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We make about 220 food decisions a day.
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New York Times best-selling author, award-winning journalist, and you are.
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These five areas where people are living measurably longer.
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Not only is there plenty of evidence that these approaches work, but also it offers a path to longevity that's enjoyable.
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The best-selling author and host the number one health and wellness podcast with Jay Shetty.
0:59
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
1:02
Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed.
1:09
Now, I love sitting down with people who have deeply studied, obsessed, and excavated insights and ideas for us.
1:16
People who have focused deeply on mining the world, traveling the world, and finding wisdom, finding tenets of ideas and concepts that can transform the way we live in the modern world.
1:30
And today's guest is someone I've had on the show before, but I'm so excited to see him again after around four or five years it's been since we were last together.
1:38
I'm speaking about Dan Buettner, an explorer, National Geographic Fellow, award-winning journalist, and producer, and New York Times best-selling author.
1:48
Dan discovered the five places in the world dubbed Blue Zones hotspots, where people live the longest healthiest lives.
1:56
In Dan's new book that I have right now, The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer, Lessons from the Healthiest Places on Earth, Dan talks about his travels and journeys of living and learning from people all over the world that we'll dive into today.
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I want you to grab a copy of this book.
2:15
It beautifully synthesizes and summarizes really complex and difficult ideas and really really simple and beautiful ones in a way that you can practice them and bring them to life in yours and the people you love.
2:29
Uh welcome to the show, Dan Buettner.
2:31
Dan, thank you for being here.
2:33
Oh, you're such a master.
2:35
It's It's a complete joy to see you again and and to be here in your studio.
2:39
Yeah, and congratulations on your documentary, too, on Netflix.
2:41
I mean, it's been received exceptionally well.
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If anyone hasn't seen it yet, make sure you go and see that and get the book at the same time.
2:47
It's It's so beautiful because when we met, you'd been dedicated to this work for so long already.
2:54
And the fact that it's now having another resurgence and you know, it's becoming even more mainstream, which I love because I think these ideas need to be mainstream.
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Talk to us just about how long you've been fascinated and obsessed about this journey and how amazing it is.
3:07
You just said a moment ago outside to me, you said, "You know, I thought the work had had its course, but here it is again. It just It's timeless."
3:14
1999, I I did a read a study in the World Health Organization finding that Okinawa, Japan produces the longest-lived disability-free lives in the world.
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I thought, "Aha, that's a great mystery."
3:30
And I did a very quick expedition there and became personally on on fire about the topic.
3:36
And then in 2004, I got an assignment from National Geographic and a grant from the National Institutes on Aging and wrote a cover story for National Geographic.
3:45
And the idea here, Jay, was, you know, so many It's very hot in Silicon Valley right now to search for longevity hacks or anti-aging nostrums and so forth.
3:57
And instead of looking for secret to longevity in a test tube or some sort of genetic code, we very methodically found these five areas where people are living measurably longer.
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And then because only about 20% of how long we live is dictated by our genes, 80% is something else, then we took teams of scientists to find the common denominators and the the correlates.
4:20
And I think the reason this this the Netflix series is resonating so much right now is because in our fast-paced world where we're constantly looking for answers in technology, we've overlooked this wonderful repository of time-honored wisdom that if we stop, pay attention, you can see not only is there plenty of evidence that these approaches work, but also it offers a path to longevity that's enjoyable. Absolutely.
4:50
And I I'm so happy that you're shining a light on that because I think it's so interesting how obsessed we can get and even how stressed we can get about our health.
4:58
And almost when you go back to these very grassroots ways and methods and approaches, it's so much more natural and organic.
5:05
But walk us through that. You said 20% is genes. What's the other 80%?
5:10
Maybe 10% is health care.
5:13
You know, how good your insurance is, how much access you have to hospitals and doctors.
5:16
But the other 70% or so I argue it is largely your environment.
5:21
We spend over 150 billion dollars a year on diets and exercise programs, but if you look at the the duration of how long those last, it's measured in months or maybe a year and a half or so.
5:32
And when it comes to longevity, there's no short-term fix.
5:37
There's no pill, there's no supplement.
5:39
It is the sum of lots of small improvements to your lives aggregated over decades. That's what works.
5:43
And I've been shown nothing else that can work in the in in the in the short run.
5:50
So, So, that 70% is how you set up your environment so that you are unconsciously nudged to do things that favor longevity and nudged away from the things that we know take away from health and vitality.
6:06
That's kind of the general idea.
6:06
And I love that idea about environment.
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I think the challenge is today that a lot of us would find that environments we grow up in or environments we live in and work in are almost set up against longevity. Right?
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Would you agree with that?
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And what are some of the ways in which we almost have to not fight, but we have to almost defend, protect, and create environments to grow in be abundant in?
6:27
So, we're in Los Angeles right now.
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I happen to know that the average Angelino spends 47 hours a year not just in traffic, stopped in traffic.
6:38
In places where there are walkable, where there are bike lanes, where there are nice wide sidewalks with trees, so they're aesthetically pleasing, cleaned up playground, the physical activity level of the entire community is 20% higher.
6:52
So, we live in a nation nation where fewer than 24% of people get the minimum amount of physical activity, which is only about 20 minutes.
6:58
So, just by living in a walkable neighborhood, you're probably going to get more physical activity over the long term than you are signing up for a gym.
7:10
The other problem is our food environment.
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You know, we evolved with genetic hardwiring to favor salt, favor sugar, yearn for fat, and take rest whenever we can.
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That's served us very well in in an environment of scarcity and difficulty like we evolved in, but now we live in this environment where we're never more than five steps away from a salty snack or soda or hamburger or pizza.
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And you know, our genes lust for that.
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And we can try to deploy discipline or presence of mind to overcome it three or four times, but the sixth time you're confronted by it in a day, you know, that discipline muscle wears out and the next thing you're, you know, eating that Snickers or digging into that bag of chips.
7:52
And and uh it's hard to wag your finger at Americans and say, "It's your responsibility to eat healthy when 97 out of 100 choices out there for most people aren't healthy."
8:03
I want to dive into all the lessons and the insights that we can make shifts.
8:07
How have you found people being able to apply the Blue Zones work in their modern lives in these big cities, in places where 97 out of 100 options are unhealthy or toxic or whatever they may be.
8:22
What examples have you seen?
