Well, now it's time for
us to get in the zone.
If your goal is to live long and healthy,
our next guest has ideas on
how we can get there.
He thinks what we eat has
a lot to do with it here.
What author Dan Buettner says
you should know about the world?
5 blue zones.
I've never actually heard the term
Blue Zone. Will you explain what it is?
It was a project that began with National
Geographic and me of almost two decades ago,
and we sought to kind of reverse
engineer longevity by finding
the areas in the world that are.
Verified people living the
longest and we found five.
We dubbed them blue zones.
Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia,
Italy IT Korea Greece,
Nicoya Peninsula Costa Rica and among the
7th Day Adventists in Loma Linda, CA.
So these are people who live
10 years longer than us,
mostly without the disease,
is bankrupt in America.
My goodness. So I expected it.
Kind of all the places you
mentioned but not Loma Linda.
That did surprise me and in your
book you've kind of compiled about
how this longevity is by way of.
Eating correct?
Well, part of it's by way of eating.
We did a meta analysis to
find out what's centenarians.
8 for the last 100 years and it's
overwhelming a whole food plant based diet.
High carbohydrates, by the way,
complex carbohydrates like nuts and
beans and grains and greens and tubers.
But this book, the Blue Zone
Challenge really takes the core
idea of blue zones and shows you
how to put it to work in your life.
So for anybody who might be
skeptical 'cause there are
always skeptics about diets,
why should they consider?
Learning more about this.
Well, first of all,
these are real people who would
achieve the outcomes we want,
so they live 10 years longer without
diabetes and heart attacks and dementia.
So National Geographic is
very careful about its facts.
Secondly, we're not asking you to
rely on discipline or self control.
We're asking you to set up your immediate
environment so your unconscious
decisions help you eat better,
move more, socialize in the right place,
and live your life with purpose.
That's what people in the blue zones do.
To make it to age 100,
it's a whole world diet.
Mind, body, soul. It sounds like,
well, it's a you take
the Blue Zone challenge.
It takes you by the hand for four
weeks and it shows you how to
set up your home, your kitchen,
your social life and your work
life so that healthy choices
unconscious rather than making you
try to remember yet another diet
which will almost invariably fail.
Yes, they always do.
I'm all in for this, by the way.
I like the idea of this total approach.
When you were talking about you
mentioned some of the foods,
but can you kind of give us an ideal?
Of what may be a meal would look like
maybe seven day Adventist in Loma Linda
Adventists are Christians.
They get their diet directly from the Bible.
They're mostly vegetarian,
so it's going to be a lot of
nuts and grains and beans.
You know I met the longest of
family in the history of the world,
the Millis family, nine siblings,
many of them over 100.
They had the same lunch every day of
their life and that was a minestrone
soup with vegetables and beans.
A piece of sourdough bread
and a small glass of wine.
And they made it to 100,
so that's good enough for me.
You've already speaking my language.
I could eat that every single day,
and my next question was
going to be about alcohol.
Is it just kind of in moderation?
'cause it sounds like everyone I
hear who's a centenarian is says I
had a shot of whiskey every day,
alright, a glass of wine?
How does alcohol relate
with the good news, at least among
most of the centenarians in the world?
A little bit of a cocktail
glass of wine every day seems
to help fuel their longevity.
He found a blue zones wine.
It's from Sardinia.
It has the highest levels of
antioxidants of any known wine in
the world that may help explain why
Sardinia produces the most male
centenarians in anyplace else on Earth.
Fascinating,
I'm going to total wine to ask
for Blouson wine after this in
all your research which had to
be a fascinating experience.
What were some of the things
that surprised you most?
You know most of the things that are
marketed to us that have a longevity claim.
Our are just plain false.
There's no super food, there's no pill,
there's no supplement that's been shown
to reverse stop or even slow aging.
But we have found, for example,
people with a strong sense of
purpose live about eight years
longer than people are rudderless.
So, in other words,
if you could put purpose in a capsule,
it be a billion dollar blockbuster drug.
But we don't pay attention to it.
We know that loneliness.
Shaves about eight years off your
life expectancy as well so that
by taking the time to build a
healthy social circle around you,
three or four friends whose idea of
recreation is walking or playing
pickleball who care about you on a
bad day and who who know how to make
plant based food taste delicious.
That's one of the most powerful
things you can do to be healthier,
because when it comes to longevity,
there's no short term fix.
Unless you're doing it for years or decades.
Forget about it and friends tend to
be long term adventures and they have
a measurable impact on what you eat
and what you do and how you feel.
Was so inspirational.