>The people who live in the Blue Zones — five regions in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. researchers have identified as having the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world — move their bodies a lot. They have social circles that reinforce healthy behaviors. They take time to de-stress. They're part of communities, often religious ones. And they're committed to their families.
Then it goes ahead and talks entirely about diet without bothering to show that diet has anything to do with long life at all...
It really is an odd way to start the article. The first three paragraphs seem to undermine the idea that diet is such a central element in a long lifestyle, but then in the next two it just sort of waves that away with a "but diet is worth a close look, too".
I think they're trying to avoid people thinking that it's all about diet. They don't want you to think that you can be physically inactive, live a high-stress life, but eat this magic diet, and you'll live to 100.
I'm tired of media abusing and bullshitting people's health consciousness and wanting to know what to eat.
I'm even more appalled at the scientists who have no idea how nutrition works.
We're down to treating the body like a black box and resorting to laws of thermodynamics (aka calorie counting) or anecdotal knowledge of veggies are good cheesecake is bad. It is increasingly absurd in an era of synthesizing proteins designed to combat specific diseases that we can't tell people who want to eat healthy what to do with any scientific backing.
Aside from their diet, the other factor these communities all have in common is that they are isolated, either socially or geographically, or both. Which means that their gene pool is also isolated. Which means that if they happen to have mutations that lead to long life, those mutations are likely to persist locally.
The real question is, who wants to live to 100? I don't.
I was recently talking to my dad about my grandfather who lived to the ripe old age of 98. He was relatively healthy, mobile, and mentally sharp but the thing that seemed to bother him the most was a particular type of loneliness he was experiencing. The loneliness of not having those individuals in his life that he grew old with like my grandmother and childhood friends. Life without those you love and shared experiences with just doesn't seem worth it.
If you don't have friends when you are that old then that's not your problem, it's theirs. I would have hobby or my grandchildren if I feel lonely at that age. I want to live forever, yes I'm not greedy, think about the vastness of the Universe, even if everyone on this planet occupy a new planet still we have so many planets and stars. It's our limited beliefs to not live forever.
I want to live to 100 (or more!) because I am confident that I will be able to make new friends even as I grow older. The new friends may not get my references to 90's TV shows, but I'll be willing to forgive them for that.
As with so many of these kinds of articles, it skips talking about what they don't eat: sugared drinks, refined carbs, industrially refined oils, factory farmed animal products, etc. etc.
Living healthily is really, really simple: if it comes in a packet, don't eat it!
Not only that, it is biased towards the notion thathat it is what we do and eat that makes us live longer, while not exploring the possibility that environmental factors could instead be making us live shorter. Air pollution, chemicals, or anything else really.
I'm also surprised they didn't mention how all the blue zones happen to be gorgeous environments, warm (but not too warm), sunny, with good soil, etc.
Seed oil is mechanically pressed from the seed. Then the remaining oil is chemically extracted from the seed meal with hexane, then the hxane is boiled off and used again. Unsaturated seed oils go rancid as part of this production process. The odor is removed from the oil with steam.
>The people who live in the Blue Zones — five regions in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. researchers have identified as having the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world — move their bodies a lot. They have social circles that reinforce healthy behaviors. They take time to de-stress. They're part of communities, often religious ones. And they're committed to their families.
Then it goes ahead and talks entirely about diet without bothering to show that diet has anything to do with long life at all...