Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals obviously believes in the adage that you are what you eat. The Pro Bowl wide receiver has undergone a radical diet change that he hopes will help him extend his NFL career.
Fitzgerald, 29, began the Genotype diet, a concept based on cutting out certain foods depending on an individual’s blood type, this summer.
“The older you get, you start fine-tuning what works for you and what doesn’t work for you,” Fitzgerald told Yahoo! Sports. “You stick on the things that you know work and can help you have that longevity that you are looking for.
“A couple of friends of mine had tried it and I wanted to do something different. I have been on it three months and I feel great.”
The Genotype diet is the creation of naturopathic physician and author Dr. Peter D’Adamo. As with most dieting fads, the routine has met its share of controversy as well as attracted a loyal legion of disciples.
Critics claim there is little scientific evidence backing up D’Adamo’s claims that a diet structured around blood type can greatly enhance the way foods are processed and improve factors such as alertness and general well being.
However, Fitzgerald is an adamant believer and insists that overhauling his eating habits have not only helped him feel healthier, but increased his overall level of performance – though his pass-catching numbers don’t back up those sentiments. He has 14 catches for 181 yards and one touchdown reception – his third-lowest yardage total in the first three games during his nine-year career.
“There are certain things that I do – I don’t eat chicken or pork,” Fitzgerald said. “I stay away from red meat a lot; I eat fish most of the time. I think it makes me feel cleaner, not just body wise. I feel good.
“They take your blood, our blood types are all different. I am B+, so we digest some things better than others and some things we don’t digest well. So for instance, tomatoes. For me the acid has a kind of allergic reaction to my blood type.
As a result, Fitzgerald has stopped eating tomatoes and other favorite foods.
“Chicken … I am a black man, we love our chicken, but I don’t eat it anymore,” Fitzgerald said. “My genotype means I don’t process it as well as other things. But I eat lamb twice a week, that is a super food for me.
“My energy levels are off the charts, I can run all day, I breathe well and I sweat a lot so the toxins and impurities come out of my body. I stay away from too much sugary drinks, I just drink a lot of water and pee a lake pretty much.”
Your the man, Fitzgerald! Following your own personalized GenoType plan is the 'haute couture' eating discipline – one of the best practice anybody can have. It's never easy to change eating habits but your results will be as good as your compliance. Feeling good following Dr Peter D'Adamo's GenoType plan raises the bar of feeling good.
"based on cutting out certain foods depending on an individual’s blood type".
Do a minor amount of research before posting poor information. It's a wonder you can write an article since you can't particularly read well. It shouldn't of taken you anymore than 5 minutes to find out the emphasis is actually eating the right things for you. It is true that there are strong recommendations to stay away from certain foods based on EPIGENETICS (for the GT diet) but the point is actually to consume the beneficial foods; a point that has been repeated by Dr. D'Adamo. The other point being that the GenoType diet is based on epigenetics, which blood type plays a role, but the differences between epigenetics even within a blood type have rather drastic differences in dietary recommendations.
You don't have to like or agree with Dr. D'Adamo, but you could at least pretend to be a real journalist.
I'm for better journalism. People are too concerned with establishing themselves within their writing as opposed to being able to create a response with displaying information well. It is easy to write something that appears like it should be interesting if you are writing within a familiar culture full of biases, ethos, etc. But all you really did was throw in some hot words and common biases.
"Fad" being a poor choice of words referring to diets – even though D'Adamo's work encompasses exercise types too – as 16 years would not be considered the retention time for a fad by most (Atkins diet, what, a year?). But there is part of the problem, linguistically this piece is confusing and inappropriate. There isn't a differentiation between a host of the work by Dr. D'Adamo spanning that entire time. The Blood Type Diet is not the GenoType Diet. Did Fitzgerald claim that tomatoes are one of his favorite foods?
All D'Adamo has is scientific evidence, what he lacks is any scientific proof. But that is not to say that there is not a considerable amount of real criticism. Many of the original researchers say the way D'Adamo uses their research was not the intention behind the research so they could never condone it. If you can get past the shitty antagonistic articles that are just rehashes of the same trolling bloggers that posted comments about D'Adamo's work back in the paleolithic era of the world wide web, you'd know this.
