Billy Bob Thornton says a rare blood type and a long list of food allergies have shaped what he eats for decades, and that the rules of the road were laid out again on a recent podcast appearance. The 70-year-old actor said on Howie Mandel Does Stuff that he is allergic to wheat and dairy, has type AB-negative blood and cannot eat meat such as pork or beef.
Thornton said he learned about the condition in the 1980s, after growing up in Arkansas and Texas eating just about everything despite what he described as a lot of allergies. As a child, he said, he assumed everyone felt sick after meals. The condition, he said, means he has less digestive enzymes, and he told listeners that AB-negative blood is less than 1% of the world population.
The actor's comments landed as he described how tightly those limits still shape everyday choices. He said he had a bowl of blueberries and a decaf coffee before arriving at the podcast studio, and planned to have gluten-free chips with dairy-free cream cheese later. Thornton framed the restrictions not as a new surprise but as something he has lived with for years, even if he only made sense of it after that 1980s diagnosis.
He also said the challenge showed up recently at a Paramount+ Landman promotional event, where the green room had salami, prosciutto, crackers and other starchy foods. Thornton said he could not eat any of it at first, until he found grapes and spicy Dijon mustard. The combination became the unlikely highlight of the day. Mustard-dipped grapes, he said, were “one of the best things I ever had in my lifetime.”
Thornton's experience sits in a broader argument that has long surrounded blood type and diet. There is no solid research proving that eating for a specific blood type improves gut health, even as Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo has argued that people with AB blood type often have lower levels of stomach acid. For Thornton, though, the issue is less theory than routine: what he can eat, what he cannot, and the odd little workarounds that keep him going from one public appearance to the next.
