What are Blue Zones?
“Blue Zone” is a term given to geographic regions that are home to some of the world’s oldest people.
It is by the author Dan Buettner, who was studying areas of the world in which people live exceptionally long lives.
They are called Blue Zones because when Buettner and his colleagues were searching for these areas, they drew blue circles around them on a map.
In his book called The Blue Zones, Buettner described five known Blue Zones:
I have become fascinated with the food from at least two of these areas: Icaria and Sardinia.
- Icaria (Greece): Icaria is an island in Greece where people eat a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, red wine and homegrown vegetables.
- Ogliastra, Sardinia (Italy): The Ogliastra region of Sardinia is home to some of the oldest men in the world. They live in mountainous regions where they typically work on farms and drink lots of red wine.
- Okinawa (Japan): Okinawa is home to the world’s oldest women, who eat a lot of soy-based foods and practice tai chi, a meditative form of exercise.
- Nicoya Peninsula (Costa Rica): The Nicoyan diet is based around beans and corn tortillas. The people of this area regularly perform physical jobs into old age and have a sense of life purpose known as “plan de vida.”
- The Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, California (USA): The Seventh-day Adventists are a very religious group of people. They’re strict vegetarians and live in tight-knit communities.