Nutritionists Blast Nonsense

Sometimes people are so stupid they make my teeth ache.

Nancy Coale Zippe's "What's Cooking" column from August 8 on DelawareOnline.com had the promising title of "Omitting wheat and dairy products improved health." Little did I know the depths the column would sink to.

Apparently, Zippe had been a long-time sufferer of adult-onset asthma. She wanted to get off the regimen of shots and medications because "I should not have to infuse my body with chemicals to breathe. That should be a natural birthright." This should be a clue to anyone with a lick of sense that nonsense is on its way. Unfortunately, the word "natural" is now used by people to mean anti-science, as I showed recently in my post on Mike Adams, It's No Secret. You're A Moron.

You body can go wrong completely "naturally" in any of a thousand different ways. "Chemicals" have nothing to do with it. All food is made of chemicals.

Primed and ready for nonsense to cloud her already murky thoughts, the stars misaligned in a cosmic coincidence of catastrophe. Zippe was assigned to a lecture by Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo, author of Eat Right 4 Your Type. Your blood type, that is.

This hilarious bit of quackery began in Japan in 1979 with the publication of what became in English, You Are Your Blood Type, by Toshitaka Nomi and Alexander Besher. Adamo, who is a naturopathic physician, not an M.D., appears to be one of Nomi's major disciples. Needless to say, no reputable mainstream physician gives a corpuscle's amount of credence to this notion.

His beliefs, well, I should let Zippe fill you in:

Anyone with kitchen experience knows that combining flour with liquid makes paste. That happens in your digestive tract as well, "gunking up" the walls of your intestines, and prohibiting much of the good nutrition from being assimilated into the body. That's why we need fiber to scrape off the mess, or we'd become totally blocked.

Dairy products tend to act as glue and do their own clogging, affecting breathing and blood flow. Our choir director always warned against any dairy items before singing. And I can't help but wonder if my dear uncle's congestive heart failure was attributed to the fact that he owned a cheese shop and ate huge quantities of cheese.

Yes, that's exactly what fiber does. Swallowing paint scrapers is probably even better for you, given this view of our intestines.

Fortunately, I don't need to rail at this nonsense all by myself. The letters to the editor page on August 11 contained a pair of outraged missives from outraged nutritionists.

[P]lease be aware that you do your readers a disservice by printing information derived from nonprofessional individuals who purport to know effective treatments for complex diseases.

Nutrition is biochemistry, and so is medicine. Recommending a diet not proven to be effective is a form of malpractice, and there are laws regarding who can and cannot practice as a licensed dietitian/nutritionist in Delaware.

Dr. Adamo's Blood Type Diet is about as far from what we call "evidence-based" medicine as it gets -- a form of dietary snake oil. -- Rick Weissinger, MS, RD.



[T]here is absolutely no evidence that the "Eat Right 4 Your Type Diet," a weight-loss program developed over a decade ago, benefits allergy and asthma sufferers.

The author's premise that blood-type populations have specific problematic foods in common has no scientific basis or associated research.

Zippe's statement that dairy products cause mucous, "clog" our systems, and affect breathing and blood flow is erroneous.

Before making drastic dietary changes, readers are encouraged to seek the advice of state-certified nutritionists or registered dietitians. -- Marianne Carter, MS, RD, Delaware Dietetic Association

Thank you both.