8:24
What have you learned about people actually making changes and transformations in their life?
8:28
So, I I have two answers.
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And I First, I'll take it at the community level.
8:32
So, my daytime job for most of the last 13 years has been working with cities.
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Uh we're we're publicly endorsed, but privately funded, so we don't get involved with, you know, people worrying about spending uh tax dollars.
8:43
We've gone into cities like Fort Worth, Texas, Naples, Florida, Jacksonville, the whole state of Hawaii.
8:52
And instead of trying to get people to try to convince people to eat mostly a plant-based diet and get physical activity, we work with city council to help them uh identify policies that favor healthy food over junk food, that favor the pedestrian over the motorist, that favor the non-smoker over the smoker.
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And we don't come in telling cities what to do.
9:13
Nobody wants to be told what to do. We bring them menus.
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And then we go through every item on that policy menu and assess it for number one, effective.
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Do people in this room from the public and private sector think it'll be effective in this city? And two, is it feasible?
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Is there enough sort of political equity to get these things done?
9:31
And in every city, we're able to find a half a dozen to a dozen policies that float to the top, and my team can get it implemented. And that's the biggest.
9:40
According to the CDC, the most powerful lever we have to create a healthier America is policy.
9:46
It's the most cost-effective.
9:49
But then we also have a Blue Zones certification program for restaurants, grocery stores, workplaces, and schools.
9:56
And over 5 years, we can usually get 30 to 40% of those places to agree to optimize their designs and their policies so people mindlessly move more, uh eat better, you know, cafeterias are healthier with healthier choices, socialize more, we all know uh loneliness kills, and then no one live their purpose.
10:19
And it only works when you're comprehensive.
10:22
And from the time people wake up till the time they go to bed, they are nudged, uh unconsciously nudged into slightly better behaviors over the period of decades.
10:33
And in every city we worked in, and Gallup measures this, uh we've seen the obesity rate go down, life satisfaction go up, and healthcare go down a lot.
10:43
And in a country where we're spending $4.
10:46
4 trillion on healthcare, uh that's an important consideration. Yeah, absolutely.
10:50
I mean, it's incredible to have these very I love how you're approaching it almost from a very macro level.
10:55
Like in the sense of it's not just about micro habit changes, it's about redesigning entire cities or reformatting entire cities, which which I was fascinated when we first met and you walked me through the models, and I remember you showing us how you were thinking parks and spaces could be redesigned and how schools and homes and how they all need to be close to each other.
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And I was thinking, "Wow, this is it's such a practical but macro level."
11:19
I want to dive into some of these areas because I want to give people a small tour of this beautiful book that you've created.
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And of course, highly recommend that everyone grabs the book for all the full details.
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But the The Zones are Sardinia, Nicoya, Loma Linda, Icaria, Okinawa, and Singapore.
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And so, they're not necessarily the most they're not predictable, and they're not places that you'd go, "Oh, yeah, I know that place."
11:43
Like, of course those people live a long time.
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They're they're they're And I've only been to I've been to Sardinia before, and I remember going and meeting with some of the people there, and I was totally blown away.
11:53
I've been to Singapore before, and I met some local individuals, but I wanted to dive into a couple of areas that I highlighted.
11:59
So, I want to talk a little bit about a few things that may sound counterintuitive to people.
12:05
Uh one of these one of these ones was the plant-based diet, because I think a lot of people right now there's a lot of debate over plant-based versus meat-based diet, but this was something that you saw across the board as quite a strong indicator of longevity.
12:22
I think people should eat what makes them feel the best, and I'm not here to tell people what to eat, but I'm also right for National Geographic, and I'm my feet are held to the fire.
12:30
Um so, if I want to talk about a diet of longevity, the our process was to aggregate dietary surveys in all five Blue Zones.
12:41
Universities go out and find what the what the population is eating, and we did that for over the past 80 years.
12:48
So, 155 dietary surveys over 80 years.
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So, we know what a centenarian was eating when they were 20, and what they were what they were eating when they were newly retired.
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And recently, I had over site from Harvard to do what's called a meta-analysis.
13:03
And if you really want to know what a centenarian has eaten most of his or her life, uh it is about 90 to 95% whole plant-based food.
13:12
Uh contrary to sort of the popular keto diets and so forth, it's very high in carbohydrates, but complex carbohydrates Carbohydrates.
13:20
Both jelly beans and and lentil beans are carbohydrates, and obviously, you know, in a way carbohydrates is the worst word in the nutritional dictionary cuz I would argue simple carbohydrates like jelly beans are the most toxic components of our diet, whereas beans is the most healthy.
13:35
Uh the The five pillars of every longevity diet in the world are whole grains, greens and other garden vegetables. It's all seasonal.
13:45
Tubers like sweet potatoes.
13:47
Uh in Okinawa until 1970, about 65 to 70% of all the calories consumed were from purple sweet potatoes. Uh nuts as a snack.
13:56
And then the cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans.
13:59
And if you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's probably worth about 4 years of extra life expectancy.
14:06
They do eat meat, and I readily acknowledge that.
14:09
The Adventists don't all eat meat, but in all blue zones, on average, they were eating meat about five times per month.
14:14
The average American eats about 220 lb of meat a year, which is just too much.
14:21
I think uh there's plenty of evidence to show that that level of meat consumption is highly associated with about a doubling or tripling of your chances of cardiovascular disease and even type 2 diabetes.
14:33
In blue zones, they might be consuming uh 20 lb of meat a year, and it's a celebratory food.
14:38
It's usually uh from an animal that's had a pretty decent life.
14:42
Uh not to say that that that justifies killing it, but um it's just a whole different way of uh consuming meat in a in much lower quantities.
14:53
So, is there room for meat in people's diet?
14:56
Probably, but a lot less than I think we're consuming.
14:59
Yeah, and I love how you've connected and I mean, the amount of analysis that's been done is is truly remarkable.
15:03
And obviously, the amount of years, the fact that you know what someone was eating at 20 years old and and what they've eaten for their whole life is is pretty phenomenal.
15:12
One of these ones that you had here was laughing with friends.
15:14
And you know, I think laughter is laughter and crying both are such underestimated emotions and expressions.
15:28
And I almost feel like I wonder if every one of us who's listening and watching right now did a personal audit on how much we laughed per week. Oh, yeah.
