I am back from a trip to visit my parents. It was so encouraging to see my Dad exercising with his walker again. He was so sick last summer that we all feared he might never get out of the wheel chair again. His mind has regained its pre-infection sharpness, and he thinks like a man 20 years younger than his 90 years. Part of the purpose of my visit was to count out their monthly medication and vitamins. I have introduced several supplements that are beneficial for Type Os (like bioflavonoids), and I’ve quietly stopped supplements that are contra-indicated (like Vitamin E).

My Dad is receptive to the Blood Type Diet, and follows it probably 75% of the time. My Mom doesn’t understand it and is pretty set in the ways that she cooks. She doesn’t want to give up her cake and cookies. I always relax my standards a little when I go to see them. It doesn’t hurt me to indulge in fried okra and onion rings once in a while, or to share a bowl of peppermint ice cream.

However when I get home, I quickly get back on my Type O Diet. At lunchtime today I found broccoli stems in the refrigerator, left from when I had steamed broccoli before my trip. I grated the stems in the food processor, and grated a carrot as well. I added ground turkey, curry powder, turmeric, flax oil, dried pineapple, and dried goji berries. It was a fast tasty crunchy lunch.

Thank you to those who have written DD such encouraging notes. She is doing well. She has gained almost a pound, and is being faithful to take one day a week off from exercise. She has cut the intensity level back for the days that she does cardio on the machines at the university gym. She has gone out to eat twice this week with friends to local restaurants, and was able to enjoy the food and the fellowship without undo stress. She met a girl on campus who went through the same issues last year. She asked, “How did you get through it?” The girl answered, “I had to get a lot closer to the Lord.” DD has been sending me Bible verses that have new meaning for her. Here’s one I thought was amazing. It’s from Psalm 109.

But you, O Sovereign Lord, deal well with me for our name's sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust. My knees give way from fasting; my body is thin and gaunt. Help me, O Lord my God; save me in accordance with your love. Let them know that it is your hand, that you, O Lord, have done it...For he stands at the right hand of the needy one, to save his life from those who condemn him.

My Darling Daughter sent me a recipe which I tried over the weekend. It was a delicious recipe and it brought back memories of my college days.

When I was at Baylor, almost every Friday the cafeteria served “Vegetable Meatloaf”. We students used to laugh about it because it seemed to us that the cafeteria would save all of the leftover peas, carrots and green beans from the week. On Friday we would get meatloaf with little bits of orange and green peaking out of the ground beef. Though we joked about it, most of us admitted that it tasted good. Even I, who at that time of my life ate almost no vegetables at all, liked Vegetable Meatloaf.

Here is the recipe that DD sent:
1 lb ground turkey
2 medium carrots, grated
1 stalk celery, shredded
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 egg
¼ tsp each of thyme, basil, rosemary, sage, oregano and garlic powder.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl. Roll the mixture into small meatballs and place on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray. Cook in the oven 10 – 15 minutes.

I served them to my husband with pasta and a sauce. I ate mine plain with a sweet potato. We both had a side salad.

I got to try a new super beneficial food! That is exciting to me! When I first started the BTD, I enjoyed searching the isles of my grocery and health food store looking for beneficial food that I had never tried. It was quite an adventure. Experimenting with the new beneficials took away the sting of not eating old favorite avoids. But gradually, I tried all of the beneficials that were available locally. I sighed – nothing new for months on end.

In South Texas, we have a lot of Hispanic food. It was easy to find guava drinks in the ethnic food isles, but they were loaded with sugar, so I never bought them. I don’t believe that a sugar laden beneficial is really beneficial!

This week I was in the frozen food section of the grocery store buying cherries and blueberries. I saw a new product – Guayaba. Almost the entire label was in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish, but I read it marginally well. It appeared that this was guava with no sugar added.

After my bad experience eating edamame hulls, I came home and typed the label into Babel Fish Translator. Sure enough this was guava. “Defrost and it tastes like fresh fruit,” the label said. There were several recipes for drinks. Some of them said to strain the drink after processing it in a blender.

