzees and humans diverged.