15:37
I'd be intrigued to see how many of us. And I would love that.
15:41
Everyone who's listening and watching just for the next 7 days it sounds like a stupid activity and maybe this makes you laugh and that's great.
15:48
Write down how many times you you truly laughed, not just like hahaha, but like truly laughed every day.
15:52
What did you discover about the importance of laughter because that sounds like such a subtle, soft, small thing, but you you put it in the book.
16:00
Well, it's hard to quantify, quite honestly, but the where that comes from the word sardonic, which is a type of kind of slightly biting but good-natured humor comes from Sardinia.
16:10
And it very much pervades the culture.
16:12
There there's a lot of sort of ribbing, good-natured ribbing of each other.
16:16
And that's sort of a a social currency.
16:19
So when they get together at the end of the day for their glass of wine or two, it's usually they're not sitting around griping about politics or what the left is doing or what the right is doing.
16:28
They're poking fun of each other, the shepherd over the hill.
16:33
And so that was that's an anecdotal observation, but it just seemed to be one of the propellants of a very hearty and healthy social life.
16:43
I wrote the cover story for National Geographic in 2005.
16:49
I don't think anybody was connecting social the quality of your social relations with health or longevity until my first articles and books were.
16:56
And I think there's a a general realization that transcends blue zones that, you know, if you could put the health full properties of a good social life in a tablet, it would be a billion-dollar blockbuster drug.
17:13
Being having at least three friends who you can laugh with, who care about you on a a bad day is worth about eight years of life expectancy over being alone.
17:23
And I don't know of any other supplement or pill that will give you anywhere near that. We inherently know that.
17:30
Like when someone hears that, they sound yeah, yeah, I have three friends.
17:34
But I think like you said, it's the topic of conversation, it's the energetic exchange, it's the vulnerability and the depth of that relationship that seems to be stifled.
17:48
Like you're saying, like we're all searching for the magic pill, but you're saying actually just having three friends that you can call on a bad day is actually going to increase your life expectancy greater than any pill you could take.
17:58
Which just to think about that for a second, like you make it sound so easy, but that's a really powerful point.
18:03
But we maybe don't engage as effectively with three people in our life.
18:08
Where have we gone wrong in that social space?
18:10
What did you kind of come across?
18:12
There's this great Harvard researcher named Robert Putnam.
18:14
He wrote a book called Bowling Alone.
18:16
When he first wrote it wrote it in the late '80s, he he calculated that the average American has three friends.
18:25
Now he now calculates we're down to under two.
18:26
So we may think that we're socially connected, but as a nation we're getting less and less socially connected.
18:33
And I think you know, part of it is this thing right here.
18:36
It's we're using this as a proxy for the face-to-face conversations like we're having right now, which isn't nearly as good.
18:42
Part of it is our environment.
18:44
We spend about twice as much time in our cars than we did in 1980.
18:48
If we're in our cars, we're not out walking, interacting with people, and having those serendipitous social interactions that can lead to friendships.
18:56
We spend 4 and 1/2 hours a day at least interacting with our screens.
19:03
Yet again, another time taken away from social interaction. And we are humans.
19:07
The reason why we're successful over other simians is that we have this capacity to feel empathy for each other, to cooperate with each other.
19:16
And at the end of the day, most things that feel good Mhm.
19:21
uh favor our health and our longevity.
19:24
It's why we get hungry and it feels good to eat or, you know, we get that little urge and it feels good to have sex.
19:31
These are all things that sort of favor the thriving of our of our species.
19:35
Yeah, I want to pick a few things that really resonated with me there.
19:39
First is you spoke about serendipitous moments and I think that that's such a again, it's become so random or rare now to bump into someone at a grocery store and start a conversation.
19:52
We're in a line at anywhere, whether it's the doctor's, whether it's a store, whatever it may be, and everyone's on their phone and it would be rare or actually we'd see it as weird if someone said hello to us.
20:03
We'd kind of look around going like, are you okay? Like, what do you need?
20:07
It would be uncomfortable.
20:08
And I actually think that when those synchronous or serendipitous moments happen where you kind of have a moment of surprise or delight or you bump into someone that feels familiar.
20:20
I had this happen to me through a work thing last week.
20:22
We were going on a work project.
20:23
One person on the team hadn't come to an event yet.
20:26
We hit it off immediately and it felt like serendipity and it was through work and I was just like, I want to build a relationship with this person and I often feel that way.
20:36
And because I moved country and I moved city, so I moved from London to New York to now LA, I've had the positive pressure of having to rebuild community.
20:46
And I remember when I moved to New York and then moved to LA, I said to my wife, I was like, we're not just I'm not just trying to build my career, I want to build community at the same time because you can't really have one without the other.
20:58
I could have an amazing career here, but if I don't have community, how meaningful is my career going to feel?
21:03
And so they were both pursuits and efforts.
21:06
And I remember having this really and I still do it today and I'm 36 years old and I'm not shy about it.
21:12
If I connect with someone or if I enjoy someone's company, I'll just say, "Hey, do you want to come over for dinner? Let's hang out."
21:15
And I try and avoid going out for dinner and I try and avoid going to bars and restaurants because I find them to be loud, I find them to be impersonal and I find them also to be short.
21:26
Like, you'll go out for dinner for an hour and a half and then everyone look at their phone and leave.
21:28
And I almost think that if there's someone that I deeply want to connect with, I'd rather meet them one-on-one.
21:33
And if they can come over to my apartment or my home or whatever it may be, that intimate time and ordering food in kind of creates more time.
21:41
You're now going to spend 3 hours with someone.
21:43
It's likely that you're going to extend that period of time.
21:47
And another thing that's been massive in helping me is I think often we hide in groups.
21:52
So, we go out with big groups.
21:54
We go out with 20 people.
21:54
We go out with 30 people.
21:56
And you then end up having or you go out with six people and you end up having five shallow conversations as opposed to one or two deeper ones.
22:04
Now, I'm not saying I don't hang in groups.
22:06
I do and I enjoy it and my wife and I throw regular game nights and we love that kind of stuff.
22:10
But, I also crave deep, intimate, valuable conversation as well and I know my friends do.
22:18
And so, to me, I've I've tried really, really hard and sometimes, you know, you wear your heart on your sleeve and you say to someone, "Hey, do you want to hang out?" And they're like, "No."
