41–50 of 66 posts
My doctor always says “There are three little things that will give you the best chance at living a long and healthy life. Eat a little better, move around a little bit, and get a little more sleep”
Its even better to have a government pension that sends checks to your address as long as you are alive.
A 2024 Ig Nobel was awarded to work debunking Blue Zones. IMO the whole concept is one of those Occam’s razors that proves especially sharp. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2024/sep/ucl-demographers-wor...
Debunked or not, people will repeat this idea for a generation or two until, ironically, anyone that's read the book has shuffled off this mortal coil.
Blue zones have been utterly, thoroughly debunked. There’s no reason to still ask this question in 2026 unless a new/unusual population or lifestyle is emerging.
And in fact, TFA is pretty sympathetic to your position, but not as absolutely certain as you are.
Speaking entirely anecdotally – I have come across a lot of really old but still active Sicilian people. People that, at their age, would be immobile and in a nursing home in America, but instead go for walks daily, see friends in the town, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it be my personal opinion? Do you think I was the one who did the research debunking them? If you're too lazy to Google it for yourself, here's a history of the Blue Zone research, how the original "researcher" is profiting off of it, and the careful work that has been done to debunk it: https://www.science.org/content/article/do-blue-zones-suppos...
I think you misunderstand. You think blue zones are "thoroughly debunked". And it might be even true that blue zones aren't real. But I am not seeing any evidence that the general public is aware of this. And thus we need more of the articles "asking" this question so that more people are aware of the issues on it. FYI, the article you linked basically tells the same story as the topical article. Are you too lazy to…
B) Regardless of what story it tells, the article is an opinion piece by a journalist and a cardiologist, not authorities on the topic, and has a misleading title: that "answering [the] question [of whether Blue Zones are real]" is harder than ever. It's not.
Blue zones were always just eat healthy, exercise, and having friends. I believe that these things almost certainly help longevity as a number of independent studies into each of these show that, and it’s intuitively obvious
Why not simply use median life expectancy, which is more robust to fraud and outliers, instead of "number of centenarians"?
The median life expectancy means you're only in the top half! But well... simply being well off means you're going to be more likely to hit above average there.
My doctor always says “There are three little things that will give you the best chance at living a long and healthy life. Eat a little better, move around a little bit, and get a little more sleep”
Eat fewer calories. Consume as little added sugar as possible. You don't have to eat much better. You can trivially supplement. It's far more important to eat less.
> Buettner himself says he oversaw the blue zones frozen meal initiative This really captures the reality of longevity, at least in US culture. Whether or not blue zones are verifiable or real, the ingredients to statistical longevity are well understood to minimally include: eat better and maintain a level of fitness. Those are not easy to do when laziness, sedentary device time and fast food options are just so eas…
I went to a talk recently where someone who did longevity research listed high-impact things vs low-impact things for a long life. They claimed things like (numbers are from memory)
* eating legumes - live 2 extra years
* eating vegatables - live 3-6 extra month.
* walk 5-6km a day - live 2 extra years
* run several km several times a week - live extra 3 months
I'm not going stop eating veggies and I'm not going to stop exercising but it did make me wonder if their research was true.
Okay but surely there must be areas which have better longevity on average? It is probably tied mostly to social culture and walkability, is my guess. Speaking entirely anecdotally – I have come across a lot of really old but still active Sicilian people. People that, at their age, would be immobile and in a nursing home in America, but instead go for walks daily, see friends in the town, etc.
In his findings, the Okinawa people scored highly but they were Japanese and Japan was not liked that much by Americans after the 1940s for some reason. The Mediterranean folks scored highly as well, so the advice was to follow that rather than the Japanese diet.
Ancel Keys did his work before the Boeing 747, affordable cars and the shipping container came along, so people in the so-called Blue Zones were not exposed to international cuisine or the Standard American Diet.
The sad fact is that the Standard American Diet (processed food) does tend to wreck many a blue zone, or even a high standard of cuisine. Also, from the article, good old capitalist greed gets in the way too. The Adventist community did well in the original studies because they were not eating meat, or most of them were not. They were vegan before the word vegan was invented, or at least the 'strict vegetarian' members of their community were. Nowadays it sounds like 'Adventist' + 'LLC', an unholy alliance, you just know it.
Despite blue zones no longer being real, all of the original research by Ancel Keys is legitimate. He had no ideological axe to grind, his work is just exceptional science, albeit easily knocked down by social media nutrition influencer types that happen to get funding from the beef and dairy industries.
Hence the clickbait of the article, times have changed, no longer do people live in communities that are spared from the Standard American Diet (processed food) and yet the OG Ancel Keys work doesn't get a mention.