Blue Zone Red Flags

Behind the scenes of the vegan agenda

I recently started watching a “documentary” series on Netflix about the Blue Zones. I use quotes from the documentary because, within a few minutes of the first episode, the bias of the presenter was obvious.

For me, a good documentary presents the facts and follows where they lead. With this program, facts and anecdotes are offered, and then the presenter jumps to his agenda — a plant-based diet — despite them. Not again, I thought.

The Vegan (now often referred to as “plant-based” since Vegans have annoyed people to the point where they are quickly ignored or otherwise dismissed) agenda in the US was first advanced by Ellen G. White and her husband, James Springer White as part of the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Existing under several different names at its beginning, the Church took off in the early 1860s.

The Seventh-day Adventists believe that eating meat will corrupt your immortal soul — making women lustful and men prone to masturbation.

One of the early heroes of the Church was John Kellogg, who developed Kellogg’s Corn Flakes as an alternative breakfast to the popular bacon or steak and eggs. And while starting in Michigan, the Seventh-day Adventist Church now has its headquarters in Maryland and has a major presence in Loma Linda, California.

I was aware of the above before watching the first episode of the program, and now you are, too, so we can get back to the red flags of the Blue Zones.

Blue Zones are areas with reported high concentrations of people in their 90s and 100s — longevity zones if you will. There are five such so-called Blue Zones on Planet Earth:

1. Nuoro Province, Sardinia, Italy

2. Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

3. Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica

4. Ikaria, Greece

And, wait for it…

5. Loma Linda, California, United States

Not only is one of the five Blue Zones an important location for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but the church is now the owner of the Blue Zone brand. It has another unique feature relative to the other four Blue Zones — it is the only one that isn’t geographically isolated. Sardinia, Okinawa and Ikaria are islands and the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rico is cut off from the rest of the country by a thick rainforest.

One advantage of the physical isolation of a population, concerning longevity, is the relative lack of genetic diversity within that population. Of course, if the population is too small and too isolated, that’s not so good genetically speaking. But the four isolated Blue Zones aren’t completely isolated, so the genetic angle is a possibility. Indeed, this study from 2012 shows that “Consistent with the hypothesis that the genetic contribution is largest with the oldest ages, the sensitivity of the model increased in the [group] with older and older ages.”

Other studies of people who live into their 100s have shown that many of these old folks share an unusual version of the Forkhead box protein O3 (FOXO3) gene. This study describes how this gene might impact longevity.

While there are many factors contributing to how long a person lives, this study found that parental longevity is one of the most important predictors of survival to age 100 for both men and women — strongly suggesting that there is a genetic mechanism at work.

Despite claims of studying the Blue Zones for over 20 years, the presenter of the program dismisses genetics as a factor. But remember, Blue Zones is a brand — a brand he’s trying to sell to you. It’s not in the brand’s interest to point out that a major factor in longevity is something you already have (your genes) and not something they can sell you.

In Episode 1 of the docuseries, the presenter makes his bias pretty clear in one scene while talking with a group of old Okinawans. Speaking with the eldest of the group — a woman of over 100 years — he asked her opinion on why she and others in Okinawa have lived so long. The centenarian’s insight focuses on a life low in stress. The presenter says How interesting, and then focuses on what he claims is their diet.

Interestingly, the research on the FOXO3 gene referenced above points to the longevity mechanism being related to stem cell production and oxidative stress. Without going into the details of the research, the FOXO3 gene prevents new stem cells from being generated in times of stress (where they are unlikely to survive). This allows the body to produce these life-extending cells when they will be most effective. A low-stress life would, theoretically, extend this period of cellular regeneration.

But while stress-reduction techniques are something Blue Zones could sell you, it seems the bias is toward diet — and a plant-based one at that.

Purple Potatoes

At this point, the program presenter turns to what he refers to as the Okinawan Diet. He points to the purple tuber that Okinawans survived on after WW2, when the indigenous population of wild pigs, and their cultivated cousins, was almost completely wiped out. That’s right, before the war, pork was an important part of Okinawans’ diet — in fact, Okinawa was known as the Island of Pork. It was again a staple once the pig population was recultivated on the island. And they don’t just eat pork ribs and chops — they eat the whole pig, nose to tail. Okinawans have a saying that when it comes to pigs, they eat everything but the squeal.

The thing is, those first studying the diet of Okinawans did so right after the war — while the island’s inhabitants were eating purple potatoes, as it was the only widely available food source. Before the war, this purple tuber was grown as food for the pigs that were such a big part of their diet.

But the plant-based narrative is pushed, despite studies like this one that reported:

1. Nutrient intakes in 94 Japanese centenarians investigated between 1972 and 1973 showed a higher proportion of animal protein to total proteins than in contemporary average Japanese.

2. High intakes of milk and fats and oils had favorable effects on 10-year (1976–1986) survivorship in 422 urban residents aged 69–71. The survivors revealed a longitudinal increase in intakes of animal foods such as eggs, milk, fish and meat over the 10 years.

3. Nutrient intakes were compared, based on 24-hour dietary records, between a sample from Okinawa Prefecture where life expectancies at birth and 65 were the longest in Japan, and a sample from Akita Prefecture where the life expectancies were much shorter. Intakes of Ca, Fe, vitamins A, B1, B2, C, and the proportion of energy from proteins and fats were significantly higher (and intakes of carbohydrates and salt (NaCl) were lower) in the former than in the latter.