22:27
And and it's okay because I feel like if if I do feel that with someone and someone feels it back with me, that's the beginning of a beautiful friendship as an adult and I feel like we make less friends as adults than obviously we did as kids. And Especially for men.
22:42
Especially for Oh, yeah, interesting. Go ahead. Sorry.
22:44
No, I but I'd actually like to explore this idea of the positive pressure to socialize.
22:48
I think there are a lot of Americans who would love more social interaction. It's just hard.
22:55
And I'm wondering what you Like, if you're a middle-aged American living in Iowa in a small town, how would you use this positive pressure and actually start to build network or build meaningful relationships?
23:09
I find places of equal value, and that could be a bar, a restaurant, a pool bar, a darts place.
23:19
I don't know, I'm thinking of places that people in England definitely go to connect.
23:22
Like, you know, I think sports.
23:25
To me, finding This has happened recently to me here.
23:27
It's like, and I know this is in Iowa, but the idea of I have made Almost.
23:34
I haven't made I've made so many new friends simply playing pickleball.
23:36
So, pickleball has taken over the nation.
23:38
I go to a local park, like literally 10 minutes down the road.
23:43
I go there and I play, and if we've lost a doubles partner or whatever, we'll go up to someone random, or someone will come up to us and say, "Hey, you guys looking for another pair?"
23:52
And we're like, "Yeah, sure."
23:53
And all of a sudden, you're on a text thread, and you're all friends, and you're playing pickleball together twice a week.
23:57
And so, I found that sports, places of equal value, I think charities and give back opportunities are amazing places.
24:04
I think there are so many social networks inside a city that we're not even aware of.
24:11
Obviously, people's schools, and your children's schools, and communities.
24:14
I think there are just so many opportunities to meet like-minded people, and I think if we go there wanting to connect and find people of equal value, I think it's possible.
24:23
And so, I don't know, I've never been to Iowa, so I can't speak specifically for there, but No, no, no. That's great. great stuff.
24:30
Yeah, getting getting into places of Yeah, finding tangents to connect on.
24:35
I don't think you're going to bump into someone at a grocery store.
24:37
I don't think you're going to bump into someone on the street anymore.
24:38
It doesn't work like that.
24:40
But, you will bump into someone if you went to a class, a course, a program, an event.
24:43
I went on a world tour this year.
24:48
We went to nearly 40 cities across the world, and I had people who turned up to my show single, alone, came by themselves, and left with a group of friends. Right?
24:58
Like and that's that I think that's possible but because you're going to a place where you feel safe.
25:01
And they share interests, obviously.
25:03
Sharing and exploring what you're in probably sharing values. Exactly.
25:08
Yeah, it's just that you know, we're sort of relentlessly marketed that the path to health is through this diet program or this exercise program or these supplements or a longevity hack.
25:18
And the realization that quality social interaction is probably better for your health than any of those things.
25:24
There's just people Marketers can't make money off of it so you so you don't hear about it.
25:30
To your point about pickleball, I think it is the most important social innovation that America has seen in the last three decades.
25:36
I'm also pickleball fanatic. I love it. Okay.
25:38
Yeah, and we have this place where I'll just show up at 9:00 in the morning alone and within 10 minutes I'm playing a game and often because there's so much kind of talking back and forth, uh by the end of it I have the seeds of three new friendships and after three months it's a it's a community.
25:55
I I I think it's a wonderful thing.
26:00
A few other things that have worked for me.
26:01
This past summer I I visited Minnesota some.
26:04
I want to expand my social circle.
26:06
So I started I just went through my own contacts just one by one and thought, yeah, that's a person who's a healthy and I'm interested in and I'd like to get to know and I just made Tuesday and Thursday afternoons lunch days cuz it was a low bar, you know, for me to ask somebody to come to lunch with me. I'll pay.
26:26
You know, and instead of investing in a diet program or something or you know, some supplements, I you know, had eight lunches and out of that eight lunches three of those people are, you know, more of a I would say in my immediate social circle now.
26:40
So there's ways to do that.
26:42
It's Yeah, that's brilliant. Super practical.
26:45
Another one that stuck out and I want to go into so many more but this one kind of on that community element and again potentially more anecdotal, but but really powerful and a big part of how we lived in the monastery and and how I was raised, celebrating elders.
27:00
And I I love that idea because my wife's one of my wife's favorite people in the world or her favorite person in the world is her grandmother, who's thankfully still with us and she loves celebrating her.
27:09
She loves spending time with her.
27:11
She loves learning from her.
27:13
She a few years ago she sat down and interviewed her just for herself so she'd have those memories to hold on to her grandma's experiences.
27:20
So she went in asked her grandmother to share with her like old photos and all of this kind of stuff.
27:25
Uh when I think about my monk teachers who are twice my age and celebrating them and being present with them and learning from them, I think celebrating elders is such a part of society that's completely been lost, but especially in Sardinia that stood out.
27:38
Uh walk us through what you saw there.
27:40
Yeah, it's very easy to map respect of of elders as as a longevity strategy for a community.
27:48
So you go into these sort of old man uh bars up in the mountains and instead of seeing the the Sports Illustrated uh swimsuit of the month, you know, you would see the centenarian of the month.
28:00
And They actually have that? Yeah.
28:02
Yes, and in Bon Ai it's called in in the cluster of the blue zone.
28:06
I mean, that's just a outward manifestation, but in um in Sardinia it would shame the family to put your aging parent in a retirement home.
28:16
So they all stay nearby or usually living in the home.
28:20
And they're not just recipients of care.
28:22
I think a lot of people are afraid of that.
28:25
They're expected to participate.
28:28
So the women are helping with child care.
28:30
They they are the keepers of the food tradition.
28:33
Uh the men, you know, they're still advising when to plant, when to sow.
28:37
They know how to make that wonderful blue zones wine, which has the very high levels of antioxidants.
28:44
Um so it's this beautiful virtuous circle where older people are told they matter, they're they're given a reason to get up in the morning, to take their meds, to stay physically fit, to eat right.
28:55
Uh so they're living longer, and then there's something called the grandmother effect that shows that a household with a grandmother living in it or at least nearby, or grandfather or grandmother, those children have lower rates of mortality and lower rates of disease. Mhm.
29:09
So, this circle is what sort of Think of it as an upward ratcheting of uh the life expectancy of the whole community. Mhm.
