The blood type diet

I have been asked about the blood type diet.
This is from a nutritional researcher whose opinion and conclusions I value above any other I have read:
Lessons from Jon Barron
The Blood Type Diet
In this week’s excerpt from Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, Jon Barron examines the pros and cons of the Blood Type diet.
Daily Health Tip Image”Right now, the Blood Type diet and its variations are all the rage. They are based on an entirely different approach to determining the optimum diet than I have outlined. The basic idea behind these diets is that blood types evolved from the lifestyles and diets of different groups of humans over the millennia; therefore, you need to eat the diet natural to the group from which you are descended. The cornerstone of the diet is the premise that certain proteins/glycoproteins in food, called lectins, ape the glycoproteins on red blood cells, thus triggering immune reactions from the matching blood type. Is the premise valid?
Probably not so much. Yes, there is no question that different foods definitely have high allergy potential for many people, but the problem appears to be less with the lectins than with the ability of the digestive tract to fully break down the proteins in food. This is evidenced by the fact that the simple addition of supplemental digestive enzymes with meals and proteolytic enzymes between meals can often help reduce food allergies dramatically. In fact, there is little evidence that lectins, other than a handful of exceptions such as ricin (which will affect anyone of any blood type), present a problem for the human body of any blood type.
But that aside, doesn’t the Blood Type diet work for some people? Absolutely! Simple math works in its favor. If you tell an O, an A, or an AB not to eat dairy because they don’t have the right blood type, then you’ve just told the vast majority of people in the world not to eat dairy. Considering all of the problems associated with commercial dairy we’ve already discussed, a lot of people are going to feel significantly better on the diet, regardless of blood type. (Chalk that up in the win column for the diet.)
On the other hand, you’ve also just told a lot of Asians (they have the highest percentage of blood type B in the world) that they’ll thrive on dairy. Probably not such a good thing since about 90 percent of all Asians suffer from lactose intolerance. (And that would need to be chalked up in the loss column.) Bottom line: if the diet works for you, then use it, but understand that your good results are probably based more on casino odds than science.”
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