When my life first collided with Jeremy’s, we had the most complicated dietary concoction going on. I had, some months previously, visited a homeopathic doctor to investigate why I was always exhausted (aside from being a busy mother-of-many) and been recommended to give up wheat – not gluten, but wheat – for at least nine months to see how much better I felt afterwards. At around the same time my Wilfy, who had been under a specialist in London for a bowel problem and had endured two years of laxatives in his bedtime milk, was diagnosed independently as dairy intolerant. With some trepidation, but with the specialist’s knowledge, we gave up the laxatives. So our home was, as far as possible, wheat-and-dairy-free.

Our milk deliveries were impressive: the grown-ups drank skimmed milk; three out of four boys drank whole milk and the fourth drank goats’ milk. And my bread machine was cranked into action to bake wheat-free bread, which turned out to be rather easy and quite delicious when toasted.

So when Jeremy joined our lives, we were already au fait with wheat and dairy-free food. Good job, since Jem was both. Somehow, however, over the years Wilfy and Jem seem to have managed to reincorporate dairy and Jem and I to reincorporate wheat. But should we have? The symptoms that prompted the two adults in this situation to change their diet so drastically have crept back in (I won’t go into detail), and we seem to have allowed them to stay.

Then a kind contributor to Jem’s astrology page mentioned that she swore by the Blood Type Diet. We had never heard of it and decided to look into it. Suddenly, we became aware of hundreds of testimonials in favour of this way of eating. We ordered the book, which contains reams of information pertaining to what is 1) highly beneficial 2) okay and 3) not good for each type, but our next hurdle was finding out Jem’s blood-type. I know mine is O+ because I am a regular pincushion (they do like to prod you during pregnancy, don’t they?) but Jem couldn’t get hold of his for love or money. The doctor didn’t have it, and wouldn’t perform a test (“It’s not something we do.”) so we ordered a test online, which left me with the rather icky job of nurse for a bloody half-hour (which I say literally). I drew the line at pricking his finger and he was left to do that himself, but I squeezed out the four drops, smeared them in the circles and we had an instant result – thankfully for us, his blood-type is the same as mine. Had it been different, this whole new experiment would have been possibly unworkably difficult.

We have been following this method of choosing what food to eat for just three days so far and are already really quite impressed. Skin tone has improved, digestion is more efficient, vitality is boosted. (If I could just get the baby to sleep through the night, I’m sure I’d notice the benefits even more! )

We are left with a couple more conundrums: 1) What are the other boys’ blood types? I am going to have to do a test on each of them; 2) Expense: Unless you can find a cheaper way of creating your own wheat-free products, the commercial world does like to hoik up the prices of anything ‘out of the ordinary’. They have a captive market, after all! I had always joked that to keep five boys in food when they are approaching their teens is going to take mountains of bread, pasta, potatoes and rice. All we’re left with is rice! So, the bread machine is back in action and I am on the prowl for cost-effective ways to implement a wheat and mostly-dairy-free diet for a family of seven.

Wish me luck!

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