Todd Moody wrote:
>
> On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, David Karas wrote:
>
> > Every species on this planet except for us eats
> > all of their food uncooked. It seems to me that they look healthier than we > > do.
> > Do they know something that we don't?
>
> This may be a point where blood type theory has some validity.
> For some reason (some pleiotropic gene, I guess) people with type
> O blood secrete significantly more stomach acid than people of
> type A or B.  Dogs and other carnvores secrete more of it than
> humans of any blood type.

My blood type is O. I didn't think to mention this. I do know people
of other
blood types who seem to do well on raw meat. The raw meat eaters are a
tiny
minority however. I also forgot to mention how much fat I eat. The
harder (more
saturated?) the better. If I don't get enough I stay hungry. I let my
body tell
me when to eat. Sometimes I forget until it reminds me. Even then it
may have to
repeat the reminder a few times until I respond. I eat a natural whole
food diet
and don't pay attention to quantities or specific nutrients. If I am
missing
something my body doesn't let me go very long before it complains. The
longer I
ignore the complaints the more intense they become. The body always
wins
eventually. Being hungry all of the time makes it hard to get anything
done. It
is much easier to give in. Based upon what I read here many people are
not able
to do this and try to depend on formulas in books and/or what other
people say.
Supplements are not food and can not replace natural food for very
long before
they become a detriment. Too much of something is just as bad as too
little.
Someone with a hormone deficiency like Jean-Claude must walk a very
narrow line
to stay in balance. He seems to have found a way to make it work but
he tells us
in many ways that it not easy. His instinctive eating probably is what
makes the
difference.

> Although Peter D'Adamo asserts that this is relevant to "protein
> digestion," I am unable to confirm this.  Protein is not digested
> by acid, but by protease enzymes.  The function of stomach acid
> is not well understood, but one plausible theory is that its
> primary function is to kill bacteria on foods, especially
> scavenged, semi-spoiled meat.

In physiology class in college our text said that the function of the
stomach
acid (hydrochloric) was to break the protein down to amino acids. I
haven't seen
any updates that changed that. I am not trying to avoid or kill
bacteria, my
immune system takes care of the balance. I thrive on "semi-spoiled
meat".

[snip]

> So my theory is this: Prior to extensive use of fire for cooking
> meats, the A blood type was disadvantageous, because it is
> correlated with lower stomach acid levels, making people less
> able to cope with bacteria in meat (and other foods) and thus
> more susceptible to food poisoning and systemic infections.  When
> food began to be cooked routinely, the fire did most of the work
> of destroying the surface bacteria, so the A blood type was no
> longer a liability.  From that point on it began to spread though
> the human population until it was almost as common as type O.
>
> So the moral of the story is: If this reasoning is correct, it is
> cooked meat, not vegetarianism, that made type A blood viable.
> And that implies that people of type A should be more cautious
> about the bacteria in raw meat than type O people have to be.

The type A people that I know have had the most difficulty eating raw
meat.