Dear Heidi-- I need to check two things on the Blood type diet for A+ secretor... The first is; tomato, eggplant and pepper are tier two 2 in the Italian translation of Lr4yt. Is it correct or they should be a tier 1 Avoid ?



The second question is: I am forty years old, thin and healthy and my brother thirty four. Only for him six years later a pediatrician diagnosed gluten intolerance. I had the same entheropaty (undiagnosed), but I seemed to recover well without any wheat-free diet when I became three years old . He recovered after one year of gluten free diet but I do not know his secretor status.

I was easily struck by colds and sinusitis, but without cow milk it gets far better. Should I try to forget about wheat for my gluten entheropaty as a child, or being a A secretor eventually I was able to cope with wheat and I can eat pasta just not too frequently? Thank you very much for helping us ! Maria

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Hi, Maria! Yes, the Tier II list in your book is correct. As to how much pasta is good for you, it seems to me that what you are doing now has shown its results: you are "thin and healthy." As long as your digestion is unimpeded by pasta ~ and by that I mean, if you have regular and easy bowel movements (twice per day at least, for three meals per day) which pasta does not slow or dilute ~ then I believe your childhood enteropathy episode is not predictive of your present physical response to this food. Not to worry! After all, type A secretors (you lucky rascals) have white flour and semolina on your Neutral list, so the classic pasta secca should present no problem for you. This is surely the case with you if eating pasta regularly does not trigger the colds and sinusitis you mentioned, as dairy did.



Do your local pasta shops carry dry pasta made of any other grains? This is another option you may have to limit your wheat exposure, IF you would feel more secure on the safer-than-necessary side! For instance, I can find quinoa/corn pasta, 100% rice pasta, spelt pasta, all in many shapes, at my local organic grocer -- and the rice pastas are truly wonderful in taste and texture, in my (Irish! :-}) opinion. I'm sorry to say I have no recipes for making fresh pastas from these ingredients! :-( but dry pasta produced from alternative grains is becoming rather common in some parts of the world.



At any rate, give thanks for your type A heritage of all those beautiful Italian pastas! Eat! Enjoy! {a little envious here!! :-D}







I am still a little confused on the difference between type I and type II avoid and beneficial foods. When I read the descriptions of the impact of the type II foods on the body, they seem as ominous as the type I's, and yet the "Live right" book indicates you don't need total compliance to type II avoids if you're healthy. I know that's a big if and I'm not there yet! I've also read responses from Peter that indicate a healthy person can probably be compliant 80% of the time and still be okay. I don't know if he still feels that way since that was some time in the past. But does that mean you can eat type I avoids 20% of the time? Or does that mean you can eat type II avoids 20% of the time? Or what? Also, what does it mean to be a type II beneficial? I've been on the diet for a year and a half, I am in my late forties and am starting to feel good for the first time in my adult life, but it's been an uphill battle, and I don't ever want to feel that bad again. FYI - I'm an A. ~ Chris



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Hello, Chris ~~ It is a little confusing! Compliance itself is a vexed issue; (70%, by the way! :-D) ~~ does "70% is OK for healthy people" mean 70% Beneficials? Some combination of Beneficials & Neutrals? How can eating 70% Neutrals and 30% Avoids be viewed as equivalent to eating 70% Beneficials and 30% Avoids? Do Neutrals count? Does one cancel out the other? (ah, at least I can answer that one: NO. :-D)



Makes me want to ask a different question: How about the digestive need for calm and focus upon the food itself, rather than weighing out what portion of every single morsel is counting toward some percentage which was given by Peter as a mere guideline anyway? :-} phew! thanks for listening! :-} It was nice of Peter to give his professional observations on how well his patients seem to fare if they comply with the BTD to a certain extent ~~ Heaven knows we dogged him and harried him until he produced that number. Look at what success brought us. ;->



I find the percentage-compliance idea useful only as a back-of-the-mind reassurance touchstone/pressure release valve. Had a bad (avoid-ridden) day? Well, adding it up ~ turns out it was only 25% avoids... not so horrible after all! Got Gramma Beatrice's 80th birthday coming up? An avoid or two won't kill you, but she might if you turn up your nose at her six-layer cream-cheese pistachio pound cake. Been eating 100% beneficials for six months and feel like you're going to spit bullets if you don't have JUST ONE BITE of that magnificent ham from your Italian cousin in Parma???? Hey! Mangia! I don't want to open the paper someday and see, "Inmate pleads 'It was BTD Compliance that drove me bonkers!'" Remember Peter's yearly meat-stuffed cabbage, and eat that ham joyfully, with gratitude. ;-}



Here's my little message: KNOWLEDGE - COMMITMENT - RELAX. You know your diet (maybe by heart at this point!). You've got the commitment ~ you made the decision that this was the course to follow, and you're right out there, walking the walk! cuz why else would I see you struggling to get all the i's dotted and the t's crossed? :-) Now gimme an R... gimme an E... :-> we want to open the circle of all that beautiful energy from your newfound health ~ open it out into things you'd like to accomplish in the world.



