Create a conditional/dependent dropdown integrating a validation query

Is it possible to create dependent dropdowns where one dropdown queries the data in the first to create the second?

For instance, there is information in two columns. The user selects the first choice and then based on the first choice, makes a second choice.

However, the problem is related to how the information for these choices is presented in the excel sheet.

The data is arranged:

A	B
fruit	banana
vegetable	pea
meat	lamb
vegetable	corn
meat	beef
fruit	pineapple
fruit	orange

The user should use the first drop down to make a selection of either fruit, vegetable, or meat in the first dropdown (so it should also eliminate redundant entries).

Then the second dropdown should only present items from column B that match the choice in column A, i.e. "Meat" in A provides a choice of either lamb or beef.

Unfortunately, I can't alter the way the data is coming in the spreadsheet, so all the examples I have seen won't work for me (usually it involves breaking the choices up into different columns and rows)

Any ideas?