The quest to live forever has taken us from diet fads to geographic fantasies like Blue Zones. But none of these ideas are based in reality, according to Washington Post health columnist Anahad O'Connor and Saul Justin Newman, a researcher on aging. This episode was produced by Zachary Mack and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members "Blue Zones" founder Dan Buettner, who produced "Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones" Netflix show, in an appearance. Photo credit: Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Can a diet help us live longer?
Today on the show, we ask, can a diet help us live much, much longer? We do know that someone will always be trying. There's venture capitalist Brian Johnson and his vegetables for breakfast.
This is freshly made with broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, garlic, ginger, hemp seeds, and one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil.
There's David Murdoch, the 101-year-old chairman of Dole Foods and his somewhat bizarre fruit-forward diet.
I eat the skins of bananas, the skins of oranges, the skins of pineapple.
There's the Blue Zones diet, which is taken from places in the world where people are said to routinely live to 100.
The five pillars of every longevity diet in the world are whole grains, greens, tubers like sweet potatoes, nuts, and beans.
And then there's the possibility that this is a lot of nonsense. Coming up on Today Explained.
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Hey there, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of Channels, the show about what happens when tech and media collide. And this week, we're talking to Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram and who also runs Threads. And he told me what Threads was originally going to be called.
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Chapter 2: What diets do people in Blue Zones follow?
So there's lots of different diets and approaches to this.
Our listeners will know that about a year ago, I got really obsessed with ultra-processed foods. We did an episode. I was refusing to buy bread from the supermarket. I was insisting that I didn't get it at home. And it went on. It's really hard to do. That went on for maybe three months, four months, five months. I gave it up.
This morning, I was in a crappy mood and I ate a Snickers bar, like literally 6 a.m. So which diet are you on?
I tend to follow a diet where I get a lot of whole foods. I try to avoid ultra-processed foods, but not always. I also have two little kids, so they tend to dictate our shopping and purchasing patterns. But I try to eat foods that are high in protein because I know that promotes satiety, also helps to promote weight loss. generally good for your health.
Avoid the ultra-processed foods with lots of additives and high in sugar and fat and salt. And try to eat sort of a Mediterranean kind of diet, a diet that has a lot of unsaturated fats. So things like olive oil, nuts, seeds, seafood. I like fermented foods like yogurt and kimchi and sauerkraut because these foods have probiotics, which are the friendly bacteria that help your gut microbiome.
And that also plays a role in
Have you heard of blue zones?
Absolutely. Blue zones have been very influential in the nutrition and lifestyle medicine space. So the idea behind blue zones is that these are sort of pockets around the world where people have food. an unusually long lifespan compared to others. And it's thought that this is because of the different lifestyle habits they follow.
People in blue zones are living a long time because they're socializing, because they know their purpose and they live their purpose. They live near nature. They keep their families close by. And we can map all of these to higher life expectancy.
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