The Tiers system is a guide, like "compliance" numbers ~ it is a diet refinement tool to incorporate or not, depending on one's choice. Take stock of your health and goals right now, and use the Tiers as you see fit. The listings are correct as emended in the Updates Page. For your present situation, I'd say: focus on Tier I Beneficials -- and substitute Tier II Beneficials for some of the neutrals you'd usually eat. See if there's a neutral or two you can slip in for any avoid that has been a pain in the seat of temptation. In this way, you boost the salutary medical effects of the diet.



Well, I've gone on way too long. what a surprise! ;-D Hope you know I'm not yelling atcha ~ probably just yelling at myself! I'm not sure whether I should thank you for writing or for reading... so I'll just say thanks, Chris! ~:-D







I am confused about the Tier System in Live Right. It says in the text for Type A that you should add Tier Two values to Tier One values in order to be more compliant and that you should then "use caution incorporating neutral foods from general nutritional supplementation". This concept leads to some interesting priorities in food use that seem to be against the general suggestions for Type A (I am a non-secretor and so am using those values) For example, cottage cheese would be allowed and yoghurt and Kefir (good probiotics which the text says we should use) would not be advised. Lamb would be used and chicken not; kidney beans would be used (which are in general really bad for Type A the text says) and snap beans or mung sprouts not: tomatos would be good (another text no-no for Type A) and a whole host of other vegetables like kelp (said to be good in the text), asparagus, beets, string beans, etc not good; bananas (a lectin food for Type A) good and peaches, pears, etc. not good. These items especially seem puzzling to me. Maybe I am not interpreting the Tier System correctly. I find the instructions about it somewhat confusing. Thanks for answering this question. Since you have added info about the secretor status, the Blood Type diet feels very resonant and useful (I always wondered why in the original book I felt more like an O than an A). Thanks again. Clare



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Well, Clare, I kinda hope you skipped right down here to your question. Stop the presses: we nonsecretors can toss those Tiers right off the parapet. Look through LR4YT's food lists, and you'll see that ALL Secretor Neutrals are in the Neutral Tier (with the exception of blackberries for AB, which was an errant boo-boo); ALL Secretor Beneficials & Avoids are in Tiers I & II. Conversely, nonsecretor food values are in and out all over the place. The Tiers system is aligned along a Secretor "spine." Thus, our food list (the Nonsecretor Tier, if you will) is not affected by where a value falls. It's just the old Bene-Neut-Avoid grind for us! :-) Makes it a little less exciting, but a touch simpler, too. Hope you like it! I sure do ~ mostly!!

:->







Hi Heidi, A few questions if I might. 1. If two parents are type O will children also be type O? LR4YT maintains A & B are dominant so we are assuming we are both Oo. 2. Is Jasmine tea (sometimes called Chinese tea) ok for type O non-secretors? 3. Are potatoes neutral for type O non-secretors on Tier I diet? Potatoes are Tier II avoid. Thank you for your time. Willie



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Hallo, Willie! Yes, the union of two type O parents can produce only type O offspring. To be type O, one must have two O genes, so there's no other kind available to contribute. "Jasmine tea" only means there are jasmine flowers in whatever tea has been so flavored. Green tea is OK for Os, but black tea is not ~ so it's the old case of "read yon label." Potatoes, alas; take a look at the answer to Clare's question above. Nonsecretors are not given the leeway of secretors in using the Tier II foods as we wish. But heck, we don't mind! We get... Turtle! ~~ they can have their demmed potatoes. Right, Willie? Right? hmmm... :-} *sigh!*







Hi Heidi, I'm traveling to Brazil. Is anaconda acceptable for type O? Couldn't find it on the lists. Now for my real question. Back in the old days...five years ago or so, regular white potatoes and their various relatives were considered a major type O avoid like wheat, dairy, etc. But when "Live Right" came out they became a tier 2 avoid which means to me that they're OK for O's who have no health issues and simply wish to maintain their current level of health. In other words, according to BTD are white potatoes OK in moderation for ... Bob L ?



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Yeah, thanks, Bob, I just went through all that with Willie just above, and now here you pop up, Johnny-on-the-spot to rub it in. Yeah. Fine. Eat those potatoes, old buddy. Eat as many as you can hold ~ you leanbean types really frazzle my razzer, have I mentioned that before? By the way, those spuds go really well with capers, shiitake mushrooms and some acacia gum to hold it all together ~~ check it out! I'll be thinking of you in South America this winter, as I look out upon the lovely traditional NYC Christmas Scene of brown snow and gray ice. And hey: Enjoy those big Brazilian snakes, my friend! Have a beautiful trip!!!







... to be continued...