On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, EllaLane wrote:

> I have read D'adamo's book, and personally tried his diet for about half a
> year.  I won't go into the elaboration of his technical points concerning
> lectins, other than to guess Ray's definition of "foreign proteins" and
> D'adamo's lectins might differ.

They definitely do.

For the record, my own experiment with type type A diet was not
encouraging.  I gained weight and, although cholesterol went
down, triglycerides went up.  Not surprising, really.

But the idea that I have been pursuing is that there are really
two themes in D'Adamo's program.  One is lectins; the other is
digestive metabolism.  The latter theme has to do with the
gastric acid and alkaline phosphatase levels.

D'Adamo's recommendations against animal proteins for type As
are, as far as I can tell, based more on his ideas about
metabolism than about lectins.  I am coming to the opinion that
this is a weak link in his program, however.  The lectin theory
seems more substantial to me.  As a result, I am experimenting
with a "lectin-only" version of the type A diet.  That is, I am
assuming that he is just wrong about type As having problems with
meat, and that whatever problems might show up are themselves
caused by foreign proteins/lectins.  So, I am back to a lowcarb
program that makes extensive use of meats, and losing weight
again.  But I am attempting to use the lectin theory to guide my
choice of plant-based foods.  This seems reasonable to me because
the ability of lectins to trigger immune responses can be
observed *in vitro*.  Whether this is an improvement on
Neanderthin remains to be seen, but it's worth trying.

A confounding variable is this:  Meats are not entirely devoid of
lectins, presumably because when you feed an animal foods that
are foreign to it, the lectins from those foods will get into the
bloodstream and tissues, albeit in low concentrations.  But I'll
take my chances.  Cattle are fattened on corn and soybeans, whose
lectins do not cause agglutination in type A blood, so I
shouldn't have a problem with any corn and soy lectins that have
accumulated in the meat.

It would be *very* interesting if it turned out that my
cholesterol problem, for example, is lectin-driven and not
fat-driven.  It's not implausible either, since there are herbs
(bearers of lectins) that have strong effects on the liver's
cholesterol-making activities.

So, let's see what happens.

Todd Moody
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