Suzanne Graham

Pears confuse me because they are superbeneficial for Hunters, a black dot avoid for Gatherers, and neutral for Type Os. Because I’m fairly confident that I’m a Hunter, I tell myself I should eat more of them, but because they have never been one of my favorite fruits, I usually choose something else. However, in the past three weeks, I’ve eaten three varieties of pears.

My Mom always liked trying new things. Some of her finds are healthy, like cherry essence prunes - which are beneficial as well as heavenly tasting. Other finds are not so healthy, like marshmallow cream – which has no redeeming value as a food product, but it sure tastes good.

When I went to visit her three weeks ago, she had a box of apple pears. According to the box, they have been grown in California for 20 years, but they have just now made it to Texas grocery stores. Mom had been saving them until I arrived so that we could try them together. They were very crisp like a fresh apple. The flavor was more like a pear, but without any of the grittiness that pears usually have. They were very good. I wouldn’t be surprised if they grew in popularity

I went back to her house this week to clean out the refrigerator and set up an alarm system. I went to her grocery store to buy food for my two-day stay. I wanted bananas, a peach and a pear. Most of the pears were hard and green, but at last I found a bin of ripe yellow pears.

At check out, I noticed the one pear cost $1.35. I questioned the checker and was told that it was a French Butter Pear. Whatever - that was pretty expensive for a pear ($2.99 per pound)! But on impulse, and perhaps in honor of Mom, I kept it. This pear was outstandingly good. It was very juicy and very sweet. If the price on French Butter Pears went down, I’d buy them regularly.

Today I am back home. After I fed Mom her lunch – pureed beef, green beans and potatoes – I went to the grocery store. I came home with two Bartlett pears. Perhaps pears are becoming a habit with me.

We came to Alabama on vacation to see D & J get married. We've known D since before she was born, and she was a lovely bride. J is easy to like, and I think they have made a wise and lasting choice.

HH & I were invited to the Rehearsal Dinner. It was at a Birmingham restaurant called B&A Warehouse. The meal was a Type O's dream - prime rib and fresh green beans. A write up about the restaurant said they were known for their chocolate desserts. That was an understatement. The dessert table had tiers and tiers of confections, and all but 1 of them were chocolate. Though chocolate is a superfood for Hunters, because I was violently allergic to it as a child I rarely eat it, and then only in small servings. I took one truffle, because I had never had one before. It was very good.

Before the dinner, and at the After Party, they served hors d'oeuvres. Most of them involved crackers, which are easy for me to turn down. But two attracted my attention. One was a spinach artichoke dip. I enjoyed it for the sake of the two beneficial vegetables - in spite of the cheese sauce. The other was havarti cheese with a caramel pecan topping. It was as good as dessert. In fact, I ate it as dessert.

The wedding reception was on the top floor of a building with a breathtaking view of the city lights below. DD's and my eyes lit up when we saw a whole table of fresh fruit. They served shrimp and grits - a dish that I've never heard of in Texas. However on the table beyond, I saw more prime rib. Two nights in a row! It was Type O paradise.

Now it's time to head for home. SS starts his third and final year of Physical Therapy School. DD will be a college sophomore. It was so much fun for the four of us to be together for a week. I will think about that, and not how empty the house will seem after having DD home all summer.

That was the subject line of an e-mail DD sent to me after she read the GenoType Daily called “Your Body Proportions.” Of the three GenoTypes that can be Type As, she didn’t match up with any of them.

Here was the first description: “One unique characteristic of Teachers is that on one hand, your ring finger is probably longer than your index finger, while the opposite is true of your other hand. Let this asymmetry be a reminder that Teachers should always seek balance in life!” This is not DD. Both of her index fingers are longer than her ring fingers. And her body is not asymmetrical. Except for her finger prints her left and right sides are similar if not identical.

Here was the second description: “Another unique gender-specific characteristic of all Explorers: Men and women have backward finger lengths (men have longer index fingers and women have longer ring fingers — the opposite of the norm).” This is not true of DD.

Finally, the third description: “Long-headedness is a common trait of warriors — meaning your head is longer than it is wide. A Warrior’s legs are typically longer than the torso. Yet one symmetry you exhibit is that your index-to-ring-finger ratio is usually equal.” DD’s head is longer than it is wide, but her torso is longer than her legs. Her finger ratios are 63/62 and 63/60.

This GenoType Daily was a reminder of how frustrating it has been to nail down DD’s Genotype. Teachers typically have lots of whorls — DD just has three. Explorers typically have loops on their index fingers that open to the thumb. DD’s left index finger does this, but her right index finger is a whorl. Warriors usually have many arches; DD has none.

