Have you heard about “Blue Zones“? What about “blue zones” diet? It appears that Blue Zones refers to the home to the healthiest and happiest communities in the world. A well known explorer, a National Geographic Fellow and best-selling author Dan Buettner has gathered food recipes from these blue zones called the ‘Blue Zones‘ diet.

Based on his extensive travel experience around the world, Dan has explored local diet where most people live long and healthier including places like Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California.

A Quest for Long & Healthier Living

In a recent article in CNN Health, Dan Buettner writes about his quest to find places (dubbed as “blue zones“) around the world where people live long & healthy and what he learn from his extensive travel about their food and life style. After his more than 15 years of exploration, he writes that “the foods the people in these areas eat are a big part of their secret, and a plant-based lifestyle underpins the world’s longevity diet“.

For more than a decade, author Dan Buettner has been working to identify hot spots of longevity around the world. With the help of the National Geographic Society, Buettner set out to locate places that not only had high concentrations of individuals over 100 years old, but also clusters of people who had grown old without health problems like heart disease, obesity, cancer, or diabetes.

National Geographic, April 2017.

In the CNN Health article, the author states about dietary habits of peoples from blue zone as follows.

For most of their lives, the world’s super-agers have nourished their bodies with whole, plant-based foods, such as leafy vegetables, tubers, nuts, beans and whole grains. And they ate meat fewer than five times monthly.

Dan Buettner, CNN Health

Blue Zones Project Communities

Blue Zone Project is a program started by the best-selling author Dan Buettner to apply his knowledge from blue zones to improve the health & well being of communities in US including Albert Lea, Minnesota; Fort Worth, Texas; Naples, Florida; and three beach cities in California.

Blue Zones Kitchen

Dan has written several books about how to eat and live like the World’s healthiest people, including his latest best-selling cookbook The Blue Zones Kitchen: 100 Recipes to Live to 100 (Amazon: $27:00 hardcover). The cookbook includes 100 recipe which he gathered from food diet from the blue zones around the World.

This post was inspired by an explorer, a National Geographic Fellow and best-selling author Dan Buettner’s post A ‘blue zones’ diet: Live longer from what you eat at CNN Health.