The other side of the ‘Blue Zones’

The world’s so-called Blue Zones are hubs of health and longevity we can learn from. Or are they?

We’re probably all familiar with photos of the folk who live in these locations — they have happy, weathered faces and they’ll be doing something like sitting around a table with their extended family eating vegetables or drinking wine.

Though I prefer the photo of the man sweeping. Men doing things like this could well be a key to health and longevity for women.

The Blue Zones were brought to us by National Geographic writer Dan Buettner. I recently dipped into his beautiful 2023 hardcover book The Blue Zones: secrets for living longer. It’s an off shoot of his Netflix series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.

The book is a tour of the five main Blue Zones — Sardinia in Italy, Okinawa in Japan, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rico, Ikaria in Greece, and the Seventh Day Adventist community of Loma Linda in California, plus Singapore because he’s taken with the planning initiatives the government has put in place there to accommodate an ageing population.

I’m not giving anything away by revealing the ‘secrets’. In a nutshell: plenty of movement (it helps to live in isolated places and have to chase sheep or goats up and down hills); life that revolves around family, community and religion; and a plant-based diet.

Buettner spent 20 years building on the Blue Zones idea after he successfully pitched it to National Geographic. Many believe Loma Linda was made a Blue Zone because National Geographic wanted one in America. As we’ll see, it doesn’t bear much resemblance to most of the others.

In 2009 he created a Blue Zones company and started doing city makeovers (walking groups, bike paths, better food at schools, and so on). He’s also written several books besides the 2023 one, including cookbooks and advice on how to live a ‘Blue Zones lifestyle’.

In 2020 he sold the company to the Seventh Day Adventist church. That’s where it gets interesting.

The Seventh Day Adventists have been in the nutrition and food game since the church was founded in the 1860s by a woman called Ellen G. White. She experienced visions from God, and these told her that vegetarianism was the path of righteousness.

A boy called John Harvey Kellogg started working for her, typesetting her work, including her book advising mothers that animal foods would encourage masturbation in their children as well as epilepsy, sight loss, criminal behaviour, and suicide.

I’m not making this up. Also on Mrs White’s banned list were alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, fried food, spicy flavours, pickled food, and overeating.

Moreover, it was the duty of the church and its members to spread the word. They also trained doctors, bringing together medicine, vegetarianism, and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Unsurprisingly, Kellogg went on to devote his life to inventing foods to replace meat, eggs, and dairy.

The idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that cereal is the perfect breakfast started right here. In the 2023 book Buettner lists cornflakes as a top longevity food at Loma Linda. I didn’t make that up either.

A protégé of Kellogg’s, Lenna Cooper, formed the American Dietitians Association in 1917. For over a century the church has been a powerful force in telling people what to eat.

Even today, there’s a Seventh Day Adventist representative on the committee responsible for America’s dietary guidelines. We might well ask why, but there always has been.

in 1905 Ellen G. White started Loma Linda Foods under the name Sanitarium to manufacture vegan and vegetarian products. In Australia, Sanitarium is still owned by the church and is our biggest ‘health food’ company, making products such as Weet-Bix, Up & Go liquid breakfast, Marmite, and So Good soy, oat and almond milk.

Only in this world could meat, eggs and dairy be bad for us while Up and Go is healthy.

The Seventh Day Adventists take credit for starting ‘nutrition science’. They also started the food industry. And they were the brains behind creating processed foods and calling them health foods.

Lest you think I uncovered these links myself, I didn’t. A number of people have been piecing together the Blue Zones story and the way dietetics has been controlled by the Adventists from day one. Chief among these has been Launceston woman, Belinda Fettke.

Her now retired husband was an orthopedic surgeon who was routinely having to amputate the limbs of diabetic patients. He had the gall to suggest that a diet containing less sugar and starch might be worth investigating. He was right, of course. The well-conducted research bears that out. But he soon found himself before the medical board having to answer to someone working for Sanitarium.

I’ve noted that the Adventists have long been training doctors. Today, they run Loma Linda University and its hospital and Medical Centre with 18,000 employees and 4000 students from 80 countries studying in a broad range of health and medical fields from dentistry, medicine, and nursing, to pharmacy, public health, and nutrition and dietetics.

And as the owners of the Blue Zones business they’re rolling out Blue Zones retreats in luxury hotels.  Yes, Loma Linda is a tad different to, say, the goat herders of Ikaria.

From the start, the church was also publishing research on the benefits of being vegetarian. Not good quality research, mind you, just a lot of it. For one thing, their definition of vegetarianism is blurry. Some of their people are vegans, some eat eggs and dairy, some eat fish, and some eat animal foods occasionally. Yet it’s all vegetarian.

Like Ellen G. White, Dan Buettner cautions us to ‘retreat from meat’, and says that people in the Blue Zones follow a 95% plant-based diet.

Loma Linda aside, it seems highly unlikely.

Belinda Fettke points out that pigs were often kept. In Costa Rica they had cattle. These were traditional cultures where animals were eaten from nose to tail because people were too poor not to. Lard was used for cooking.

Some had chickens and could eat the eggs. In Nicoya people lived by the coast and could access fish, turtles and turtle eggs. In Ikaria they ate snails.

People clearly grew and ate plant foods, but there’s also evidence that they raised animals for meat and dairy.

Buettner seems to have used a Loma Linda lens through which to depict all the other groups. Which isn’t entirely accurate.

So what does this mean for the idea of the Blue Zones?

UK academic Saul Newman argues that it’s all poppycock based on dodgy or non-existent data. He says a lot of the supposed centenarians raised their age to collect a pension, and that while many have died, their relatives still collect the pension in their name. It’s not that they were or are crooks; it’s just what people do to survive in poor places.

That’s not to say there mightn’t be something useful we could learn from people who live simpler, more mindful lives.

But given that between the various locations they’ve had to contend with problems such as war, piracy, poverty and isolation, their lives are vastly different from ours. Again, Loma Linda aside.

Despite this, Buettner provides suggestions on how we can try to emulate the healthy aspects of their lives (use smaller plates, get a dog, etc). You may well find useful advice in his books.

But remember that above all the Blue Zones is about marketing and there’s an agenda. Dan Buettner knew a good idea when he saw one.

The big, mostly untold story behind modern nutritional thinking, dietary guidelines, the training of dietitians, and now the Blue Zones, is the role of the Seventh Day Adventist church. And it doesn’t end at American shores. In Australia we track along much the same paths in these areas.

So take from the Blue Zones idea what you can, but take it with a grain of salt.

Because Ellen G. White said salt was fine. In moderation, of course.

Photo Source: Gianluca Colla