The information we have is more interesting than someone's personal spin on reporting this story. The real criticism of the work are more powerful than the pet ideas of science everyone is trying to establish (to invalidate people with PHD's? I don't get it). I can see the value in trying to compete at a sensational level since attention spans are very short these days, but it is so regressive. Even chimps are trying to better themselves by using tools, while many humans are trying to turn their writing into one-liner advertisements.
Personally, as a measure of taste and not broken journalism, I'd like a comment from someone who is a regular Cardinal watcher about his performance since the numbers are not a true representation of just Fitzgerald as this is a team dependent game. Maybe his stats would sore if his team was up to par with him?
The "GT diet" itself is a silly fad. We would all do well to eat the right things but basing what exactly on something as vague as a blood type is wrong science. Our closest relatives, the great apes, also have mixed blood types. Chimps have A and O and almost never B. Bonobos have only Type A blood, while orangutans have all four types, A, B, AB and O.AB and O.
Dietary incompatibilities based on hematology would insist that evolution apply survival of the fittest and the varieties that we see today would not likely exist… in humans or other animals.
There is no dispute that there are differences in main blood types nor that the basic "ABO" group system is limited in what information it can convey. There are now over 30 different blood group systems (including ABO) and across them over 600 different blood group antigens have been identified. While "ABO" may be suitable in an emergency, for a transfusion, it is much too *vague* to be used in regards to finely tuned dietary requirements. The genetics of the bacteria in the human gut, *at the time a specific food is being digested no less* (since some are thought to be transient), may be more important than the genetics of the host.
From evolution (Type "A" was the first, not "O") to blood type specific lectins (only a couple edible plants are "ABO" specific), his dietary recommendations may be good for you but for a large part remain unsubstantiated through science.
The science is there, to an extent, but Dr. D'Adamo's "research" is mostly unfounded and unverified. He's good at selling books though.
The ABO studies on pubmed actually primarily look at the basic four (A, AB, B, and O). There are a certain amount that look at the FUT2 gene as well. Dr. D'Adamo doesn't really jump into the vast amount of other minor differences.
To point out bacteria that is in our intestines is to point out the affects on food. Part of Dr. D'Adamo's point is that because of established facts (at this point in time) we know that there are differences in excretion of stomach acid and certain digestive fluids between blood types. He takes the leap in recommending food based on this. That isn't unfounded at all, but it is unverified.
Furthermore what we know about bacteria is even more interesting than just food basing. Are you familiar with enteric bacteria? Despite the intermediate affects on food, what we naturally have inside us is different from person to person. That is to say if we fast than our bacteria (if capable, depends on a semi-healthy state) will balance to different natural states of more and less of certain strains (enteric). If we know anything about health contemporarily it is that achieving this balance is key to nearly all health. If we could eat foods that help promote this, and even take probiotics that do, we would be better off. That is the reason why different people need different probiotics. (The confusion comes in measure of flatulence unfortunately, which isn't appropriate for many reasons) Dr. D'Adamo is proposing what foods he thinks, based on research by others (founded), will promote this statis. Those conclusions are utterly unproven. It is a leap of faith just as much as any religion if you want to trust his logic.
I think that Dr. D'Adamo is searching for the complexity in humans to better understand them. If history teaches us much at all, it is that understanding complexity leads us in direction to simpler truths based on them. The other way around is full of bias, dead ends, and gets proven wrong consistantly. Dr. D'Adamo may be unproven wholly by double blind studies – which isn't actually the only accepted measure in the scientific community, but if you are controversial it will be the standard you are held too. Dr. D'Adamo is a very pragmatic, controversial, altruistic person, and at the forefront of research's application (whether you trust it or not). The man has balls. Balls you don't see in other work. Balls that people before him had to become legends among people not in the scientific community. That can make or break him. But once again at least he has the balls to leap forward, try something, instead of squandering in an archiac slow processes that are susibtle to strong private interest, while our health declines and life expectancy shortens.
I can't and won't argue with any of that. It's just that I wish I knew more about Dr. D'Adamo from peer reviewed research rather than how many books he has on the shelves at the local Barnes & Noble.
I've argued against his reasoning for years, first brought up at a family reunion in a way that almost made sense (then). The natural born skeptic in me has made me research his work more since then and the more I learn about the direction he's headed in the more I realize this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Good debating with you. I've enjoyed it more than the OP, especially that part that seems to suggest that in some way the athlete in question's "pass-catch" record is somehow a testament to how well a certain diet might be working ~rolls eyes~
Wow, I butchered susceptible… meant to be in the last sentence.