[mountainriver]

Blue zones were always just eat healthy, exercise, and having friends.

I believe that these things almost certainly help longevity as a number of independent studies into each of these show that, and it’s intuitively obvious

[makeitdouble]

> eat healthy

It sounds so simple, yet incredibly controversial when we go into the details.

The people actually living up to 100+ years usually have been drinking/smoking or doing some other drugs to some extent, and that alone is a whole can of worm in the current climate.

> having friends

They are many unreported elderlies living alone in the middle of nowhere minding their business. I remember a documentary about a guy growing mushrooms (Shiitake) in the forest and only getting down to the town every 6 months to give them to his wife, and he'd get back to being alone until the next time.

[HerbManic]

It is just good advice. I follow this fairly closely, not so much for life span (although that would be nice) but simply for health span.

Knowing my luck some hyper cancer will just come out from somewhere and take me out in a few weeks or I just slip down the stairs one day. But I try to sway the odds.

[loeg]

No, they were fraud. Eating healthy, exercising, and having friends is great advice for statistical longevity, but is distinct from the concept of "blue zones," which were just pension fraud.

[djtango]

Community is the one that I feel is most under threat these days...

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I think you've missed the entire point of TFA.

It is, in fact, highly debatable whether blue zones exist at all. That is, it is highly debatable whether there are any places in the world where longevity is statistically significantly longer than anywhere else.

Newman says (and insists) that the answer is "there are none". Buettner insists "there are". One of them is wrong.