I did a little more Internet research and found that it is ok to eat the skin and seeds of guava. The seeds are hard, so some people discard them, however, in doing so you also discard the sweetest part of the fruit, which is the central pulp around the seeds. Interestingly, the peel has the most phytonutrients.

Yesterday I diced two guavas and mixed them with a banana in my breakfast nuts. It was a delicious combination. The guava was tart, but mixed with the banana, it was perfect. The seeds are definitely hard, but no more annoying than blackberry seeds (I know blackberry is Type O avoid, but I remember what they were like from pre-BTD days.).

It is great to have another frozen beneficial fruit just in time for winter months, when fresh fruit is scarce and high priced. I hope there will be enough demand for the grocery store to continue to carry it.

HH saw some beans soaking on the kitchen counter and asked what they were. “I’m fixing fava beans for myself tomorrow,” I told him. “You don’t like them.”
“How do you know I don’t like them?” he asked. “I don’t ever remember having them.”

So I retold the story (I’m sure I blogged about it way back when) of how the first time I cooked fava beans he loved them. I had over cooked them in the pressure cooker and they reminded him of mashed potatoes. He requested that we have them once a week. The third time I cooked fava beans he said he didn’t like them, wouldn’t eat them, and not to fix them any more. OK I’ll admit it, I teased him quite a bit about his inconsistency. He said, “Maybe I’ll give them another try tomorrow.”

The next day I was listening to talk radio in the car, and one of the shows had a guest who was reviewing some recent research about how great the spice turmeric is. I thought to myself that if he followed the BTD he would have known long before his “recent research” that turmeric is beneficial or super beneficial for every Type.

Then I chided myself for not using it more often. I like the flavor, but somehow it gets pushed to the back of the pantry. With all of this in mind I arrived home to fix the fava beans. The package says to pressure cook the favas for 20 minutes. If I do that, they become so soft that goop starts to ooze out of the top of the pressure cooker. So I cook them for about 12 minutes. They are soft enough to mash, but they are not gooey or burned.

I added turmeric, garlic, and olive oil to the favas as I mashed them. I tasted them and I liked them. HH tasted them and said, “These are ok; you can fix them again.

Melissa left a comment that she thought my husband would like the Lemon Turkey she posted in BTD recipes. I fixed it tonight, and both of us thought it was delicious. HH suggested we have it again soon. That’s two victories this week!! I’m all smiles.

Wow. Both of my kids are off at college. Incredible. The time has flown by so fast. It seems like yesterday that I was bringing my babies home from the hospital.

People have been asking all week if I’m ok. Am I sad? Is the empty nest hard? I have to say I am not sad or depressed. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been too busy to be unhappy. Perhaps it’s because I have no regrets. I loved being a Mom. I totally threw myself into being a full time at home Mom for years. It wasn’t until DD started Middle School that I even considered going back to work. Then I was working part time at her school.

My goal has been to raise two productive, healthy, godly young adults. To hold them back from their dreams and plans for the future would be unnatural.

That having been said, I did pamper them a bit the last week that they were both at home. I fixed a lot of their favorite foods. Spinach with raisins and butternut squash for SS. Pumpkin with ginger and green beans with basil and garlic for DD. Watermelon and mango for SS. Papaya, kiwi, and nectarines for DD. Eye of round roast for SS. Fresh salmon for DD. It was fun to plan meals that I know they like, and that they won’t get when they are off at school.

The distance doesn’t seem as great as it did when I went off to college in the 70s. Long distance phone calls were expensive, and letters took 2-3 days to reach their destinations back then. I’ve talked with DD on the cell phone every day. She called me from the grocery store this afternoon asking my opinion about fruit juice and soy milk. It was fun to imagine her and her roommate loading up their shopping cart.

I heard this statement earlier in the summer, “When you are a mother, the days go by slowly, but the years go by quickly.” It’s hard to grasp that when you are struggling with a 2-year-old or negotiating with a 13-year-old. But when you hug your 18-year-old and your 23-year-old good-bye, you realize how true it is.

