I just finished reading through a book called Eat Right for Your Metabolism by Felicia Drury Kliment, who also wrote The Acid-Alkaline Balance Diet. The basic premise of Eat Right for Your Metabolism is that a single standard diet, whether for weight-loss or for health, cannot work for everyone (but we already knew that). Each person must eat according to what types of foods his of her body metabolizes best - either grains or meat.

Part I explains the reasoning behind the metabolic types, which are pre-determined by your ancestry. For instance, British people's taste for red meat can be traced back at least 8,000 years. Early Britons were meat-eaters, and their descendants all over the world are metabolically meat eaters. When people eat outside their metabolic type, even if the foods they eat are what we traditionally believe to be "healthy," they will suffer health problems because the body cannot break them down. The undigested foods decompose into acid waste and "poison" the body causing everything from unusual allergies to cancer.

The book has several "tests" by which you can determine what type of metabolism you have. The primary test is the Niacin Test, in which you swallow a 50 mg capsule of niacin (which is Vitamin B3 and can be found in health food and vitamin supplement stores). How your body reacts half an hour later indicates your metabolic type. If you feel no change, that means the niacin, which is acidic, has neutralized or had no effect on the acid level in your stomach. You are a grain eater. If, after taking the niacin, you become flushed and itchy, the niacin has contributed to your already highly acidic stomach environment, which is a characteristic of meat eaters. If you feel warm and euphoric after the niacin, then you are an omnivore. Either that, or perhaps you didn't take niacin.

Grain eaters need to eat more grains (obviously), green leafy vegetables, and depend primarily on poultry, fish, and other seafoods for protein. Meat eaters need to eat more root vegetables, red meat, nuts, seeds, cheese, eggs, and the part that disturbs me, "lots of butter" and "meat fat." I'm not opposed to butter or lard, but suggesting to anyone that they eat lots of it seems a little extreme.

The remainder of the book lists weekly suggested menus for each metabolic type and has recipes. The menus are helpful for someone who needs that kind of regimen in their eating and dining. A typical menu for a grain eater looks like this:

• Breakfast of oatmeal topped with fresh fruit, nuts, and plain lowfat yogurt
• Lunch of baby spinach salad
• Dinner of salmon filet with mango cilantro salsa

In addition to recipes for some of the dishes on the menus, the author recommends that both meat and grain eaters drink Alkalinizing Potato Water because white potatoes have an anti-acid effect. When cooked, potatoes are good for the grain eater because they speed up digestion, and not so good for meat eaters. However, white potatoes in a raw state help alkalinize the body's acid waste.

The arguments in Part I seem logical, especially since the author draws on a number of resources, but they don't all seem to fit together. As I always say, anyone can make valid arguments on either side because there will always be resources out there to support you. I don't necessarily agree with the idea of the metabolic types, but I do believe that there is no standard diet that works for everyone. Health and nutrition are very deeply personal