Eat, love and live a hundred years – 09/24/2023 – Ronaldo Lemos

It’s fashionable now to talk about “blue zones”. These are the regions of the planet where people live longer than expected, exceeding one hundred years. For example, Icaria, the Greek island in the Aegean Sea, the Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica, the islands of Okinawa in Japan, or the Loma Linda Adventist community in California. Completely different places, but with the longevity (and health) of their inhabitants in common. There’s even a recent documentary on the subject on streaming (which I haven’t seen).

Several studies attempt to “reverse engineer” these regions, seeking the secret to long and healthy life. For example, eating habits. Several regions consume 90% or more foods of plant origin, with emphasis on black beans, sweet potatoes, lentils and soybeans (consumed as tofu). They practically do not consume milk and dairy products or sugar.

Meat consumption (mostly pork) occurs around five times a month in small portions. Fish is also consumed in small quantities. Several, but not all, blue zones consume wine, limited to one or two glasses per day.

Many people look at this data and come to the conclusion: simply adopting the blue zone diet is enough to live for over a hundred years. Nothing more wrong. The common point between all these regions is not diet. It’s the quality of relationships. In all blue zones, people cultivate strong and lasting relationships with each other. This sense of community is the cornerstone of a longer life.

This finding appears not only by observing the blue zones, but also in Harvard’s famous multigenerational study on adult development that has followed groups of people and their children for 85 years. The same conclusion is also found in research from the Stanford Longevity Center: strong relationships and socialization are central to a healthy life.

The question that remains open is precisely the impact of technology on personal relationships. Does the virtual produce effects similar to real connections? For example, in Loma Linda the inhabitants are strongly united by religious ties. In Okinawa, people practice “moai”, the habit of cultivating a group of five friends, committed for life.

In a world increasingly mediated by technology, wouldn’t people be becoming individualized and disconnected from each other? Could technology be the force capable of dynamiting one of the pillars of longevity? Even though the number of virtual connections grows, their quality declines.

A Gallup study determined that friendship ties are not equal. There are at least eight types of friends that are vital throughout life. The “builder”, who helps with our training. The “collaborator”, with whom we do projects together. The “connector”, who introduces us to important people, and so on. These roles can hardly be performed online.

It is also worth remembering the survey carried out in the USA in 2019, which found that 22% of millennials have zero friends. In previous generations, the number of friendless people was around 9%. These are people who live in the opposite of a blue zone. They are closer to a dark zone, a bad omen for all of us.

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It’s over Collective values ​​and homogeneous communities

Already Individualism driven by technology

It’s coming Aspiration to restore the balance between individualism and collectivity as a pillar of contemporary politics

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