Our son is home for a break between summer and fall semesters. I wanted to fix a grain dish to go with cod for last night’s dinner.

I cooked the cod with Mrs. Dash Garlic & Herb Seasoning Blend. It is loaded with Type O beneficials. The next to the last ingredient is orange peel, but I can accept that tiny diviation. There is probably more pepper that in good for Type As, but the Type Os outnumbered the Type As for this meal, and my husband liked it.

I sauteed spinach in butter, and added a handful of currants. I’m still not totally confident about the currant rules. The GTD website described the beneficial currants as looking like tiny raisins. The BTD website says all currants are neutral, but that there are two varieties – the tiny raisin-like ones, and the gooseberry-like ones. It’s really a moot point because I can’t get the gooseberry-like ones in South Texas.

After I got the cod in the oven and the spinach wilting, I turned my attention to the grain dish. I had quinoa in mind, but there wasn’t a box in the pantry. However, I did have buckwheat groats. Usually I follow the directions for kasha, which has has a texture similar to rice. But other things were cooking and I didn’t want to take time to precook the kasha in egg. Instead I put the buckwheat in boiling water and turned to another pan where I was grilling an onion and some portabella mushrooms. I turned back to the buckwheat and it had already cooked to mush. So fast! I added the onions and mushrooms and tossed stirred them together. What else could I do? This close to dinner I wasn’t going to start over.

When the family came in I told them that I had taken a short cut and goofed on the pilaf. The texture was all wrong. But after we tasted it, we all agreed that buckwheat with onion and portabellas was a good idea. Next time if I prepare the kasha correctly, I will have a tasty side dish that I can be proud of.

I made one other goof. I didn’t prepare enough. At the end of the meal the buckwheat dish was empty. There was none left over for today’s lunches.

I have had one of the most breathtakingly wonderful experiences of my life. It started with an ordinary event – exercise.

While I was at my parent’s house it was hard to exercise. The days were busy ones, with much to do to take care of my Dad. The days were also hot and humid. Nights were plesant, but it made my mother very nervous for me to be out walking by myself at dusk. Two days I went anyway, against her wishes. Some days I did T-Tapp in the living room after everyone was asleep. Some days I missed out on exercise.

The first day I was at home, DD and I went for a power walk with weights. It was wonderful to charge up and down the hills in the fresh air. Over the weekend we went for a bicycle ride. We pushed ourselves hard, riding for about an hour.

As we came back home, we startled four deer in our neighbor’s front yard. Two of them took off down our driveway, heading into the trees behind our house. The other two began to run down our street. They were running right beside me, neck and neck with my bicycle, perhaps four or five feet from me.

I could see their beautiful eyes and watch their graceful strides. We were side by side for several hundred feet, then they sped up, crossing the road in front of me. They leaped effortlessly across the bar ditch and disappeared into the trees.

It was a magical moment.

One quick followup to my blog about edamame. A stomach virus swept through the store where DD works. She had fever and cramping, and she felt pretty miserable. It was not caused by the edamame pods. A virus is a virus and it has to run its course. But I don’t think that the extra amount of fiber helped her recovery any. Even though she is able to swallow the whole edamame, she agrees that from now on, whe will just eat the beans, not the pods.

We have tried a new food, and our reaction had interesting BTD implications.

While I was at my parent’s house, my Darling Daughter bought groceries and cooked BTD meals for herself and her father. The day before I got home, she cleaned the house from top to bottom, and when I arrived, she had a delicious dinner waiting. See why I call her DD?

She and I talked on the phone every day about lots of things, including food. She was really interested in trying stir fried snow peas. As she was looking for them at the store, she discovered a bag of edamame in the freezer section. Knowing that soy was one of her superbeneficial foods, she bought it.

The instructions on the bag were pretty clear – boil them or microwave them. They look a whole lot like snow peas. So yesterday she and I cooked edamame with carrots and celery. DD took some in her lunch to work, and I took some in my lunch to school. I took one bite and spit them out. It was like eating hay. The pods were disgusting.

I left a message on her cell phone, apologizing for the inedible lunch. I told her to pick the beans out of the pods and just eat those with the other veggies.

