The New Optimum Nutrition Bible

by Patrick Holford

  However, for most of the time our ancestors seem to have eaten a varied vegan diet. That means leaf vegetables, root vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, and sprouts. This, I propose, is the third and most common digestive program—for a mixture of foods containing a mixture of carbohydrate and protein, but never as protein-dense as meat. I see no problem in combining rice, lentils, beans, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

  80 percent alkaline

  One of Dr. Hay’s greatest observations was that people with more acidic blood were more likely to be ill. He identified a range of acidity, a pH of 7.4 to 7.5, which is slightly alkaline and associated with good health. A pH of 7 or below is increasingly acid, while a pH above 7 is increasingly alkaline.

  Many factors affect the acid-alkaline balance of the blood.

  When foods are metabolized, acids are produced that are neutralized by the alkaline salts (carbonates) of calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium. So our intake of these mineral salts affects our acid-alkaline balance, as does the type of food we eat. Foods containing large amounts of chlorine, phosphorus, sulfur, and nitrogen (for example, most animal products), tend to be acid forming. Those rich in calcium, potassium, magnesium, and sodium (for example, most vegetables), tend to be alkaline forming. Exercise too has an effect—it makes the blood more acidic. Deep breathing makes the blood more alkaline.

  In her book The Wright Diet, Celia Wright describes the overacidic person as being grouchy, sensitive, and exhausted, inclined to aches and pains, headaches, problems with sleeping, and acidity of the stomach. Smokers have been found to have a high acid level in their urine. Cravings appear to decrease on a more alkaline diet.

  Nearly all fresh fruit, vegetables, and legumes are alkaline forming. Exceptions include butter beans and fava beans, asparagus, olives, and mustard and cress. Meat, fish, eggs, and butter are acid forming, while skimmed milk and whole milk are mildly alkaline forming. A few starches are acidic, including oatmeal, whole wheat flour, sago, and tapioca. Walnuts and hazelnuts are acidic, but other nuts are alkaline. (For a comprehensive list of acid and alkaline foods see the chart in part 9.)

  No doubt part of the success of Dr. Hay’s approach was his emphasis on alkaline-forming foods. This, as you can see, means eating plenty of fruits and vegetables that are naturally high in many vital nutrients.

  Refined carbohydrates are out

  Refining food, or cooking it, Dr. Hay did not recommend either. As explained earlier, the more refined, processed, or cooked a food is, the less nutrition it will provide. The obvious advice is to eat raw or lightly cooked whole foods instead of overcooked and overprocessed junk foods. Refined high-sugar foods are a new invention as far as your digestive system is concerned. Very few naturally occurring foods contain the kinds of concentrations of fast-releasing sugars that modern food can provide. The body is simply not adapted to deal with a flood of fast-releasing sugars that not only make your blood sugar levels rocket, requiring all sorts of hormones to swing into emergency action to restore the balance, but also feed potentially undesirable microorganisms that can occur in the gut.

  Improve your digestion

  In a nutshell, food combining can be condensed into five simple steps, as shown in the illustration below. If you still have problems digesting these food combinations, you may have a digestive enzyme deficiency, a food intolerance, or a gut infestation of candida or unfriendly bacteria and should see a nutritionist. Vegans have only one rule to follow, which is to eat certain fruits separately. Easy, isn’t it?

  Food combinations—do’s and don’ts.

  Five quick guidelines to help improve your digestion

  Eat 80 percent alkaline-forming foods, 20 percent acid-forming foods. This means eating large quantities of vegetables and fruit, and less-concentrated protein foods like beans, lentils, and whole grains instead of meat, fish, cheese, and eggs.

  Eat fast-fermenting and acid fruit on their own as snacks. Most soft fruits, including peaches, plums, mangoes, papayas, strawberries, and melons, ferment quickly. High-acid fruit (although alkaline-forming) may also inhibit digestion of carbohydrate; they include oranges, lemons, grapefruit, and pineapple. All these fruits require little digestion, releasing their natural fructose content quickly. Eat them on their own as a snack when you need an energy boost.

  Eat animal protein on its own or with vegetables. Concentrated protein like meat, fish, hard cheese, and eggs requires lots of stomach acid and a stay of about three hours in the stomach to be digested. So do not combine fast-releasing or refined carbohydrates or food that ferments with animal protein.

  Avoid all refined carbohydrates. Eat unrefined, fast-releasing carbohydrates with unrefined slow-releasing carbohydrates. Fruits that do not readily ferment, such as bananas, apples, and coconut, can be combined with slow-releasing carbohydrate cereals like oats and millet.

  Do not eat until your body is wide awake. Do not expect to digest food when your body is asleep. In the morning, leave at least an hour between waking up and eating. If you take exercise in the morning, eat afterward. Never start your day with a stimulant (tea, coffee, or a cigarette), because the “stress” state inhibits digestion. For breakfast, eat only carbohydrate-based foods such as cereal and fruit, just fruit, or whole-grain rye toast. In the evening, leave at least two hours between finishing dinner and going to sleep.

