A longevity expert has revealed a “superfood” we should all be eating every day to live longer. Inspired by the diets of people living in Blue Zones, he urged people to eat at least half a cup of this food daily.
Blue Zones are regions in the world with lower rates of chronic diseases and longer life expectancy. They typically have more people living to the age of 100 than anywhere else.
There are a number of factors that affect this but a major one is known to be diet, with people in these zones eating lots of plant-based foods and fewer to no processed meals.
Dan Buettner, the founder of Blue Zones LLC, explained on his website: “It starts with food choices. Most of the Blue Zones residents I’ve come to know have easy access to locally sourced fruits and vegetables – largely pesticide-free and organically raised. If not growing these food items in their own gardens, they have found places where they can purchase them, and more affordably than processed alternatives.
“They have incorporated certain nutritious foods into their daily or weekly meals—foods that often are not even found on the shelves of convenience stores or on the menus of fast-food restaurants across the country. They have inherited time-honoured recipes or developed recipes on their own to make healthful foods taste good—a hugely important part of the Blue Zones diet, because if you don’t like what you’re eating, you’re not going to eat it for very long.”
He shared his advice on what is both best to eat and best to avoid, based on research into Blue Zones. “The findings here represent a long-term, statistical, and science-based study,” Dan said.
“We needed information that was not just anecdotal or based on interviews, visits in the kitchen, or shared meals with individual centenarians. We analysed more than 150 dietary studies conducted in Blue Zones over the past century, and then we distilled those studies to arrive at a global average of what centenarians really ate.
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“Here we provide some guidelines you can follow to eat a Blue Zones diet like they do and live to 100.” Among these recommendations was one to eat at least a half cup of cooked beans daily.
He described beans as the “cornerstone” of every Blue Zones diet in the world. In Nicoya, people eat a lot of black beans, while in the Mediterranean you will find lentils, chickpeas, and white beans are popular, and in Okinawa, Japan, soybeans are a staple ingredient.
Dan said: “The long-lived populations in these blue zones eat at least four times as many beans as we do, on average. One five-country study, financed by the World Health Organisation, found that eating 20 grams of beans daily reduced a person’s risk of dying in any given year by about eight per cent.”
He explained that the average bean is made up of 21 per cent protein and 77 per cent complex carbohydrates, which provide a slow and steady energy release, rather than the spike you get from refined carbohydrates. They are also low in fat and high in fibre.
Dan continued: “They’re cheap and versatile, come in a variety of textures, and are packed with more nutrients per gram than any other food on Earth.” He advised adding at least half a cup of beans to your daily routine.
He added: “And because beans are so hearty and satisfying, they’ll likely push less healthy foods out of your diet. Moreover, the high fibre content in beans helps healthy probiotics flourish in the gut.”
To incorporate more beans into your diet, he recommended:
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