When she got home, she said, “What were you talking about? The edamame was good.” She had eaten it pods and all. She liked it so much, she wanted more today.

I looked at the bag. There was nothing in the directions about eating or not eating the pods. I went on the Internet. Of all the sites I checked, the vast majority say don’t eat the pods. They recommend eating edamame as finger food, squeezing the little green beans out of the pods and throwing the pods away. But there are a few sites that say eating pods is fine, as long as they are cooked. A few people write that they actually like to eat pods and all.

All I can say is that those people have to be Type As! Unless you had some internal sense that you were eating something very beneficial, you wouldn’t eat soybean pods and like them! I’ll give edamame another try, but I’ll be eating it like they do in Japan, with a bowl nearby for discarding the pods.

I got another stir fry lesson from my sister the other night. She said that her favorite vegetable to stir fry was broccoli because of the beautiful color. She washed the broccoli and cut it into medium size flowerets. She began to stir fry in plain olive oil. “Watch what happens,” she said. When the broccoli was done it was a bright, almost fluorescent green. “It happens every time,” she said. “It’s how I know when it’s done.”

I was at the store one day picking up a few things for dinner. I was really hungry, but I didn’t want to succumb to snack food. I looked around in the produce section and found a case of juices and smoothies. They all had lots of healthy ingredients – but most of them were also high calorie and laden with sugar. I looked at the label on a pom green tea. All of the ingredients were natural. There was no added sugar, it was sweetened only with pomegranate juice. It was pricey, but I bought it, and it was delicious. It took the edge off my hunger without spoiling my appetite for the meal.

My dad is slowly improving. He is getting along with the home health care worker we have hired. I should be able to go home soon.

When family gets together, there are always new recipe opportunities. Even when the occasion is a sad one – like this illness of my Dad’s – people have to eat.

My sister, who has lived in Europe for more than 20 years, had planned a visit to my parents for this week long ago. It was wonderful to have her here helping make decisions. She and I tend to see situations from different angles, and we really worked well together.

We both agreed to give my Mom a vacation from the kitchen. Both of us cooked some of our favorite dinners. She stir fries a lot, and I learned several techniques from watching her. One night she stir fried carrots and snow peas.

She sliced the carrots in thin rounds and cut the snow peas in half. She heated the olive oil and started cooking the carrots in a skillet. When they were about half done, she added the snow peas. Once she starts cooking, she stays right by the pan and stirs constantly. She never covered the pan – as I sometimes do – so her vegetables were very crisp. It was so easy and so delicious.

My dad is a little better every day. He thinks a little clearer, and he helps us move him a little more. He will have occupation therapy and physical therapy for several weeks. I really enjoyed watching the OT and PT do their evaluations. They did some of the same tests that my son had practiced on us while we were with him in Kentucky. Both the OT and PT are very optimistic about Dad’s potential for a full recovery.

Today’s activities highlighted how seriously some people take animal nutrition and how little thought they put into their own diets. I doubt that Kentucky is all that different from any other part of the country; it’s just that the contrast was so obvious at the Kentucky Horse Park.

The Kentucky Horse Park is like a theme park – except there aren’t rides. It’s like a museum – except there are shows and activities. It is a wonderful place to learn all about horses and see close up some of the things that horses can do.

We wanted to have lunch in between two of the shows. The restaurant serves cafeteria style, and at first, there didn’t seem to be anything but sandwiches and wraps. Then we came to the salads, but they were pre-made with bacon and fried chicken. At last, at the end of the line, DD and I found what we wanted – plate lunches with a meat and two sides. One of the meat choices was a half of a baked chicken. DD and I decided that we would get one plate lunch with mixed vegetables and green beans. We would add a side order of green beans, and share. It was a good plan and it worked.

When we paid for our meal at the end of the line they charged us $2.50 for the extra green beans. Behind us was a boy who wanted an extra order of French fries. They charged him $3.00. DD and I found this to be amusing. People are willing to pay more for fries than they are for vegetables.