The author of the study, Hiroshi Shibata, commented: “Unexpectedly, we did not find any vegetarians among the centenarians.”

This is in direct contradiction to the slant of the program.

This, to me, points to pushing an agenda that claims to extend one’s life despite evidence that the opposite is true. But that’s what the Seventh-day Adventist Church is willing to do to save your immortal soul. How nice of them…

It’s Greek to Me

Moving on to Ikaria, Greece, we run into a couple of other problems. To start with, one of the proponents of the “Mediterranean Diet” was known fraudster Ancel Keys. He was selling a low-fat diet to the American government — and low saturated fat in particular. His visit to the Greek Islands, to study their diet, was made during the Catholic period of Lent — a time when meat consumption is at its lowest. That someone selling a low saturated fat diet chose to study the diet of long-lived people during a 40-day period where they were avoiding animal products suggests they are looking for evidence to support their case — even if it isn’t representative of the long-lived overall diet. Keys, however, wasn’t looking to save your immortal soul — he was looking for fame and funding back in the USA.

Another problem with the diet research that was done in Greece was the questionnaire they used to collect data on what was being eaten. The questionnaire had only one place to enter how much meat a given person ate — and the Greek word used for that entry was the word for beef. The problem here is that Greeks eat a lot of meat that isn’t beef, and no one would think to enter the amount of lamb, goat, or chicken that they ate in the space labelled “beef.” This was compounded by the fact that the island of Ikaria has very few cows, and hence, beef is not eaten very often.

Also missing was a place to record dairy products, like milk cheese or yoghurt. But whoever thinks of cheese or yoghurt when they think of Greek food…

Were these errors made on purpose? Hard to know. What’s easy to see, however, is that they greatly underestimated the amount of animal products eaten by those living on Ikaria.

What About the Data?

Diet aside, there is the issue of overall data quality concerning the age of these alleged centenarians. There have been many studies looking at other variables that might predict super-longevity, besides living in a Blue Zone. One study looked at centenarians in the US going back to the 1800s — before all states had mandatory birth registration.

Interestingly, they found that the best predictor of the percentage of centenarians in the local population, across a wide range of variables, was whether or not birth records were kept by the local government. That is, as states adopted mandatory birth registration, the percentage of centenarians within the state went down.

“The introduction of state-wide birth certification coincides with a sharp reduction in the number of centenarians born in each state. In total, 82% of the centenarian records from the USA predate state-wide birth certification. Forty-two states achieved complete birth certificate coverage during the survey period. When these states transition to state-wide birth registration, the number of centenarians falls by 80% per year overall and 69% per capita when adjusted relative to c.1900 state population sizes.”

This suggests that before mandatory birth registration, there was some “inaccuracy” in reported age. The authors of the analysis suggest clerical errors and pension fraud as potential reasons for the inaccuracies. For example, the Italian government found, in 1997, that they were paying out pensions to 30,000 dead people — these were people who had died, but the family didn’t report them as having died so they could continue receiving that person’s pension every month.

This reminded me of how over three million children went missing in the US in 1992. You see, before then, one could claim a child as a dependent on their tax forms by simply writing their name on a line. I remember doing this after my first child was born, thinking Really, they don’t ask for any proof that my child exists? But things changed for the tax year 1992 — you had to also enter each claimed child’s Social Security number on your 1040. And with that tax form change, over three million children vanished.

This same team of researchers looked at data from countries with more complete birth documentation. In those countries, the big predictor of longevity was related to income — or, more accurately the lack thereof. The big surprise, however, was that increased levels of poverty among populations predicted greater numbers of people living into their 100s. This was particularly true for the UK, France, and Japan.

Italy didn’t have the income/poverty data available for analysis, so other variables were looked at. Interestingly, many areas within Italy have a strange relationship between Survival to Age 55 and living into your 90s and beyond. This odd relationship is most clearly seen in the Province of Olbia-Tempio, in northern Sardinia. Olbia-Tempio has a relatively poor rate of survival to the age of 55. But if you make it past 55, you have a higher-than-average likelihood to live into or even past your 90s.

The authors chalk this up to likely errors in record keeping. However, I had a look at some of the top industries in the area and found that mining, petrochemical processing, and fishing were prevalent. Many of the jobs associated with these industries are dangerous. Maybe if you make it into your 50s without a major work-related accident, you are the kind of person who knows how to survive. Or maybe the centenarians in Olbia-Tempio work in other industries — tourism is also big in that area, and not nearly as dangerous as mining.

There are a lot of other findings that counter the importance and/or relevance of the Blue Zones in that research paper, but those I’ve presented make the point: For the most part, the Blue Zones aren’t anything special.

The one Blue Zone that is a bit different from the other 4 is Loma Linda, California. Before knowing that the Seventh-day Adventist Church owned the Blue Zone brand, I thought it very strange that this non-isolated city of 25,000 people should have so many centenarians. Once I learned of the connection, it all made sense.

This just scratches the surface of the problems with Blue Zones, but this article seems as too long as it is, and the above issues, in my opinion, are enough to reject the validity of said zones.

Let me know your thoughts!