From the waist up she is sinewy like a Teacher. From the waist down she would be padded like a Warrior if she didn’t exercise so much to keep her legs in shape. None of her is muscular like an Explorer.

Because the physical characteristics are inconclusive, we took another look at the personality and emotional characteristics. Except for the tendency to be compulsive, DD has none of the Teacher personality. She is mostly like a Warrior, with a few Explorer traits.

For this reason DD has continued to follow the Type A diet — with a few Teacher and Warrior diamond foods added for variety.

This blog is not in any way to disparage the GenoType Diet!! If your GenoType is clear, by all means take advantage of the diet. However, I know from reading the Forum, that DD is not alone, and that others also appear to be Genotypeless. If you are in that category, I would encourage you to follow your Blood Type Diet. There is no guesswork about your type, and the results for my family have been outstanding.

A quick glance at the Type O/Hunter food lists could be overwhelming because of the abundance of choices. A closer look can be disappointing, because many of the foods are not locally available, and many others are too expensive. Lamb and bison used to be in that category.

Lamb was available at my grocery store – if I wanted to pay $10 per pound for a bone-in chop. (which I will emphatically say I did not!) I well remember the day I found boneless leg of lamb at Sams Club for about the same price as a roast. Suddenly it was possible to enjoy this Type O beneficial on a regular basis. Not only that, the package says that the lamb is 100% grass fed. I know that grass fed meat or yard raised poultry is better for my body, but it’s not usually good for my budget.

Interesting, while lamb is not a popular American food, once I found a good source for it, the quality was superior to the easily available beef.

I’ve eaten bison when we’ve vacationed in Colorado and Wyoming. However for years I could not find it in Texas where I live. Once I got really excited when I saw buffalo sausage in a store, but my enthusiasm vanished when I read that the top two ingredients were buffalo and pork. No way! Last year I found buffalo hot dogs in the freezer section at the Health Food store. But they were expensive and very salty.

This week I answered an ad for a used bicycle in town 30 miles from where I live. It sounded perfect, and I drove over with every intention of buying it and going for a ride that afternoon. What a disappointment, the “like new” bike was rusty, and the seat was frozen. I couldn’t even have taken it for a test ride.

On the way home I passed an HEB grocery store in another town. I went in to pick up food for the weekend. In their meat department they had ground bison and bison steaks. Ground bison was $5 per pound; bison steak was $5 per 8 ounce package. I got two packages of ground bison and one bison steak. The package says that the bison is guaranteed natural grass fed and no hormones. I have never found grass fed beef for that price!! There is an HEB in my town, and I’m hoping they will also start carrying bison. If not, I think it would be worth a drive once every couple of months to stock my freezer with bison.

The price of the steak was more than I usually spend on meat, but I really wanted to try it. In it’s defense, it was very lean and well trimmed - no visible fat. So there was no waste. I sprinkled it with Braggs liquid aminos, and cooked it at 400 degrees in the oven. It was delicious.

Once again, when I finally find an unpopular beneficial, the price is more reasonable than many readily accepted cuts of beef. Some day perhaps I will find canistel for the same price as pears or Jew’s ear in the produce section next to mushrooms.

We have three or four pairs of cardinals that live in the trees behind our house. I’m sure they have suffered along with the other wildlife during this incredibly dry summer and fall. The last time I remember it raining was sometime in June. However, today while I was fixing lunch, we had a brief shower. As I watched out the back windows, the cardinals came out and perched in the top branches shaking their feathers and enjoying the rain. That has nothing at all to do with today’s blog, but it was such a beautiful sight.

The first time I tasted flax oil I was sorely disappointed. It tastes like fish. In fact I remember looking at the label on the bottle, thinking that perhaps I had picked up cod liver oil by mistake. I use flax oil once in a while because I know it is highly beneficial, but I have to coax myself to do it.

A while back someone gave me a recipe that called for toasted sesame oil. It was ok, but I wasn’t wild about the taste. So that bottle of oil has been neglected in the back of my refrigerator. I knew that if I didn’t use it soon, I’d have to throw it out, and I hated to do that since sesame oil is beneficial for Hunters.

One night last week I mixed half and half of these two oils that I don’t like on my salad. Don’t ask me why – it must have been a masochistic moment. Incredible! The combination was good – not fabulous like the flavor of a newly opened bottle of extra virgin olive oil – not heavenly like a spoon of freshly made ghee – but good.

