The Blue Zones Challenge focuses on setting up your environment to make healthy choices the easiest choices. By borrowing lifestyle practices common to blue zones—areas with the longest-lived people in the world—we can optimize the places we live, socialize, and work. Our homes can become mini blue zones, and along with our social network, we can expand the reach and improve the overall health of our immediate circle, including friends and family and even our greater community.

Individual change is hard—willpower runs out quickly. Most New Year’s resolutions last just four to six weeks. In the Blue Zones Challenge, I help you make over your own environment—in your kitchen, in your home, in your yard, in your office, and even in your social circle. Each aspect of the Blue Zones Challenge will help you create a lifestyle that supports longevity and a better quality of life. 

1. Enjoy a Japanese or Costa Rican breakfast.

Breakfast in the blue zones looks vastly different from the standard American breakfast of eggs and bacon. Beans and rice are a common breakfast staple in Costa Rica, while miso soup and rice are popular in Okinawa. In Loma Linda, centenarians often eat a hearty breakfast of oatmeal or a somewhat nontraditional tofu scramble.

In most blue zones regions, breakfast doesn’t look that different from other meals of the day. Retraining yourself to enjoy soup and bread or even a hearty salad and sandwich in the morning might take some getting used to, but it’s an easy way to simplify your cooking routine while cutting out American breakfast favorites that are most often heavy in fat and sugar. Put together a hearty meal using healthy blue-zones staples such as cooked whole grains, fruits and veggies, and beans. 

2. Set up your home for better health by design.

Trying to change your behavior without changing your environment will lead to failure. Now is the time to set up your home and your kitchen for success. You will have a much easier time if you don’t have candy on your counter and a pantry filled with chips and soda. We’re not telling you to never have this kind of food, but please don’t bring it into your house.

Prepare to make this transition easy by decluttering your pantry, kitchen, and refrigerator: Physically remove foods that are off-limits or might be too tempting but that your family members don’t want to throw out, such as candies or junk and processed items, and clear your countertops of any kinds of snack foods (that open bag of chips, the box of crackers). Most of us are on a “see-food diet”: We tend to eat what we see. Create an inconvenient junk food cabinet or drawer that is up high or down low.

3. Socialize more. 

Americans had an average of three close friends in the 1980s. Today, that number has dropped to between one and two. If you don’t have at least three friends whom you can call up on a bad day, research shows that you could be shaving about eight years off your life expectancy.

Research also shows that happiness is contagious, but so are smoking, obesity, and loneliness. The social circles of long-lived people have favorably shaped their health behaviors. To reap the benefits that blue zones residents experience, reach out more socially and nurture strong friendships. The more you socialize, the happier—and healthier—you’ll be.

To start: Volunteer in your community for a cause that you care about and that speaks to you. If it’s something you do weekly or monthly, hopefully you will see and meet people with like-minded interests.

4. Start an outdoor or container garden.

In all blue zones, people continue to garden even into their 90s and 100s. Gardening is the epitome of a blue zones activity because it’s sort of a nudge: You plant the seeds and you’re going to be nudged in the next three to four months to water the plants, weed them, harvest them. And when you’re done, you’re going to eat an organic vegetable, which you presumably like because you planted it. Plus, you’re moving naturally while you’re outside enjoying the healing power of the sun and nature and fresh air.

Mugwort, ginger, and turmeric are all staples of an Okinawan garden, and all have proven medicinal qualities. By consuming these every day, Okinawans may be protecting themselves against illness.

5. Optimize your mealtimes.

Focus on food. Turn off the TV and the computer. If you’re going to eat, just eat. You’ll eat more slowly, consume less, and savor the food more. Use smaller vessels: Choose to eat on smaller plates and use tall, narrow glasses. Studies show you’re likely to eat significantly less without even thinking about it.

Excerpted and adapted from The Blue Zones Challenge by Dan Buettner, published by National Geographic books

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Combining subtle flavors from Southeast Asia, East Asia, and some of the world’s most powerful longevity ingredients, the Okinawan diet has produced not only the world’s longest lived population but also some of Asia’s most delicious food. 

