The Blue Zones Blow Up: Commercialism Runs Amok

By Robert McGarvey

I come not to praise Dan Buttner’s Blue Zones but to bury it – or, rather, the New York Times did the execution and I am here to lament the fading of an idea I have admired and recommended for 15 years.  

The essence of the original Blue Zones story is that Buettner found five discrete communities where the inhabitants live a lot longer than the rest of us.  They are Ikaria (a remote Greek island). Sardinia (the villages up in the mountains), Okinawa, Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, and Loma Linda CA, a town around 60 miles east of Los Angeles that is distinguished by the fact that 9000 of the 25,000 residents are 7th Day Adventists who are vegetarians and don’t smoke or drink alcohol.

The kicker is that in these communities people are 10 times more likely to reach 100 than the rest of us and they also are generally healthier.

Sadly, the Nicoya Peninsula and Okinawa are fading out of Blue Zones status as the traditional lifestyles are replaced by a 21st century convenience and fast food culture.  But Singapore recently was added and it, interestingly, is not a product of a traditional lifestyle so much as it has been created by a society that seeks to control pretty much everything.

What do residents of the Blue Zones have in common? They eat little meat (maybe once a week), they eat nuts, they drink alcohol in moderation (or not at all), and they get a lot of exercise, not typically in a gym but more commonly as an ordinary part of their lives (walking, gardening, etc).

What they don’t do is follow health fads on TikTok, consume “super foods,” frequent expensive “wellness” spas or, really, do much of anything except live the kind of life people in their communities have lived for a very long time.

For me, all this is practical, reasonably easy to follow and it makes good commonsense. So for a decade I’ve tried to live something of a Blue Zones life and it’s not terribly hard to do.  It also has much in common with a traditional Mediterranean Diet so cooking ideas are easy to come by and not expensive to implement.

Where did all this go wrong?  The New York Times story’s subhead points us in a direction: “Communities certified as ‘blue zones,’ a concept that promotes healthy living and longevity, are multiplying, but some wonder if the movement is just another gimmick.”

Some 70 communities in the US have worked with the Blue Zones company to create better, healthier lifestyles for their residents. 

Along the way, a Blue Zones tag has also found its way on cans of beans, bottled teas and frozen burrito bowls.  

Meantime, too, some real estate developers have determined it’s a selling point to be a Blue Zones and so they are claiming.  Noted the New York Times: “in some cases, it appears to be more a marketing strategy than anything else, joining a flurry of real estate certification programs and having little to do with the modest way of life that Blue Zones is meant to reflect.”

Not every community even wants to be a Blue Zone. In South Phoenix, a lower income neighborhood with a majority Hispanic population, there has been a push to implement Blue Zones lifestyles – but that has been met by vocal opposition.  

Said one group of opponents: “The Collaborative for Black & Indigenous Land Restoration and Reparations, is choosing to push against this project that does not share the decision making power with the community it intends to help.”

Here’s my bottomline: I still like and recommend the original Blue Zones concept that the traditional lifestyles of various communities foster longevity.  We can adopt what pieces we want and likely will see some benefits.

But I for one have no intention of buying products that are slapped with a Blue Zones seal of approval, and neither do I want my community (midtown Phoenix) to go all in on a Blue Zones project. And I definitely have no interest in buying a home in a “certified” Blue Zones. If I did I’d probably move to Loma Linda.  But I don’t.

As far as the six Blue Zones, I’m interested in visiting Ikaria but can’t say I’m keen on any of the others.

And I’ll still mainly eat a Blue Zones diet that’s veg forward with sparing intake of meats.

I was walking 5 or 6 miles a day before I stumbled on the Blue Zones and still do.  That won’t stop.

But I won’t try to tell you what to do.

It’s your life, live it your way.