29:17
And And that becomes harder like even for us like we've moved away.
29:21
We're not close to our our own parents, and of course our grandparents are getting older as well.
29:27
And it's harder when you've the world is growing and the world is getting bigger and you're you're moving and traveling more.
29:32
Is there a way of keeping that connection through phones, through FaceTimes, through visits?
29:36
Like does it Can it still have a similar impact or Yeah.
29:41
Or Or even more immediate have a surrogate grandparent.
29:44
Uh there's a Yale researcher named Becca Levy who found that just having a positive attitude towards aging lowers your mortality by about 40%.
29:52
And And part of that is having older people in your life and learning from their wisdom and honoring it, not you know, forcing them to retire, but finding a way for their wisdom to be put to work even though they might not have as much fluid intelligence as they had when they were 30. Yeah, absolutely.
30:09
Yeah, no, I I have a lot of That That makes me feel really good.
30:12
I'm really happy you brought that up as such a research point.
30:14
I definitely have people in LA that I I see as those elders in my in my life and in my world that can replace those people that I don't always have access to. That's really powerful.
30:28
Uh a couple of things that I want to surprise people with this because this was huge, a couple of fun ones.
30:30
This ideal to drink seven cups of green tea a day.
30:35
I think this was on your TikTok.
30:35
I seven cups of green tea. Talk me through that. That sounds like a lot. Hard to do.
30:42
I was just in Kyoto last week with a researcher who actually very clearly mapped it to frailty.
30:47
Seven is ideal, but as low little as three cups of green tea a day uh is associated with about four extra years of healthy life expectancy. And we don't know why.
30:59
I mean, you can you can guess it's probably the antioxidant antioxidants or the catechins they call them, but it there's there's probably 1,500 compounds in green tea. We don't know for sure.
31:11
But green tea's been around for a long time, and it's consumed daily in volume by at least two of these blue zones.
31:17
And um you know, it's one of these things that you know, rather than turn to the superfood or the super beverage, why not drink what we uh learn from our our ancestors who've achieved the outcomes we want, which is a long healthy life. Yeah, absolutely.
31:33
My wife and I created this uh sparkling adaptogenic tea called Juni.
31:38
And we put one cup of green tea in there.
31:40
And so that's one of the seven, at least.
31:42
I'm doing this for my longevity.
31:46
Uh it's got zero grams of sugar in it. Thank you.
31:49
It's got zero grams of sugar in it, only five calories.
31:50
It's all-natural uh products.
31:52
It's you know, it was it was part of that.
31:55
Like, how do you create something that's fun and healthy at the same time?
31:59
And I'm glad you enjoyed it.
32:01
Yes, and that competes with the sugar-sweetened beverages.
32:03
You're much much better off grabbing a Juni than a you know, a Pepsi. Yeah, ex- You said it.
32:11
No, but no, but that was the goal.
32:11
It was like, I think it's about what what we what you're doing here as well.
32:14
It's about how do we make alternatives accessible, and how do we make healthy options accessible? the head. And easy.
32:20
And you remove the friction of price. Correct.
32:24
You know, I was I named Singapore a blue zone 2. 0.
32:26
And the reason is in in one lifetime, life expectancy has jumped 20 years.
32:32
They now have the highest health-adjusted life expectancy in the world.
32:38
So, they live the longest, healthiest life.
32:39
It's not some coincidence from some ancient culture.
32:43
They very deliberately went went about making, uh, unhealthy food more expensive and harder to get.
32:50
Uh, so, for example, they tax sugar.
32:52
We all know sugar's not good for us.
32:54
Uh, if a Coke in Singapore has 20% less sugar than the same Coke in America.
33:00
So, they've they've mandated it has to be less sugar.
33:03
Meanwhile, they they subsidize things we know are good for us like brown rice.
33:07
They know that driving, especially in traffic, is bad for the air.
33:14
It's bad for, you know, kids get killed in accidents.
33:18
You don't get much physical activity when you're sitting in the car.
33:19
So, they've made car driving incredibly expensive.
33:24
$100,000 just to have the right to drive a car. 300% tax on top of that.
33:29
Therefore, 89% of people in Singapore walk. But, they 89%? 89%.
33:36
Yeah, only 11% people own cars in Singapore.
33:39
But, what that means is that there's all this tax revenue that they're able to sink into a fast, efficient, clean, and air-conditioned, wonderful, uh, public transport system.
33:50
And nobody's more than about 300 m away, uh, from fast, much faster than driving, public transportation.
33:57
You know what the side of benefit of that is?
33:59
Everybody takes about 7,500 steps a day without even thinking about it.
34:03
So, they're already ahead of 75% of Americans just getting to work in the morning or going out to see their friends or going out to eat because they're walking to the subway. Wow.
34:13
That's the way American policy, uh, makers need to start thinking if we really want a healthier America.
34:21
Are you Are you working on the policy shifts, too?
34:23
Is that a big part of your focus or is that Well, yeah.
34:26
You have to work on local policy.
34:28
working with a one of my favorite congressmen, Dean Phillips, about a uh, design for healthier America bill that would provide block grants for cities to do this kind of work.
34:39
So, designing for setting Americans up for health. Mhm.
34:43
Right now, we're set up for ill health in in this country. I hate to say it.
34:47
So, it's just instead of the $4.
34:47
4 trillion a year we spend cleaning up America's health mess, getting ahead of it, which is a much better investment and it also avoids lots of suffering and lots of premature death. Absolutely.
35:01
I mean, speaking on the you know, one of the things I wanted to ask you is what are the things that Americans do currently that are seen as healthy but are actually causing us to gain weight and live a shorter life?
35:11
Are there certain things that you think are marketed, promoted, or focused on for us to become healthier that are having the opposite impact?
35:19
Anytime anybody markets you a superfood, you can be pretty sure it's not.
35:23
Many, if not most of them, have added sugars or processed ingredients or which aren't all that good for you.
35:31
Basically, any packaged food that that trumpets some health benefit, it's probably all not that all not all that good for you.
35:38
In Blue Zones, the the foods they eat have one ingredient.
35:40
You know, the as it comes out of the ground for the most part.
35:44
It's combined in wonderfully delicious ways, but it's not processed. Mhm.
35:49
And it's seasonal, too, right?