All through the park there is an emphasis on proper nutrition for the animals. The owners and trainers want the horses to be sleek, fast, and in good health. But the snack stands and much of the food in the restaurant play to the lowest desires of the human visitors.

SS asked if his grandfather had made progress learning to walk again, and I gave him an update. He took my observations and explained what is happening physiologically. Both neurological components and immobility components are at work, he said. At first, right after the accident, it was all neurological. The head injury was real, and it interfered with the nerves to his leg. However being in a wheel chair for 18 months has affected his ability to use his muscles and joints properly.

There is no way to know how much of the problem now is neurological and how much is immobility. It’s possible that permanent nerve damage was done. It is also possible that his current problems are not the result of the head injury at all. SS said that immobility perpetuates itself. Muscles shrink when they are not used. The lubricating fluids that allow joints to move properly are not made until the joint moves.

Keep yourself moving with the right exercise for your type. Don’t let immobility rob you of your ability to have an active lifestyle now and in the future.

When we travel, we picnic two meals a day and eat out one. This saves money and time, plus it makes it easier to stay within BTD boundaries.

Every motel we are staying in on this trip has a continental breakfast. Most of the time that means wheat and orange juice. DD and I don’t even go to look at the breakfast any more. We bring nuts and dried fruit with us. I pick up fresh fruit at local grocery stores. My husband and son check out the breakfast buffet. If it’s donuts and bagels, they come back to the room for trail mix. If it’s muffins and cereal, they stay. This morning they stayed, and when they got back they told me that there were hard-boiled eggs. I went down and picked up two for a snack later in the day.

At the meal we eat out, we order things that aren’t practical to carry in our ice chest. I usually look for beef and fresh vegetables. For lunch today, our son took us to Qdoba. It is a lot like Chipotle, but better. I had a naked burrito – in other words a burrito without the tortilla. It had black beans, shredded beef, rice with cilantro and Romaine lettuce.

Dinner was a picnic in our hotel room. I brought a loaf of Ezekiel in my suitcase. I don’t know how hard it will be to find healthy bread here. DD had a peanut butter and blueberry Simply Fruit sandwich. HH and SS had turkey and soy cheese sandwiches. I had a can of salmon and a can of asparagus mixed together with a little olive oil in a bowl.

There is a nice fitness room at our motel. All of us except HH worked out on the machines. SS told us more about what he is learning about muscles. He said it is important to spend equal time working out chest and back muscles. Because body builders over emphasize pectorals, many of them spend incredible amounts of time doing bench presses, and never work out their backs. Often they wind up hunched over and in pain.

This blog sounds like all we did is eat and exercise. Of course that is not true. We spent the day exploring the incredibly beautiful horse farm country. We got to meet some famous racehorses, and watch some little colts scamper after their mothers in the pastures.

When I first started eating pumpkin as a vegetable, I seasoned it like pumpkin pie, just without any sweetening. I'd add ghee, cinnamon, ginger, and occasionally a little all spice or cloves. It was delicious. I ate it happily just like that for 4 1/2 years.

Then DD started eating pumpkin with me. She liked the pumpkin pie version, but one day she suggested adding nuts. Another day she said how about a little dried fruit. We now have a variety of pumpkin recipes that are all delicious.

We always start with a can of 100% pure pumpkin. We always add ghee, 1 tsp ginger juice and 1 tsp cinnamon. Then the fun begins. Here are three of our favorite combinations:

chopped pecans and dried cranberry
chopped walnuts and dried pineapple
chopped walnuts and dried cherries

Warm together until the flavors have a chance to blend.

While I may think of pumpkin as a vegetable, grocers disagree. Canned pumpkin seems to always be placed on the isle near the cake mixes. It would be easy to miss if you were looking for a tasty beneficial vegetable.

The last yearbook picture has been placed. Yesterday I happily delivered the last page designs to Fed Ex. It is the most creative yearbook I’ve ever worked on. That’s saying a lot - I’ve worked with yearbooks off and on since 1972. However, I’m very glad its finished and the pressure of the deadline is behind me.