Okinawa is a Pacific archipelago that was once known as the Ryukyu Kingdom. Its location—south of most of the Japanese islands, roughly 800 miles south of Tokyo, 400 miles east of the coast of China, and 300 miles north of Taiwan—has meant that it has served as a trading post for centuries.

For hundreds of years, China exerted most of the culinary influence, along with the traditional Chinese medicine practice of categorizing foods as cooling or warming foods. When Japan annexed Okinawa in 1879, the Japanese culinary influence grew stronger. Today Okinawan cuisine is a delicious blend of Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Japanese cooking styles, along with its native tropical vegetables and fruits. You won’t find many of these regional dishes and delicacies anywhere else.

Through the mid-20th century, when the current crop of Okinawan centenarians were developing as young adults and establishing lifelong eating habits, the quotidian diet consisted mainly of tubers, garden-grown greens and vegetables, tofu, and a little seafood. About 60 percent of all calories came from just one source: a purple variety of sweet potato known locally as beni imo. Why? Mostly because typhoons blew through the islands several times a year, wiping out most other crops but sparing these underground tubers. The Okinawan sweet potatoes were abundant, easy to prepare, and—dressed up with garlic chives or sesame oil—could be made to taste delicious.

Over the centuries, Okinawan cooking assimilated rice, sugarcane, and many of the other wild vegetables you might see in an Asian market. Okinawans’ use of bitter melon, as well as herbs and spices like turmeric, is evidence of the southern and southeastern Asian influence. In the 16th century, a semi-savage strain of black swine arrived on the island and proliferated slowly; by the late 19th century, most households kept a family pig, and pork found its way into Okinawan cuisine (though mostly as a celebratory food).

Most of what we know about Okinawa’s longevity diet comes from Blue Zones collaborators Bradley Willcox and his brother Craig, along with their mentor, Dr. Makoto Suzuki. For more than a half-century and in their best-selling book, The Okinawa Program, they’ve chronicled what Okinawans have eaten traditionally and how the ingredients may explain longevity. They reveal that Okinawan tofu is firmer and more packed with protein and phytonutrients; turmeric, used in teas and soups, is a powerful antioxidant and anticancer agent; and goya, the main ingredient in champuru stir-fries, has powerful compounds that control blood sugar. Plus, the ubiquitous purple sweet potato is high in B vitamins and potassium, and it has a higher concentration of the antioxidant anthocyanin (from purple pigment) than blueberries.

Lately, the brothers have been investigating FOXO3, what they call a “genius gene.” It helps our cells clean up waste and reduces inflammation in the body. (Chronic inflammation is at the root of every major age-related disease.) FOXO3 also helps cells detect a malfunction and signals the cell to destroy itself, lowering the chances of cancer. And what activates FOXO3? Turmeric, kelp, green tea, and tofu—all four pillars of the traditional Okinawa diet.

Like all other blue zones regions, several nondietary factors explain longevity on Okinawa. First, the word “retirement” doesn’t exist in the native dialect. Instead ikigai, or “a reason for being,” imbues every adult life. Having a strong sense of purpose is associated with about eight extra years.

Other longevity advantages include the Okinawan propensity to support each other by forming moais (pronounced moe-eye), or committed social circles, and by practicing yuimaru, the spirit of mutual aid. Traditionally, Okinawan peasants didn’t have access to bank loans, so they’d form groups of five to eight people and agree to meet regularly. At each meeting, moai members would chip in a sum of money to be given to the member with the greatest need. Through the middle of the 20th century, moais helped the community, providing aid to farmers needing to buy seed or covering the medical costs of a sick child. While moais are still popular in Okinawa, they’re now mostly a social affair, and an excuse to gather around a meal. Nevertheless, the bond is authentic, and moai members tend to support each other, literally and figuratively. This ancient practice helps prevent loneliness, an increasingly prevalent ailment in the modern world that can be as bad for your health as a smoking habit.

Want a taste of Okinawan cuisine? Try Sweet Potato Bites, a recipe from The Blue Zones Kitchen.

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Excerpted from The Blue Zones Kitchen, by Dan Buettner. Copyright © 2019 by Dan Buettner. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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Recipe adapted from Blue Zones.

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