35:52
It's often seasonal, but several of the Blue Zones only have two growing seasons, so they still have to get through winter. Right.
35:57
The cornerstone of all these longevity diets are beans and grains, which store beautifully for years at a time and those sort of get people through the times where their gardens aren't producing.
36:08
By the way, you know, we put enormous burden on ourselves trying to tell Americans that they need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.
36:16
You go in the inner city, a lot of people don't know what to do with fresh fruits and vegetables.
36:21
They don't have a taste for them.
36:23
A much greater, easier solution is beans and rice, beans and corn tortilla, beans and pasta, pasta fagioli.
36:32
Whenever you have a bean and a grain and you put them together, you have a whole protein. They're cheap.
36:39
Almost every ethnicity knows how to cook them and make them taste delicious.
36:45
They're usually fast to combine and cook.
36:47
We would serve Americans much better if we sent the message to eat healthy, to start your journey to perhaps live to 100, eat beans and rice.
36:56
What's really hard is I'm I'm listening to you and and and and I see this is the challenge, too.
37:03
It's like it almost seems like all of our bad decisions, whether it's what we eat, whether we walk, whether we work out, are primarily based on high levels of stress.
37:15
So, when we're stressed, you're going to reach for unhealthy food because it makes you feel better.
37:18
When you're stressed, you're more likely to reach for sugar.
37:21
When you're stressed, you're more likely to sleep in or try to sleep in or have bad sleep and then you don't have energy to work out.
37:27
You're more likely to skip a workout or skip walking because you feel stressed.
37:31
You want to rush home in your car and just get in front of the TV.
37:35
And so, so much of our choices are all based on a lot of stress.
37:40
And obviously, in the blue zones, they don't have a stressful life, I imagine.
37:44
You're right fundamentally that stress drives poor decisions and then also, if we're eating a meal and we're stressed, you're mixing you're interrupting that digestion process with cortisol, which is not good for not good for you.
37:59
But, people in blue zones suffer stress just like we do.
38:03
They worry about their kids, they worry about their finances, they worry about their health.
38:06
If you're unhealthy and overweight in America, it's probably not your fault. And I'll tell you why.
38:14
In 1980, about 15% of Americans were obese.
38:16
Now, it's 42 going to 43% of adults.
38:20
So, almost tripling of the obesity rate.
38:22
Uh Uh there's seven times as many people are suffering from type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes.
38:30
That's not because uh 35 years ago people had more discipline or better diet programs or they're or they were better people or they were exposed to less stresses.
38:38
What has changed is our environment.
38:41
I've mentioned before, we're we're driving more, but also the number of fast food restaurants has gone up exponentially.
38:47
Over 50% of all retail outlets, including the place you get your tires changed and the place you pick up your diabetes medicine, force you through a gauntlet of sugar sweetened beverages, chips, and sodas.
39:01
We make about 220 food decisions a day.
39:06
Only 10% of them are conscious.
39:06
The other 200 or so have been orchestrated by marketing and by proximity and convenience and and really mindless decisions.
39:16
And to your point, some of those bad mindless decisions are because of stress, but most of it is because of our unhealthy environment.
39:24
Yeah, I've always said that plant-based has saved me from those gauntlets because I can't eat any of it because all of it Yeah, all of it has some sort of dairy or some sort of animal in it and it's like that's the only reason me and my wife talk about that all the time.
39:36
Whenever we walk past donuts, we walk past donuts and pastries and we're just like gosh, if I wasn't plant-based, I would be because I I I have a massive sweet tooth.
39:46
I grew up eating a ton of sugar.
39:48
I was It was I was exposed to it since I was a kid and so it's taken me years to curb that, but the thing that saves me the most from exactly what you're talking about right now, the donut shop, the the pizza shop, the whatever is I'm plant-based and that's the only thing that saves me.
40:01
I hate to tell you there are plant-based donuts. Oh, no, there are. Yeah, I know.
40:04
I luckily I live So, this is a well-rounded meal.
40:07
No, so I'm going to put I'm going to put it out.
40:10
There is an amazing, if you live in LA, there is an amazing plant-based donut place called Donut Friend. It is unbelievable.
40:19
And I am so lucky that I live like over 30 minutes away from it.
40:24
And so thinking about driving for 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back to get a donut, they don't deliver to where I live, is like that saves me again.
40:29
Uh Van Leeuwen is too close though. That's vegan ice cream.
40:35
imagine if there were you you walk went came out your driveway.
40:38
Every time you came out your driveway there was a there's a special little donut vendor right there. Totally.
40:44
And that's what most Americans are confronted with.
40:45
That the convenience stores, the uh It's hard.
40:47
No matter where you shop, you're tempted by this stuff.
40:52
And yeah, we're set up for really a tough time. Yeah.
40:55
One of the things you mentioned again on your TikTok was you've said that you believe the best weight loss tool is the scale.
41:04
Um I wanted to ask you about that because I think for a lot of people getting on a scale is stressful.
41:06
It's like anxiety-inducing.
41:08
They they look at it and it and it makes them more aware of a number and now they get focused on a number.
41:14
And if they don't make that number, they judge themselves and criticize themselves or they call themselves fat or ugly or name you know, whatever it may be.
41:22
So how what were you trying to get at when you were sharing that? You're right.
41:25
There is a minority of people who obsess about it and it's an anxiety-inducing.
41:31
But for a the aggregate, people who step on a scale every day and confront their weight.
41:37
And by the way, you know, if your weight goes up, yeah, you're going to feel a little kick in the pants.
41:43
But if your weight goes down, there's a little endorphin surge. It's a little reward.
41:48
And and setting up that system, putting a bathroom scale in your way.
41:51
People who self-weigh every day after 2 years weigh about 8 lb less than people who never self-weigh.
41:58
So I actually have one of my little social groups from Los Angeles here. I used to live here.
42:04
I still have four people and I hardly know I've seen them once in my life.
42:07
But every day we email each each our weight.
42:11
And it kind of keeps us uh doing it.
42:13
If we we we're accountable to somebody, and every one of us our weight has gone down a little bit over the last decade or so.
42:19
And for the average American male in 10 years, you're you can expect to gain an extra 10 years.
42:25
So, even among my little focus group, we've been it's worked really quite well.
42:28
Competition and collaboration together are really fascinating. Really, yeah. Yeah, powerful.
42:33
Yeah, it's why pickleball works for me.