I’ve written so many blogs in my head, and I’ve put none of them on computer. Some of them were pretty good – and most of them are completely forgotten. However I’ll do an abbreviated version of two BTD items that caught my attention while I was immersed in the yearbook.

I cannot figure out why pears are Super Beneficial for Hunters. I have always thought of pears as a “nothing fruit.” They’re sweet, but they don’t have much flavor. They have a texture like sand. It’s difficult to buy them because they are either too green or too ripe. To add to the confusion, they are black dot avoids for Gatherers. None-the-less, in my database that combines everything I know about the BTD and the GTD, I have them rated Super Beneficial for me, and I’ve tried to eat more of them.

Then one day when I was buying dried fruit for DD’s power bars, I saw dried pears. I picked them up. “Disgusting,” I thought, and put them down. I picked them up and put them back several times before they ended up in my cart. Surprise, surprise they are delicious. The flavor is concentrated in dried pears. They are chewy and much less sandy. Now my problem is not eating too many of them.

My Honorable Husband (Type A) had a set back and drank four sodas in one week. He paid for it with an upset stomach that lasted most of the next week. I was not a sympathetic wife. I laughed at him. I also e-mailed him this tid bit from the GenoType Daily, “Ever wonder why you shouldn't eat Teacher Toxins like cornstarch, sugar, and soda? It's because starches and simple sugars encourage microbial growth in your intestines, which can lessen the efficiency of your immune system.”

He loves sodas, and he doesn’t think it’s fair that club soda and seltzer water are beneficial to a Type O like me. Now that the weather is hot and dry, I’ve been indulging in more carbonated beverages. Knudsen spritzers (carbonated water and pure fruit juice) are delicious, but expensive. I like making my own soda beverages using fruit juice and plain club soda.

Because DD takes a shake made with fruit juice and egg white protein powder to work every day, we’ve been buying Dole 100% frozen juices. There are several flavors including raspberry and cranberry, which are beneficial for her.

I took some of her raspberry juice (which is neutral for me) and mixed it and a teaspoon of ginger juice in a glass of ice cold club soda. Raspberry ginger ale! It was fabulous.

We have a friend who says, “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can sure make you comfortable.” The statement always gets a laugh because it’s true. Almost everyone wishes they had more money, but they can see that the rich are some of the unhappiest people in the world.

It’s equally true that food can’t make you happy. In spite of all the magazine articles about comfort food; eating with the wrong motivation just compounds problems, it never makes them go away.

My Darling Daughter and I had a conversation on this topic this morning. It started when she said, “Food makes you happy, Mom, but I’ve never really liked to eat.” At first I wanted to flatly deny both parts of the statement, but I couldn’t.

I do enjoy eating. I like the flavors and textures of food. I don’t care for gourmet cooking with fancy sauces and decorations. Simple food simply prepared is my style. However, I do get pleasure from cooking and eating.

DD on the other hand, says she has never really liked to eat. I remember that when she was a little tyke, she rarely finished her breakfast or lunch in one sitting. She would eat a few bites, then leave the table and go play. An hour later I’d see her back at the table, eating a little bit more.

This has made it hard for her to gain weight this year. She doesn’t like feeling full. She doesn’t want to have to eat snacks in between meals. She especially doesn’t like eating before she goes to bed.

I reminded her that while she didn’t eat a lot when she was little, in her middle school and early high school years she would come home from school, watch TV and snack. That was different, she explained. TV and munching seemed to go together. It wasn’t so much that she liked eating, but she liked keeping her hands and mouth busy while she watched. And she certainly didn’t like the weight that she put on during those years.

She told me how unhappy she was when her jeans wouldn’t fit. “So you worked hard and lost weight – too much weight,” I said. “Did that make you happy?” No she admitted that it hadn’t. “Now you’re almost at your goal of a healthy weight, does that make you happy.” Again the answer was no.

Food doesn’t make you happy. Happiness and joy come from inside. (The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Galatians 5:22) Happiness is more about your faith than about how much you eat or how much is in your bank account.

