People are unique in more ways than we can see. Stomachs and other internal organs come in many different shapes and sizes. Digestive juices, too, can vary dramatically from one person to another. Thus, according to author William Linz Wolcott, founder of Healthexcel, a company that provides metabolic typing for individuals, it stands to reason that different foods have very different effects on different people. Wolcott believes that tailoring your diet to your body's particular quirks--metabolic typing--will improve digestion, circulation, immunity, energy, and mood. To determine your type, he has you take a 65-question test (the questions range from nose moisture to how you feel about potatoes), then place yourself in one of three categories: protein type, carbo type, or mixed type.
The protein type is instructed to eat a diet that's 40 percent protein, 30 percent fat, and 30 percent carbs. The carbo type gets 60 percent carbs, 25 percent protein, and 15 percent fat. And the mixed type should consume 50 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 20 percent fat, although this type has to play with the ratios a little more to find the optimal mix.
Although The Metabolic Typing Diet is based on information from researchers the majority of the public will never have heard of, Wolcott makes a strong case that it's all based on common sense: most of the dietary problems we have come from ignoring the foods that make us feel satisfied and energetic in favor of ones that we feel we're supposed to eat, or foods that we eat in desperation because our last meal left us hungry or lethargic. If we just eat the foods that make us feel right, Wolcott argues, we'll never feel like things have gone horribly wrong. --Lou Schuler
From the Inside Flap
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Do you experience low energy, digestive problems, allergies, low blood sugar, poor concentration, mood swings, hormonal imbalances, high blood pressure, or other chronic ailments? Have you tried lots of diets with limited success? Are you confused by all the contradictory advice offered by nutrition experts? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, here's what you need to know: the real secret of health and fitness is customized nutrition.
In The Metabolic Typing Diet, William L. Wolcott provides, for the first time, a simple, practical method for identifying the particular diet that is tailored to your body chemistry, and yours alone. You begin by taking an innovative new self-test that enables you to identify your "metabolic type." From there you move on to mastering other quick and easy techniques, which allow you to zero in on the precise foods and combinations of foods--proteins, fats, and carbohydrates--that will enable you to achi
From the Back Cover
"Metabolic typing is a huge step forward in the field of diet and nutrition, and this book is essential for anyone interested in optimizing their health by exploring their own biochemical individuality."
--Sherry Rogers, M.D., author of Wellness Against All Odds
About the Author
William L. Wolcott is the world's leading authority on metabolic typing. For the past twenty years he has been instrumental in furthering the evolution of this unique clinical and academic discipline. He is the founder and director of Healthexcel, an organization that provides technical consulting services to health professionals in the United States and Europe.
Trish Fahey is a writer and researcher who specializes in alternative medicine.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One: One Man's Food Is Another's Poison
The Wisdom of Ancestral Diets
Would you believe that in certain remote regions of the world there are old and indigenous cultures in which our modern epidemics--obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, colitis, hypertension, arthritis, and the like--are virtually unknown?
For many years scientists have observed isolated cultures in which people maintain levels of health and fitness that are vastly superior to the health status of those of us who live in modern societies.
Yet these remarkably strong people live in primitive environments very far removed from the industrial mainstream, where there are none of the vast resources so widely available in "advanced" civilizations--no high-tech medicine, no scientists or clinicians or academic institutions, no multibillion-dollar research programs, no health officials or government advisory boards, no vitamin industry, fitness clubs, health spas, weight loss clinics, or health-oriented media.
Oddly enough, the native diets of these old and indigenous cultures are far from what you and I might consider healthful.
Imagine: Traditional Alaskan Eskimos with excellent immunity and cardiovascular health thriving on large quantities of fat and several pounds of meat a day. Daily diets centered around caribou, kelp, salmon, moose, seal, and whale blubber.
Today there are Aboriginal people in remote regions of the Australian Outback with the strength and fitness levels of Olympic athletes. They still live as their ancestors did, on diets comprised of insects, beetles, grubs, berries, and meat from the kangaroo and wallaby.
Consider this: Swiss people with superior constitutions and longevity living in isloated mountain villages, eating primitive diets of whole rye bread and large quantities of high-fat cheese and cream and raw goat's milk, supplemented by wine and small amounts of meat. Villagers of all ages enjoying robust health despite rustic living conditions and the challenges of glacial winters.
Similarly: African Masai tribes, renowned for extraordinary physical and mental development, still living as they have for centuries, primarily on meat and milk and blood that is carefully extracted in small doses from live cattle at regular intervals.
And in other isolated places--high in the Andes Mountains, deep in the Amazon rain forest, in remote villages of the South Pacific islands--native people who consume the primitive diets of their ancestors consistently demonstrate the same kind of remarkable strength, stamina, and resistance to disease, often living well past one hundred.
Researchers have discovered that people who live in primitive cultures consistently display an astonishing range of physical attributes rarely seen in modern cultures: virtually no birth defects or physical deformities or weight problems. Exceptionally well-shaped bones and skeletal frames. Wide and symmetrical faces with expansive, highly functional nasal and respiratory passages. Strong jaws with perfect dental alignment and flawless teeth and gums that rarely if ever succumb to decay and disease.
