A new book on how to eat and live like "the world's
healthiest people" is that longevity is not just about food.
The people who live in the Blue Zones — five regions in Europe,
Latin America, Asia and the U.S. researchers have identified as having the
highest concentrations of centenarians in the world — move their bodies a lot.
They have social circles that reinforce healthy behaviors. They take time to
de-stress. They're part of communities, often religious ones. And they're
committed to their families.
For Longevity, Go Easy On The Meat, Study Says. Eat nuts For
Longevity.
But what they put in
their mouths, how much and when isworth a close
look, too. And that's why Dan Buettner, a National Geographic explorer and author who struck out on a
quest in 2000 to find the lifestyle secrets to longevity, has written a follow
up to his original book on the subject. The new book,
called The Blue Zones Solution, is aimed at Americans, and is
mostly about eating.
Why should we pay attention to what the people in the relatively
isolated Blue Zone communities eat? Because, as Buettner writes, their more
traditional diets harken back to an era before we Americans were inundated with
greasy fast food and sugar. And to qualify as a Blue Zone, these communities
also have to be largely free of afflictions like heart disease, obesity, cancer
and diabetes. So clearly they're doing something right.
You can get the backstory
in this excerpt of
the original book, which was published in 2008. But in a nutshell, Buettner in
2004 rounded up a bunch of anthropologists, demographers, epidemiologists and
other researchers to travel around the world to study communities with
surprisingly high percentages of centenarians. He and the scientists
interviewed hundreds of people who'd made it to age 100 about how they lived,
then did a lot of number crunching to figure out what they had in common.
A year after that book was published, the team announced they'd
narrowed it down to five places that met all their criteria. They gave them
official Blue Zone status: Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Ogliastra Region,
Sardinia; Loma Linda, Calif.; and Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.
In the new book, which was released April 7, Buettner distills
the researchers' findings on what all the Blue Zones share when it comes to
their diet. Here's a taste:
§ Stop
eating when your stomach is 80 percent full to avoid weight gain.
§ Eat the
smallest meal of the day in the late afternoon or evening.
§ Eat
mostly plants, especially beans. And eat meat rarely, in small portions of 3 to
4 ounces. Blue Zoners eat portions this size just five times a month, on
average.
§ Drink
alcohol moderately and regularly, i.e. 1-2 glasses a day.
The book also features "top longevity foods" from each
Blue Zone, some of which we found pretty intriguing.
Ikaria, Greece
You may remember this
Blue Zone from Buettner's wonderful 2012 New York Times Magazine article entitled
"The Island Where People Forget To Die."
As we've reported,
health researchers have long praised the Mediterranean diet for promoting brain
and physical health and keeping chronic diseases at bay. So what makes the diet
of the people on Ikaria, a small island in the Aegean Sea, so special?
"Their tradition of preparing the right foods, in the right
way, I believe, has a lot to do with the island's longevity," writes
Buettner.
And "what set it apart from other places in the region was
its emphasis on potatoes, goat's milk, honey, legumes (especially garbanzo
beans, black-eyed peas, and lentils), wild greens, some fruit and relatively
small amounts of fish."
Ikaria has a few more "top longevity foods:" feta
cheese, lemons and herbs like sage and marjoram that Ikarians use in their
daily tea. What's missing that we usually associate with Greece? Lamb. The
Ikarians do eat some goat meat, but not often.
Okinawa, Japan
Buettner calls the
islands of Okinawa a kind of "Japanese Hawaii" for their laid-back
vibe, beaches and fabulous weather. Okinawa also happens to have one of the
highest centenarian ratios in the world: About 6.5 in 10,000 people live to 100
(compare that with 1.73 in 10,000 in the U.S.)
Centenarians on Okinawa have lived through a lot of upheaval, so
their dietary stories are more complicated than some of the other Blue Zones.
As Buettner writes, many healthful Okinawan "food traditions foundered
mid-century" as Western influence brought about changes in food habits.
After 1949, Okinawans began eating fewer healthful staples like seaweed, turmeric
and sweet potato and more rice, milk and meat.
Still, Okinawans have nurtured the practice of eating something
from the land and the sea every day. Among their "top longevity
foods" are bitter melons, tofu, garlic, brown rice, green tea and shitake
mushrooms.
Sardinia, Italy
On this beautiful island in the middle of the Mediterrean, the
ratio of centenarian men to women is one to one. That's quite unusual, because
in the rest of the world, it's five women to every one man who live that long.
iThe sharp
pecorino cheese made from the milk of grass-fed sheep in Sardinia, has high
levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
Buettner writes that the Sardinians explain their exceptional
longevity with their assets such as "clean air," "locally
produced wine," or because they "make love every Sunday." But
when Buettner brought along a researcher to dig deeper, they found that
pastoralism, or shepherding livestock from the mountains to the plains, was
most highly correlated with reaching 100.
So what are those ancient Sardinian shepherds eating? You
guessed it: goat's milk and sheep's cheese — some 15 pounds of cheese per year,
on average. Also, a moderate amount of carbs to go with it, like flat bread,
sourdough bread and barley. And to balance those two food groups out, Sardinian
centenarians also eat plenty of fennel, fava beans, chickpeas, tomatoes,
almonds, milk thistle tea and wine from Grenache grapes.
Loma Linda, Calif.
There's a Blue Zone community in the U.S.? We were as shocked to
learn this as you may be. Its members are Seventh-day Adventists who shun
smoking, drinking and dancing and avoid TV, movies and other media
distractions.
iThey
also follow a "biblical" diet focused on grains, fruits, nuts and
vegetables, and drink only water. (Some of them eat small amounts of meat and
fish.) Sugar is taboo, too. As one Loma Linda centenarian tells Buettner:
"I'm very much against sugar except natural sources like fruit, dates or figs.
I never eat refined sugar or drink sodas."
Gary Fraser, a cardiologist and epidemiologist at Loma Linda
University and an Adventist himself, has found in studies that Adventists who
follow the religion's teachings lived about 10 years longer than people who
didn't. Another key insight? Pesco-vegetarians in the community, who ate a
plant-based diet with up to one serving of fish a day, lived longer than vegan
Adventists.
Their top foods include avocados, salmon, nuts, beans, oatmeal,
whole wheat bread and soy milk.
Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica
We'd love to be invited
for dinner by a centenarian here, where they #putaneggonit all
the time. One delicious-sounding meal Buettner was served by a 99-year-old
woman (who's now 107) consisted of rice and beans, garnished with cheese and
cilantro, on corn tortillas, with an egg on top.
As Buettner writes, "The big secret of the Nicoyan diet was
the 'three sisters' of Meso-American agriculture: beans, corn and squash."
Those three staples, plus papayas, yams, bananas and peach palms (a small
Central American oval fruit high in vitamins A and C), are what fuel the
region's elders over the century.
Granted, it's not easy to emulate the Blue Zoners if you live in
the U.S. where you're likely to be tempted with bacon and cupcakes every day.
And maybe you don't want to become a vegan.
But Buettner has plenty
to say about simple ways Americans could live like these isolated tribes of
exceptional health in The Blue Zone Solution.
That's what he's focused on now with the Blue Zone Project: helping communities
adapt the cross-cutting tenets of a healthful lifestyle. So far, the project
has gotten several towns — and U.S. states — to sign on.
For
recipes from the Blue Zones with the ingredients above, check out the web site. And for more photos from the Blue Zones, head to National Geographic.
Review by Rob Long
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