I would be so interested to find a Blood type B who is lactose intolerant...as B's are the only ones who can tolerate dairy...that would be a good case for them needing homeopathy to get back on track. Likewise, if I can, as an 0 after homeopathic treatment eat wheat and dairy...would it be supression or changing the nature of the blood. I suppose we'd have to wait and see what I die of.

Divina

My husband is 100% Italian (I am the first non-italian in the family, oooooh) Anyway the whole family is grossly overweight, you would think these people would be dropping like flies from cardiac disease and such, but the whole lot of them live way into their 90's. My hubby is probably 80lbs. overweight and yet his blood pressure and cholesterol are both way better than mine and I am at a normal weight. So I agree with the cultural aspects.

Hi everyone,

Claudia, thank you for posting what I have always believed--that cultural traditions will have more weight in creating health than imposed diets such as the D'Adamo diet. I know you and I are not the only Type O's who do well on foods we are not supposed to have on this diet--so I don't think you should be trying to change a tradition that in your line has been almost 800 years in the making! The cultural influence on nutritional health seems to provide a big obstacle to the blood type theory...so it must be respected, not ignored.

This is the reason why you tend to feel less healthy when you avoid dairy, and also the reason why your children cannot tolerate North American cheese, but do well on the imported stuff which comes from lands close to home...most European cheeses are still made from unpasteurized milk and cream, and the livestock is still fed natural fodder and is spared doping with anti-biotics and growth hormones. In North America, agribusiness rules food production so what we are given to consume has largely been processed, refined, or "enriched"--leaving it largely devoid of nutrients. Its no wonder North American cheese causes problems--it is usually pumped full of colorants, hormones, salt and flavour additives or worse--its processed--which means it is little more than coloured plastic. We've lost our connection to the foods our grandparents ate (even if our Grandparents were not from here!) so now we are seeing the long term effects of giving up our beneficially, culturally established healthy foods.

In D'Adamo's diet, I would not eat parmiggiano cheese and I would have to give up grains and pulses--foods I love and do very well on. Meat is something that is supposed to be highly beneficial to me as an O, but I just can't remember feeling good after eating it, and have stayed away from it for over 10 years now. I toyed with the idea of eating it again--but I just can't bring myself to do it at all; fish I can take in moderation, yet some of my favourites are on D'Adamo's no-no list. So, I'm a walking anomaly, as you are...but the reality is that blood type isn't everything in nutrition--just a good starting point which leads you to select foods which may or may not help you to support your body. Perhaps if the cultural traditions of your ancestry (and all our ancestries) were to be applied to D'Adamo's advice we'd have the means to create the perfect nutritional plans for ourselves.

Want more info on this? Price Pottenger Foundation's website, which features all kinds of research conducted by non-partisan scientists (meaning not paid for by the nutrition/food/drug lobby) can direct you to all kinds of information on the importance of maintaining your traditions in nutrition. You can find it at www.price-pottenger.org.

As for me, I'm not giving up my Italian regional cuisines for anyone...because on those foods my own relatives lived very long, productive and healthy lives. Some died of heart pathology--but they were well into their nineties (one was 103!) when that happened. My last visit there--4 years ago--reminded me how much healthier people are over there in general: seeing a group of cyclists stopped at a light in traffic, I could easily count a large number who were at least 50 or 60 years old--and it was not unusual to see even older people being so active. Here in Canada, most 60 year olds are already complaining of aches and pains and why they can't do anything active at all...yet they've always "eaten well", had good medical care, and usually had enough money to do whatever they needed to do...

Divina

[This message has been edited by Divina (edited 27 February 2001).]

Hi Barb--

Just have to ask one question--when you say his whole family is overweight, are you also referring to those in Italy? In my family, those in Italy eat butter, olive oil, fresh foods, fresh dairy, fresh cheeses, foods from scratch (but I know that even the "packaged" food mixes in Italy--like the ones for risotto--have nothing but rice and the ingredients you would add if you made it from scratch, including saffron instead of food colorants and MSG that would be used here!). There is one sector of my family, my mother's people, who eat breakfast at 5am (and that is huge) then eat again at around 10am; then at about noon to about 3pm; then eat dinner around 7 and don't leave the table till about 9pm--and almost every meal is a full 3-courser!! Yet they are all reed thin and live well into their 90's!!! Same with my father's people, who are not quite so tall as my mom's, but still very fit, active, and "on the ball". I just lost my favourite uncle--father's brother--last September and he was 96 years old. He was still fishing every day and riding his motorino (a Vespa!!) throughout the town at that age, still quite self-sufficient though he was very old. This is not uncommon in my family in Italy--but it is much rarer here in North America.

Here it is quite the opposite--weight issues are big!! For the reasons I mentioned above. Where once we would eat butter, fresh unpasteurized milk, real cheese and olive oils, people here are scammed into buying margarines or eating refined grains and sugars in place of whole grains (and you know how Italians LOVE bread and need to have at least one serving of pasta or rice a day!) Also, transplanted Italians eat way too much meat, as I said above (my brother has always had a very tough time ordering a "bistecca" in Italy--they always bring him this thin little wafer of beef when he was expecting a great big Texas steer or something!! But no one eats that way there!) The ironic thing is that everyone is told to stop eating their traditional foods--which we are told are just too rich and fatty for us--and the result is that we are physically malnourished by the processed foods they use as "replacements". That is why your family is all overweight...in America. It has also happened to the Asian populations who have emigrated to NA, and we are also seeing it happen in the East Indian populations, too. The sad thing is that even if an effort is made to retain those nutritional traditions, many of the raw ingredients available here are just not the same--compare nutrient value of organically grown foods (more the norm in Europe) to agribusiness foods which are often GMOs, and you will see why "we don't absorb as many nutrients" from our foods on this side of the Atlantic...

And don't even let me start on the French and Belgian members of my family--in the french "supermarkets", exactly half of the store is stocked with....CHEESE!!! Rosanne Barr said it correctly when, after her first trip to Europe, she proclaimed, "There are no fat people in Europe." It's not 100% true, but in my mind, the mental image comparison between those seated at a cafe in Bologna (the "fat" food capital of Italy) and those seated at Disneyland is shocking...Just goes to show how important those longstanding, long tried-and-true cultural traditions really are.

Divina

I agree with the cultural differences.

Here's a site that claims to be able to rid you of your food allergies. www.naet.com
Sounds too good to be true. My former chiro performs the procedure and I can say that I can visibly SEE a difference in her. It works with your body similarly to accupuncture.

Let me know if anyone has experience with this, as I am considering having this done to my oldest this summer.