I hope that DD will come to learn that while the right kind and right amount of food can bring health, a happy heart is much more than weight or dress size or the image in the mirror.

I like reading the GenoType Daily e-mails. I read the latest three this morning. (I still have 10 or so that are unopened in my inbox. I’ll catch up on them, but it may be June when yearbook deadlines are behind me.) I may as well admit that I’m way behind on all my BTD mail. If you’ve sent a comment, I’ll answer eventually, but it may be June as well.

Sometimes the GT Daily contains a simple hint that’s easy to incorporate. Sometimes it highlights a food fact that I’ve missed – like reminding me that other oils are better for Hunters than olive and flax. But sometimes – like in the ones I read today – they remind me that I don’t completely fit as either a Hunter or a Gatherer.

Yesterday’s GT Daily was about body proportions. Hunters are symmetrical – yes that’s true of me. Hunters have longer legs than torsos. Nope that’s not me. A Gatherer’s lower leg is almost always shorter than the upper leg. Yes, that’s true of me. A Gatherer’s index finger is longer than their ring finger, their fingerprints are asymmetrical. Neither is true of me.

This is why I’m not totally following either diet. It’s why I’m comparing all the food lists and trying to find my own identity as a Type O who is a mixture of GenoType characteristics.

I really want apples to be beneficial. My personal experience with apples is beneficial. They are a wonderful source of fiber. There is nothing better to fend off the irregularity that often comes with travel. They are inexpensive and easy to take in the car or pack in my backpack.

But – don’t you hate that word “but” - it’s such a spoiler word. But, apples are rated exactly the same as apricots: limited toxin for Hunters and Gatherers; neutral for Os, but Infrequent Neutrals in all of the Health Library books that I own.

When I was first starting the BTD, I read a description in Heidi’s column of what oranges do to a Type O’s stomach. I’ve never been tempted with oranges or orange juice since. I wish I had a mental picture of what an apple might be doing inside of me. It would make it easier to accept them as Infrequent Neutrals.

The best thing for me will probably be to not eat apples on a daily basis at home. I’ll save them to enjoy on picnics and when I travel.

I mentioned last week that I have had trouble deciding what to do about Apples, apricots, carrots, grapes, strawberries and tomato. Apricots, I reluctantly said, were going to be infrequent neutrals for me. I have to decide about the other foods as well.

There are a lot of food lists out there. Everyone from grocers to doctors to holistic counselors have strong opinions. One theme that frequently reoccurs is the values of foods that are red or blue. Strawberries and purple grapes get high marks on almost everyone’s lists. But Dr. D. is not impressed with strawberries and grapes, at least as far as Hunters, Teachers, Type Os and Type As are concerned.

For starters, Dr. D doesn’t make a distinction between the varieties of grapes. He counts green grapes, red grapes and black grapes the same. For me, grapes are black dot toxins on the Hunter diet and neutral on the Type O diet. Normally I would consider them neutral, but there are little things in some of the other lists that make me cautions. Grapes are also black dot toxins for Gatherers. They are infrequent neutrals in all of the Type O Health Library books that I own except for the Cancer diet (frequent neutral).

They are even less favored for my Type As. The teacher diet lists grapes as toxins. They are neutral for Type As, but again, my Health Library books list them as infrequent neutrals except for the Cancer diet (frequent neutral again).

I looked at the Glycemic Index. That’s not the problem. They are not the lowest GI of the fruits, but all varieties are under 50 , and anything under 55 is considered low.

I love grapes. They are quick snacks and easy to pack in lunches and on picnics. They are readily available and inexpensive. I really want them to be neutral. But I can’t escape the fact that there’s something about them that Dr. D. doesn’t like. I have to classify them as infrequent neutrals for all of us.

Strawberries get a lower rating from Dr. D than grapes. They are toxin for Hunters and black dot toxins for Teachers. Though neutral on the Type O and Type A diets, they are infrequent neutrals across the board in the Health Library.

I like strawberry flavor, but when I eat them, I somehow know strawberries are not a super food. While it was hard to turn away from grapes, it’s easier to put strawberries down as an infrequent neutral.