I thought it might have been a fluke, and I tried it again yesterday. Somehow the flax oil is less fishy, and the toasted sesame oil is less overpowering when the two are mixed together. As I’m typing this blog, I’m eating turnip greens with grilled onions and canned salmon, topped with a half teaspoon each of flax and toasted sesame oil. It’s a surprisingly tasty combination. In addition, it is very beneficial for Type Os who are Hunters. If you are not a Hunter, experiment! Perhaps you will find another tasty combination using an oil that is beneficial for you.

My husband and I are back from spending a weekend with our Darling Daughter. It was Homecoming where she goes to college. All of the activities gave me many opportunities to observe people and their eating habits. It revived an issue I had when the GenoType Diet first came out.

There was an emphasis on how life in the womb impacted the genes of the growing baby. Here is a quote, “The Gatherer's motto — Whoever dies with the most wins — stems from a lack of food in the womb. By making food a top priority, you are able to ensure that you'll always have enough in times of scarcity. But watch out — in our plentiful times you can easily put on excess weight because of overeating.” One example was that a thin mother would produce a baby with thrifty genes – in other words a chubby baby. There was a study of women in a European country in World War II that was used to prove the theory. My interpretation was that the opposite would also have to be true. An over weight mother, consuming more than enough calories, would produce a child without thrifty genes who would grow up thin.

All I can say is that when I observe people, I don’t find that to be true. This weekend as I watched families together I didn’t see skinny parents with fat kids and fat parents with skinny kids. For the most part if mom and dad are thin, the kids are thin. If mom and dad are round, they have round kids.

I can’t say whether this is genetic – in other words whether the tendency to be fat or thin is built into the cells of the children – or whether it is behavioral – thin parents eat a certain way and exercise a certain way and those behaviors are picked up by their offspring. What I do know is that as we walked around campus, I rarely saw a thin mom with an overweight child.

If the idea of thrifty genes was universally true, one place it could be observed today would be in African countries plagued by famine. However, our church has been involved in work with several African orphanages. Some of the orphans come to the US to sing and speak in order to raise funds to keep the orphanages going. These kids were born to poverty stricken, starving mothers. Yet when they are moved to an environment were they get plenty to eat, and even when they visit the US where there is an abundance of food, they are not overweight.

I was pleased with how much good food is available in this college town. We ate one meal at an Arbys – which used to serve nothing but beef for Type Os and nothing at all for Type As. My husband had a remarkably healthy chicken sandwich, and I had a Martha’s Vineyard salad with chicken, apples, and cranberries. Another meal was at a Chinese restaurant where they were happy to adjust the meals for our blood types. Sunday lunch was at a restaurant that had a great variety of fresh vegetables.

There is a grocery store across the street from campus where DD can buy almost everything she needs to supplement the dorm cafeteria food. She says the fresh fruit prices are even better than the prices at home. Now that’s my idea of thrifty.

One of the first things you read about Hunters is that we have "an overabundance of adrenaline and a fierce, nervous energy that winds down with age." I'm afraid I saw that characteristic up close last weekend.

When I first met my husband, he (though a Type A) was the runner. Once he got me started running, he knew he had created a monster. I wanted to push on to longer runs, but he was content to jog a mile or two. He had a friend who also liked running. One summer my husband hurt his back, and his running days were over. The friend went on to run marathons. We saw him and his wife occasionally, and they always looked like they were both in great shape. At the time I didn't know anything about BTD or GTD, but when I think of him now I would say - "Type O Hunter."

We hadn't seen them in several years, but we ran into them at a party over the weekend. I didn't recognize him. Even when HH called his name I thought, "No, that's not right." He looked like he had some sort of wasting disease. He held up his end of the conversation, but with little enthusiasm. They left the party early, and I turned to a mutual friend and said, "Clearly something is wrong, what is it?" I expected to hear the C word, but instead I heard this story.

He had retired early and loved it. He kept running marathons, and started gardening. He threw himself into gardening with the same energy that he did everything else. His knees began to give him trouble, but he kept on pushing. He began experiencing neurological symptoms, and went to the doctor. They tried several medications. They couldn't find the source of the nervous sympboms, but they did find that he had lost all of the cartilage in his knees. He got depressed. They tried several surgeries and several more medications. The depression deepened, and the symptoms got worse. He is in a physical and mental downward spiral.

All I could think was Hunter burn out. I have the same kind of enthusiasm, energy and drive. Now I have seen up close what I could be like in 10 years if I don't eat right, I neglect getting enough rest, and I let the stresses of life get to me.

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.