But when these same people are exposed to the foods and dietary customs of modern civilization, their health rapidly deteriorates and they fall victim to the very same diseases that have long permeated industrialized societies.
The most noteworthy observer of the declining health of primitive cultures was Dr. Weston Price, a remarkable medical researcher who began his career as a dentist in Ohio in the early part of the twentieth century. Price first became interested in malnutrition in an attempt to understand why so many Americans suffered with extensive tooth decay and gum disease, along with severe structural deficiencies such as small dental palates crowded with poorly developed and crooked teeth.
Dr. Price knew that people in undeveloped regions of the world had no such problems--no need of orthodontia, metal fillings, gum surgeries, root canals, or elaborate restorative work. He wanted to find out why.
So in 1934 he began a series of investigative expeditions to remote corners of the world. He visited indigenous cultures and closely examined the diets and health status of native populations in Africa, northern Europe, Canada, Alaska, Australia, and the South Pacific.
Time and again Price found indigenous cultures to be free of the chronic disease and physical disabilities that were very much the norm in the United States and other "advanced" societies. He also observed that whenever primitive cultures abandoned their native diets and adopted modern eating habits, they would rapidly develop the kinds of health problems prevalent in the advanced cultures to which they'd been exposed.
In 1938 Dr. Price documented his findings in the classic Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. This book includes a wealth of dramatic photographs that clearly illustrate the rapid physical deterioration of many indigenous cultures throughout the world.
The Myth of the Universal Diet
Over thousands of years of evolutionary history, people in different parts of the world developed very distinct nutritional needs in response to a whole range of variables, including climate and geography and whatever plant and animal life their environments had to offer.
As a result, people today have widely varying nutrient requirements, especially with regard to macronutrients--the proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that are the fundamental dietary "building blocks," that is, the compounds most essential to sustaining life. Most foods from either animal or plant sources contain at least some amount of each of the macronutrients.
For example, many people who currently inhabit tropical or equatorial regions have a strong hereditary need for diets high in carbohydrates such as vegetables and fruits and grains and legumes. These foods provide the kind of body fuel that is most compatible with the unique body chemistry of people who are genetically programmed to lead active lifestyles in warm and humid regions of the world. Their systems are simply not designed to process or utilize large quantities of animal protein and fat.
Conversely, people from cold, harsh northern climates are not genetically equipped to survive on light vegetarian food. They tend to burn body fuel quickly, so they need heavier foods to sustain themselves. Eskimos, for example, can easily digest and assimilate large quantities of heavy protein and fat--the very types of foods that would overwhelm the digestive tracts of people from, say, the Mediterranean basin.
The bottom line is that a diet considered healthful in one part of the world is frequently disastrous for people elsewhere in the world.
For instance, well-known dietary expert Nathan Pritikin pointed out that Bantu tribes in Africa eat a very low-fat diet, one that is widely regarded as very healthful in the United States and other industrialized societies. Not surprisingly, coronary artery disease among the Bantu is almost nonexistent.
Pritikin's successors and other leading health professionals have long advocated low-fat diets for everyone. Yet this "one-size-fits-all" approach has clearly failed to reduce obesity and cardiovascular disease in large segments of our population. Like all other universal dietary recommendations, it overlooks the enormous amount of biochemical and physiological diversity among individuals.
As an example, Scottish, Welsh, Celtic, and Irish people have certain nutritional requirements that are just the opposite of the Bantu. The ancestral diets of the Scots and Irish and related cultures have always been very high in fatty fish. For this and other reasons they have a hereditary need for more fat than other populations. Remarkably, the low-fat diets that prevent heart disease in the Bantu can actually cause heart disease in many people of Anglo-Saxon descent.
This principle of diet being linked to genetic requirements is seen throughout nature. Every animal species is genetically programmed to feed on specific sources of food. They're not guided in their food selection by their taste buds or manipulated by high-concept advertising strategies about what's "good to eat."
Unlike man, who applies free will to his dietary choices, animals eat according to their natural instincts and genetic dictates. Consequently, insects, reptiles, fish, birds, and mammals (except man) are not plagued with degenerative health disorders like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, allergies, and multiple sclerosis--to name but a few.
In his book Happiness Is a Healthy Life, Lendon Smith, M.D., writes: "The trick of eating is to figure out your racial/ethnic background and try to imitate it." It's a great idea, but there's just one problem: Few of us today have a clear-cut ethnic or genetic heritage, particularly in the United States, where we've become a true genetic "melting pot."
People from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds have moved from continent to continent and country to country and mixed and mingled like crazy. So most of us have lots of different blood running through our veins. A little of this and a little of that.
Maybe you're part Irish and part German with traces of Mexican blood. Your best friend might be half Italian and half Japanese. Perhaps your neighbor has a Swedish mother and a Lebanese father and a maternal grandmother who was part Jamaican. The permutations are endless. There have been so many cultural shifts and so much intermarriage in the modern world that it's just not possible for most of us to identify with any degree of precision exactly what our ancestral diets might be.
And even if you could, it might be pretty tricky to try to imitate it. If you're of pure Native American descent, you could have a hard time obtaining cactus or buffalo meat on a regular basis. Or if you're of full-blooded Austrian descent...