42:34
It's It's also why I think I have so many people I know do 10,000 step challenges within their family, and most of those people are walking way over 10,000 steps simply because they're trying to beat someone in their family, and then everyone's average is growing up.
42:48
And so, I think that making something competitive and collaborative is is the genius of the social network, the fitness, the fun in life.
42:59
Like, so much of it comes from that, and I think we've lost that.
43:02
One of the strategies we deploy in our cities, it it's an idea we took from Okinawa, uh the notion of a moai, a committed social circle.
43:08
And we'll get 4 or 500 people to show up to a gym.
43:14
Uh we'll have them circle up according to what neighborhood they live in.
43:16
We ask them a bunch of questions about um, you know, are they religious, what their favorite food is, what they listen for music, and have them look at each other as these questions are being answered.
43:27
And then we have them self-select in groups of five people.
43:29
And a lot of these people are completely lonely.
43:30
And once they self-select in these clusters, we call them moais, we have them give themselves a name.
43:38
And then we organize them around walking together.
43:41
This Everybody can walk together.
43:43
And then we offer a little prize at the end of 10 weeks.
43:45
What happens during that 10 weeks is not only are these people walking a lot more than they normally would, they're creating a social network or a social circle around walking that that uh in many cases, we know about 60% are still around 4 years later.
44:02
So, as you were starting to to latch on to, it's the power of uh collaboration, but creating a social circle around a healthy behavior.
44:10
That's what's going to last, and that's what's going to matter over time. Absolutely.
44:15
I wanted to quickly jump back to diet and food because there's this great technique that you have and you mentioned mentioned and this was popular in parts of India that we're teaching it from this perspective as well that the method you spoke about was being eight out of 10 full when you're eating.
44:31
And when we were trained about that, when we'd hear about it from a from an Eastern Ayurvedic perspective, the idea of how breath is part of feeling full and so food is not the only thing that your stomach is full on was how I was introduced to that idea of being 7/10 full or 8/10 full and the rest would be covered by breath.
44:52
Of course, there's water as well.
44:53
Walk us through that idea of how we can all stop eating at 8/10 full because I think most of us wait till 10 Yeah. 10 or 12 10/8 yeah.
44:59
Yeah, 10/8 yeah, exactly. Yeah.
45:02
So so it it has its roots in a Confucius.
45:08
The Okinawans have this saying hara hachibu, which is a reminder to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full.
45:15
And they'll say that like a prayer before a meal.
45:17
So instead of saying a grace or whatever, that it's a reminder.
45:21
I believe though much of it is is actually done at the table.
45:26
They they tend to pre-plate their foods and put the leftovers away at the beginning of the meal instead of the end when you might be mindlessly eating.
45:33
They don't have a TV, so they're not mindlessly eating to their favorite television show.
45:37
They're they're sitting around with friends, slowing the meal down.
45:41
It takes about 20 minutes from the full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain.
45:45
And if you're wolfing your food down, if you're not breathing like you say, not drinking water, there's a pretty good chance you're going to overeat before you know it.
45:56
It's so fascinating how how have they been able to in these places hold on to these traditions?
46:00
Like even you're saying they I I won't say it like you said it.
46:03
So the the repetition, even the reminder of hey, let's stay 8/10 full at this meal.
46:11
How have they managed to hold on to these very old traditions and ideas and concepts in places that I'm sure are being, you know, commercialized, gentrified, and all the rest of it.
46:22
Like how have they managed to hold on to it?
46:24
Well, it worked until about the year 2000 or 2005 because there haven't been outside influences.
46:31
But in all these blue zones, the American food culture and the onslaught of ubiquitous media is starting to hit.
46:39
It's lagged by 10 or 20 years cuz these are remote areas, but you know, as soon as the American food culture walks in the front door, longevity walks out the back.
46:48
And all of these blue zones sadly are disappearing. Mhm.
46:53
Uh they'll be gone I I I figure in about a half a generation.
46:56
Okinawa is already no longer a blue zone.
47:00
Um so yeah, sadly they're making the same mistakes that we're making.
47:03
You think in our lifetime that Blue zones will probably be gone in in about a decade and a half.
47:09
The the Nicoya blue zone has shrunk to about 1/5 its size.
47:14
The Okinawan blue zone is gone except for people 90 and over.
47:17
You still have a blue zone in that demographic.
47:22
Uh Sardinia, you're starting to see fast food restaurants show up.
47:26
Greece, Ikaria is doing a good job, but I'll tell you why.
47:31
Because the recognition they're they're getting as a blue zone has created an awareness of the incredible treasures of the older people are.
47:39
And younger people in their 20s and 30s are bringing back these traditions and they're celebrating this diet that is producing longevity.
47:49
And I have real hope for the Ikarian blue zone. Mhm.
47:51
Do you think that may be the last standing one?
47:56
I think it'll be the last of the of the Blue Zone 1. 0. Yeah.
47:58
Uh the Singapores, I think there are more and uh my current project is to track down more of these areas where um governments have been successful at manufacturing Blue Zones. Mhm.
48:10
And so, I think those are the going to be the most relevant lessons because hey, let's face it.
48:14
We live, you know, in 2023 and and there are modern forces that we have to contend with and the lifestyle that evolved beginning in 1500 uh isn't as useful.
48:28
It provides lessons and and we can use it to I think model new environments and new policies, but uh it's not exactly an apples-to-apple. Yeah.
48:39
At a at a government level, at a decision-making level, what is making people care or not care?
48:43
Because I think that's something people always think about, right?
48:48
Like all of this makes so much sense.
48:49
If I was in charge, I'd say, "This is how we should be wanting to help people and support people and let's make it easier."
48:56
Because my job on a day-to-day basis is so much about empowering the individual to make better choices, to find healthier options, to build discipline, to almost deal with the onslaught and the gauntlet of everything.
49:08
That's kind of my day job, right?
49:09
That's that's what I'm focused on here.
49:11
But if I was in charge at state levels, I would want to see the changes you're making.
49:16
What is incentivizing and enthusing people at that level to say, "Let's build Singapore 2. 0 and more Blue Zones 2.
49:21
0" versus what's people going, "Nah, it's all right. Like GDP is great." Like what what is that? Yeah.
49:30
Singapore realized a long time ago that its most important resource is its people.