  20

  Eat Right for Your Blood Type

  Each of us is unique, and each of us has a unique set of inherited genes, which determine our own individual “perfect diet.” Some of us are programmed to function better on more protein, others do well on more carbohydrate. Some of us need more folic acid than others. In the future, it will be possible to determine your “ideal” diet and nutrient intake by testing your pattern of genes, as well as taking into account your diet, lifestyle, and environment.

  One example of your inherited genetic uniqueness is provided by your blood type. There are four blood types and, owing to the pioneering research of naturopath Peter D’Adamo, some nutritionists consider that each of them may be best suited to a specific type of diet. Why? Because blood types have evolved, from O to A to B to AB, as humanity has evolved, with each phase representing a different pattern of diet and environmental challenges. Knowing your blood type may therefore be a key to knowing how your immune system will react to certain foods and to certain diseases and to what you need to eat to maximize your potential for health and vitality.

  The story begins about fifty thousand years ago with the emergence of our early humanoid ancestors, first Neanderthal then Cro-Magnon, who through cunning became the most dangerous predators on earth, the kings of the food chain. Their diet was high in animal protein, and the blood group O—the predominant blood type today—was born. These were the original hunters and every culture still has many type Os. With no natural predators other than themselves, the population of our ancestors exploded. As a consequence, their hunting grounds became exhausted. The Cro-Magnons migrated further afield from their African roots, exhausting big game along the way. By 20,000 B.C. Cro-Magnons were in what is now Europe and Asia and eventually migrated to Australasia and the Americas. The failing food supply probably led to rivalry, migration, and wars and may have propelled our early ancestors toward a more omnivorous diet of berries, nuts, grubs, roots, and small animals.

  Then, somewhere between 20,000 and 15,000 B.C., a new blood type gained dominance in western Europe—type A. A is for “agrarian” and reflects the emergence of peasant farmers who grew their own grain and domesticated animals. Type A reflected a whole new digestive and immune program—for much better adapted individuals, who are more resistant to contagious diseases such as cholera, plague, and smallpox; who are able to digest grain and able to cooperate; who are less the hunter and more the cultivator, working in network communities. Very rapidly, type A took over from type O, particularly in western Europe, where it is still most concentrated. Even today, type Os are more susceptible to death from infections than are type
As.

  Another mutation took place in the Himalayan highlands somewhere between 15,000 and 10,000 B.C. and blood type B emerged. It was the hallmark of the great tribes of the steppe dwellers—the Caucasian and Mongolian tribes. These tribes were herders. Their diet was more nomadic than that of people living in western Europe and included meat and cultured dairy products. Soon type B spread throughout Asia and into Eastern Europe. B stands for “balance”—a mixture of the vegetarian and meat-eating diets of the As and Os.

  AB blood type is thoroughly modern. Emerging only in the last ten or twelve centuries, it is a very recent evolution of blood type and accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s population. It probably started as the nomad warriors (type Bs) moved in on the collapsing civilization of the Roman Empire and other European cultures. The result was a multifaceted blood type, complex and unsettled—a perfect metaphor for modern life.

  Blood type—the blueprint for immunity

  Your blood type is your blueprint for immunity. Your cells are tagged with an antigen (a marker), which tells the immune system which cells belong to you. The immune system produces weapons—antibodies—to anything that isn’t you, for example, a virus. It also produces antibodies to other blood types, so a type A will have antibodies to type O or type B cells. That’s why a type A will react to type B or O blood—the blood cells don’t have the right marker so the immune system goes ballistic.

  Those with blood type AB carry no antibodies to O, A, or B and can receive blood from any group. On the other hand, they cannot donate blood to those having any of the other types of blood. Their cells are tagged with both A and B antigens, so type A reacts to the B antigen, type B reacts to the A antigen, and type O reacts to both!

  Food is the major invader of the body. The need for the immune system to react appropriately to digested material is of paramount importance to survival. That’s why there are more immune cells and activity in the gastrointestinal tract than anywhere else in the body.

  Not unexpectedly, different blood types program the immune system to tolerate different kinds of foods. It really doesn’t matter what you or your immediate ancestors have got used to eating. Your immune system is programmed to accept the kinds of foods that were the major part of your ancestors’ diet thousands of years ago. That’s why a type A (the grain-growing vegetarian) is more likely to react badly to dairy products, the staple of nomadic type Bs, or to a high-meat diet, the staple food of type Os.

  The key to how this works is lectins, which are proteins found in most foods. These proteins have sticking or “agglutinating” properties that help them to attach to other molecules and other molecules to attach to them. Germs and immune cells use lectins to their own benefit. Cells in the liver’s bile ducts have lectins on their surfaces that snatch up bacteria and parasites. Microbes and bacteria use lectins to stick to slippery surfaces such as the gastrointestinal wall. These lectins are often blood-type specific, as are those found in some foods. The lectins in milk have B-like qualities, so type As are more likely to react to them.

