Abstract
BackgroundThe ‘Blood-Type’ diet advises individuals to eat according to their ABO blood group to improve their health and decrease risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease. However, the association between blood type-based dietary patterns and health outcomes has not been examined. The objective of this study was to determine the association between ‘blood-type’ diets and biomarkers of cardiometabolic health and whether an individual's ABO genotype modifies any associations.MethodsSubjects (n = 1,455) were participants of the Toronto Nutrigenomics and Health study. Dietary intake was assessed using a one-month, 196-item food frequency questionnaire and a diet score was calculated to determine relative adherence to each of the four ‘Blood-Type’ diets. ABO blood group was determined by genotyping rs8176719 and rs8176746 in the ABO gene. ANCOVA, with age, sex, ethnicity, and energy intake as covariates, was used to compare cardiometabolic biomarkers across tertiles of each ‘Blood-Type’ diet score.ResultsAdherence to the Type-A diet was associated with lower BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, serum cholesterol, triglycerides, insulin, HOMA-IR and HOMA-Beta (P<0.05). Adherence to the Type-AB diet was also associated with lower levels of these biomarkers (P<0.05), except for BMI and waist circumference. Adherence to the Type-O diet was associated with lower triglycerides (P<0.0001). Matching the ‘Blood-Type’ diets with the corresponding blood group did not change the effect size of any of these associations. No significant association was found for the Type-B diet.ConclusionsAdherence to certain ‘Blood-Type’ diets is associated with favorable effects on some cardiometabolic risk factors, but these associations were independent of an individual's ABO genotype, so the findings do not support the ‘Blood-Type’ diet hypothesis.
Highlights
A link between ABO blood group and diet was proposed by P.J
We examined the interaction between diet score and the matching status on levels of each cardiometabolic disease risk factor for each ‘Blood-Type’ diet by using the Tukey-Kramer correction
After adjusting for age, sex, and ethnocultural group, subject characteristics were similar across ABO blood groups, except for insulin, homeostasis model of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and HOMABeta (p,0.05)
Summary
A link between ABO blood group and diet was proposed by P.J. D’Adamo in his book ‘‘Eat Right For Your Type’’ published in 1996 [1]. Based on the ‘Blood-Type’ diet theory, group O is considered the ancestral blood group in humans so their optimal diet should resemble the high animal protein diets typical of the hunter-gatherer era. Those with group A should thrive on a vegetarian diet as this blood group was believed to have evolved when humans settled down into agrarian societies. The ‘Blood-Type’ diet advises individuals to eat according to their ABO blood group to improve their health and decrease risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease. The objective of this study was to determine the association between ‘blood-type’ diets and biomarkers of cardiometabolic health and whether an individual’s ABO genotype modifies any associations
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