49:34
It's not some industry or not some commodity like a lot of places.
49:37
And it has gone about a very disciplined way of looking at each policy through the lens of does this increase the well-being of people or not?
49:46
And they don't have the the uh voice of a lobbyist speaking loudly in their ear, some sort of uh fundraising incentive to to to favor some, you know, some big business.
49:58
I I think it it really starts with electing leaders who care about who put well-being first.
50:05
Thomas Jefferson, in fact, I believe was the world's first American to say that the charge of any leader is the health and happiness of of the people.
50:15
And I think if if we're able to you know, I don't know what we can't do much about Washington, but we can do a lot in our own communities about the type of mayor and city councils that we elect.
50:26
A lot of the best government in America right now is being done at the municipal level, not the federal level.
50:33
And you can get a lot done in a hurry in in a in a city or even at the county level.
50:38
If someone wants to be involved or help or support and help their community and town become more of a blue zone, where would you suggest they start?
50:45
Well, if you go to the Blue Zones website, there is a bluezones.
50:48
com, there's a button about my community, and you can see how other cities have done it.
50:54
And there's lots of good ideas.
50:54
But honestly, Jay, it requires a an orchestrated effort comprehensively.
50:59
So many have been sort of half-baked ideas or they're not comprehensive enough, and they get people really excited about it, and sponsorship is money is spent, and then not much happens.
51:12
So, inconveniently, unless it's comprehensive, a 4 or 5-year effort staffed by people who know what they're doing with enough intensity, it's probably not going to work. Got it.
51:25
Yeah, it's good to it's good to have that clarity.
51:26
I think a lot of people would want to see this change.
51:29
I can I can imagine, you know, wanting to back this change, and I'm sure a lot of these people are already doing it in their own lives, but they'd love to see it extended out to to others in the future.
51:40
have one one suggestion that most cities can consider.
51:43
There's something called a complete streets policy bundle.
51:47
Every street is redone on average every 7 years and that provides an opportunity to make that street constructed not just for cars as most streets and roadways in America are, but for humans, too.
51:59
So, in other words, they have to be considered for narrower lanes, which calms traffic for bike lanes, for wider sidewalks, for trees, for safe crosswalks.
52:09
And if a city council that adopts complete streets, it it creates an onus for them to make a more walkable, livable community and any city in America can do that.
52:22
And there's by the way, there's great examples.
52:23
Santa Barbara, California has done a fantastic job.
52:27
Boulder, Colorado, fantastic job.
52:30
Madison, Wisconsin, these are places that are not only walkable, but they're economically thriving and people report the highest levels of well-being.
52:36
They have some of the lowest rates of obesity in America.
52:40
So, that's a great place to start for for most American cities.
52:44
I want to make sure everyone knows when you get the book, you're going to hear about sleeps, naps, fasting, sunlight.
52:49
I mean, there are so many other topics that I don't want to go over here because I want you to go and read the book and and dive into the depth of just, you know, how much research, how much thought, how much work has gone into this over the last, you know, a couple of decades from Dan and his team.
53:05
But Dan, I have to ask you about purpose.
53:07
We're on On Purpose and you talk about purpose in the book.
53:10
I remember speaking to you about it last time as being such a key attribute of a successful centenarian was purpose.
53:21
How did they define or view purpose or contributing to the greater good?
53:24
Like, what does that look like for someone in a Blue Zone?
53:29
Well, I have a few things to say about purpose.
53:31
So, it begins in Blue Zones with vocabulary for purpose.
53:35
And in Costa Rica, it's plan de vida and in Okinawa, it's ikigai.
53:42
So, it's imbued in their in their culture.
53:46
Um, but it's manifested purpose in in blue zones is rarely an individual pursuit.
53:52
It's like my and my purpose is stamp collecting or something or butterflies.
53:56
It always has a a social component or a philanthropic giving back to the community, supporting the family, supporting my my group component to it, a service component to it.
54:08
And um, you know, I do a lot of thinking about it what in our in our blue zone work, uh, we have this uh, purpose workshop and you'd be shocked at how many Americans wake up every morning tired, they pull uh, the breakfast together for their
54:24
kids, get them off to school, rush to work, wait work eight to nine hours, muscle through traffic back home, get dinner back together and the stress just never goes away and only about 30% of Americans uh, have purpose in their work. That's according to a Gallup poll
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That's according to a Gallup poll that uh, surveyed about 2 million Americans.
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I think purpose is the intersection between having clarity on what your values are, knowing what you love to do, knowing what you're good at and then studying those three lists for an outlet for them.
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That's true purpose, I think.
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That's available to all of us.
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But the uh, founding director of the National Institutes on Aging, Dr.
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Robert Butler, uh, found that people who could articulate their sense of purpose over time were living about eight years longer than people who are rudderless.
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So, there's a real health benefit, but more so than a health benefit, it's just an enjoyable, rich way to live your life and anything you can do to get more purpose in your life, uh, including, I might add, listening to this podcast twice a week every week of your life, uh, is time well spent. Dan, thank you so much.
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Uh, the book is called The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer, Lessons from the Healthiest Places on Earth.
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Dan Buettner, this is the book.
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Make sure you go grab a copy.
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Like I said, we didn't even scratch the surface.
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There are so many things I could talk to Dan about, but I want you to go grab the book. I want you to read it. I want you to study it.
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I want you to see these beautiful uh summary pages that are absolutely fantastic that talk about the key learnings from each of the Blue Zones that Dan's been to and studied because it makes it really easy to just pick it up, reflect, have a discussion about it.
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I hope that I hope that you're going to reach out to a group of people that should listen to this podcast that are going to be part of that tribe, part of that squad, part of that social circle for you all, whether it's a book club, whether it's a pickleball team, whatever it may be.
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Uh I really hope that that social part is not underestimated and undervalued.
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And Dan, I thank you again for coming all the way.
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You just flew in an hour before this.
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Literally landed, came from the airport, stepped in the seat, gave a beautiful interview with all your energy, passion, and uh it's it's truly remarkable, and I'm really grateful for your work. So, thank you so much.
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It's been an honor and a pleasure, Jay. Thank you. Thank you.
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Always been a fan and continue to be.
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We'll see you when you're 100. Yes. Yeah. Thank you.
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If you loved this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr.
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Gabor Maté on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
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Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable.
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So, a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it?
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It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.