This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you here Weekday Afternoon is on the Drive. You may have seen Dan Buetner's work on National Geographic Explorer. He is he's done a study and has and has figured out how people are living longer and healthier lives across the globe and he's trying to bring that now to the United States. His new book out is called The Blue Zone Secrets for Living Longer. Dan Mutner, Welcome. Let's
start with where you started. What brought this topic to your attention. Well, I was interested when I was a reader of National Geographic and I read this story about large have you written in nineteen seventy four, and when I found out a lot of those places were debunked. So when I was a National Geographic writer myself, I teached the story of trying to reverse in your longevity by actually finding the places where people are living the longest and then distilling
their common denominators and hence grew zones. And these blue zones are places like Sardinia, Italy, Ikaria, Greece, Okinawa, Costa Rica, and many more. Yeah, there's five of them in total, and there's sub regions in those countries, and you know, only about twenty percent of how long we live is dedicated by our genes. So this is important because if your parents dig young, that doesn't mean you have to the other eighty percent of
something else. And by finding places where people are living the longest and then looking for their common denominators, you can distill out some pretty cool lessons for the rest of us to follow. Because by the way, people living in blue zones, they don't have better genes and they don't have any great secret elixer. They're just avoiding the diseases that poor short in our lives and live
in about ten years longer. The Blue Zone Secrets for Living Longer. That's the book and it's from the creator of National Geographics popular Blue Zone franchise, Dan Buner is with us. So what are some of these common denominators that Americans need to know about? Well, if you look at what a centenarian or a hundred year own eight to live to be a hundred throughout their life. As I get one hundred and fifty five Guy Toy surveys, you find
you're eating mostly a whole food plant based diet. Beans and sleep. Potatoes are cornerstones. They don't make me but only about five times per month lo cous dairy, which is kind of an inconvenient message. And when it comes to what we're drinking, water, coffee, teas and a little bit of wine. Actually, contrary to all that sort of research we're hearing at the contrary but the billion site is that if you long to live longer, you're
much better off trying to change your environment, change your surroundings. Then you are trying to change your behavior. People lose olds aren't on diets, they're not on exercise programs, they're not on supplement regiments. They're they're just optimized. They just live in environments where the healthy choice is the easy choice. You know. That's one of the things I decided when I was in my
mid forties, stan Butner. I got tired of going on diets and then getting off of them and going back on them, and I finally decided, all, look, okay, look each and every day, think about what you're eating, and if you find yourself gaining weight over a couple of weeks, then start cutting back. I mean, to me, it's a simple equation. You're gaining weight you're eating too much and you're not moving enough. Yeah. Yeah, it's very hard to do that because you know, we
are genetically hardwired to create sugar, flat and salt. Yeah, and the number of fast food restaurants and our lifetime has gone up by a factor of thirty over fifty percent of places where we buy things from where we get our tires changed to where we buy our diabetes Edison pempt us with the gauntlet of sugar sweeting beverages and chips and sodas, and you know, our genes are
going to win out over our disappointment. But things that that that work when it comes to living morty, and that's living in a city that's walkable. We know that people live in walkable cities get about twenty percent more physical activity
than people who live saying in suburbs. So the big idea here, if a miracle wants you know, three fourths of us O beasts or overweight, the sequen is to take a cue from blue zones and start making our cities more walkable and bikeable, and make our food environment where it's easier to get more mole plant based foods than it is to get you know, a happy meal. Well, that's the thing too, Dan petn are the Blue Zone Secrets for Living Longer. You don't have to go on an all vegan diet,
do you. No, you don't have to go on an all vegan diet. And even it's a little misleading because a lot of you know, vegan foods like you know, potato chips are vegan. Yeah, gritos are vegan. It's not so much about vegan, it's about eating a whole food, plant based. It's food our grandmother's aid. One of the things you know, if you want of the one that your grandmother tea box the recipe book and ranches down the meat, and you pretty much have a Blue Zone
diet. The Blue Zone Secrets for Living Longer. It's the new book out by Dan Buner. You know him from National Geographic and National Geographic Explorer. H and are some of the people who live in these areas? Are they as you say? They don't have a lot of mass transit, They don't have a lot of super highways, so they have to walk, walk, or bike everywhere anytime they go to work or a friend's house, or out
to eat. In the cages of walk they still grow gardens themselves. They still gardens themselves, and their houses aren't full of the mechanical conveniences that have engineered physical activity out of their life. The idea here is to move naturally, and people in blue zones are moving about once every twenty minutes or so.
They're getting up to do something, and that keeps our metabol metabolisms burnie at a higher rate all day long, and they're burning more calories than they would if they sat at their desk or at around their house all day and expected to make it up at the gym, which never works, by the way, it's just not working. Exercise is an unmitigated public health failure in this country, failure in that we don't do it enough or that it's overrated.
Well, only twenty three percent of Americans get the minimum amount of exercise for a week, which is about ninety minutes, and people in blue zones get that in a day just by doing their own housework and their own yard work and walk into their friend's house and having a garden out back. That's the shift I think we need to make if we want to see a healthier America. But mainly are our cities that making our cities more walkable and vikable.
Probably the best thing we could do to get people moving more because we do it mindlessly. Dan Buetner, The Blue Zone Secrets for living Longer. The other thing about modern conveniences is that it seems like more of these foods that you describe are accessible to us than they've ever been, and our means of preserving them at home are much better than they used to be. I, for one, love my vacuum sealer, so I love getting fresh vegetables,
part cooking them and then vacuum sealing them. Let me give you the biggest Blue Zone secret. It's beans. If you're eating a couple of beans a day, you probably live about four years longer. It's associated with living four years longer. And if you can you know I've written there's a cookbooks, but there's a bunch of books if you can learn how to make bes taste delicious. A fantastic source of proteins that are then meat, fantastic source
of fiber. Eighty percent of us don't get enough fiber in our diet. We're dirt cheap, and believe it or not, you can make them taste as delicious as you can't Hamburger. It just takes a little a little bit of that group and making that effort best thing to do for your family. Well again, I must brag a little bit, Dan Buttner. That's where my instapot has been become a staple, a staple in my kitchen. I have two size instapots. Yes, and and and beans freeze fantastically. They'll
really do, especially the big beans. Yeah. You know, you know, people say I don't have time to cook healthy anybody on instapot. I've nothing to do it inst the pot, but I own one. Yeah, you can make a Sardinian ministrony or a beautiful beans and rice, and it takes you about ten minutes to assemble it. You put a lit on, hit hit a bottom, and twenty minutes later you come back and you have ten meals, all of which cost less than a dollar piece. Tell me
I'll eat faster than that. I make my own refried beans, I make my own baked beans. I make my own black eyed peas, which, by the way, I never thought I could ever make black eyed piece taste good until I started cooking him in the insta pot. Yeah, you get him the right. Yes, you don't even have to circle with an instapot. No, no, anyway, I didn't want to turn this into an instapot add I just Van Butner. We are into your book, The Blue
Zone Secrets for Living Longer. It's available everywhere you get books. Thanks for the information and for joining us today. Any other questions I'm asking on beater on Instagram and I will answer the personal. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoon from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation