alt Hacker NewsOkay 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.
Yes and no. The article does not go into the full history of the phrase, but it goes back to the work of Dr Ancel Keys, who was a fascinating genius of a man, with an equally talented wife. He did his crucial work on nutrition in the post-war years and this included a massive study of what people ate around the world, for longevity.
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.