  This, in a nutshell, is the basis behind Peter D’Adamo’s work identifying which foods are most suited to which blood type. However, his work isn’t based just on this logic. It’s also based on testing thousands of foods and people and noting which foods raised toxic by-products of these lectin reactions. His research led him to produce certain dietary guidelines for each blood type (see this page).

  Blood types and disease risk

  Knowing your blood type does more than help identify which foods are likely to suit you best. It reflects your unique metabolism and even possibly gives clues to your personality, although the latter is more plausible conjecture than scientific fact. However, what is becoming clear is that your risk of getting certain diseases, and your chances of recovery, may depend on your blood type. D’Adamo’s book explains the connection between blood types and many common diseases and outlines the best strategies for different blood types.

  Perhaps the most interesting story emerging from the ongoing research into disease and blood types is the link to cancer. There is undeniable evidence, says D’Adamo, that people with type A or AB blood have an overall higher rate of cancer and poorer odds of survival than those with type O or B. The high risk of cancer among type ABs was reported as early as the 1940s by the American Medical Association, although the scientific community didn’t pick up on this important discovery.

  This is the first of many discoveries that will unfold, now that the link between blood types, immunity, diet, and disease has been uncovered. In my view, we owe an enormous debt to Dr. Peter D’Adamo and his father, who first developed the blood-type theory and published it in 1980. Dr. D’Adamo’s book Eat Right for Your Type is the place to start for those wanting to unravel the mysteries of the evolutionary code hidden in your blood type and what it means for you in terms of your ideal diet and lifestyle.

  Be aware, however, that you are even more unique than your blood type. The best way to find out which foods suit you and which foods don’t is to have an allergy test (see Resources) that measures whether or not you produce specific antigens to specific foods. The dietary guidelines below, applicable to specific blood types, are just that—guidelines. By all means try them out. See how you feel. Many people find this way of eating works well for them. Others find that it makes little difference to them.

  Also bear in mind that times and food have changed. If you were a type O back in the Stone Age, all that was available for you to eat was fit, organic meat, and you were not exposed to hormone-disrupting chemicals. Today, in the twenty-first century, most meat is from unfit animals, so it is fatty and contains undesirable chemical residues that overstimulate cell growth. Beans, on the other hand, were not an available food source back in the Stone Age, but do have protective effects against cancer. So, even if a “blood-type” diet has to be altered to fit the age we live in, it is one piece of the jigsaw of finding out your optimum nutrition.

  Eat right for your blood type.

  PART 3 The Wonderful World Within

  21 You Are What You Eat

  22 Improving Your Digestion

  23 Secrets for a Healthy Heart

  24 Boosting Your Immune System

  25 Balancing Hormones Naturally

  26 Bone Health—A Skeleton in the Cupboard

  27 Skin Health—Eat Yourself Beautiful

  21

  You Are What You Eat

  Nothing created by man compares to the magnificent design of the human body. As you read this book, 2.5 million red blood cells are being made every second within your bone marrow in order to keep your body cells supplied with oxygen. Meanwhile, today you will produce ten quarts of digestive juices to break down the food you eat and enable it to pass through your “inside skin,” the gastrointestinal wall, a thirty-foot-long tract with a surface area of about twenty-two yards that effectively replaces itself every four days.

  The health of your gastrointestinal tract is maintained by a team of some three hundred different strains of bacteria and other microorganisms, as unique to you as your fingerprint, which exceed the total number of cells in your entire body. Meanwhile, your immune system replaces its entire army every week and, when under viral attack, has the capacity to produce two hundred thousand new immune cells every minute. Even your outside skin is effectively replaced every month, while most of your body is renewed over a seven-year period. Your brain, a mere 3 lb. (1.4 kg) of mainly fat and water, is processing information of immense complexity through its trillion nerve cells, each connected to ten thousand others in a network whose connections are formed as our life, and the meaning we attach to it, unfolds. In fact, by the time you finish this chapter you will have hard-wired thirty new connections between your brain cells.

  The energy produced from a small amount of food powers all these unseen processes, with plenty left over to keep us warm and allow us to undertake a wide range of physical activities. The by-products are water and carbon dio
xide, both of which are essential for plants, which in turn produce carbohydrate, our fuel, and oxygen, the spark that lights our cellular fires. It is estimated that we use only a quarter of a percent of our brain’s capacity and, in many cases, half the potential life span of our bodies. The design, the capacity, and the resilience of the human body is truly awesome.

  Yet, unlike a new car, we arrive without a maintenance manual and rely on instructions developed by those who have made their livelihood from a study of the human body—usually sick bodies at that. These instructions are in their infancy, a fact that is obvious when you consider how much of medicine is based on giving drugs that poison the body, radiation that burns it, and surgery that removes defective parts. Most of us begin to think about body maintenance only when something goes wrong. Yet, because of the body’s incredible resilience, most serious diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease take twenty to thirty years to develop. By the time we notice the symptoms, it may already be too late.