What really explains longevity these complex and it's multifactorial but a certain point I realized that when it comes to change in your health behaviors for most Americans the change comes through their mouth Americans probably lose six years of life expectancy eating the standard American diet. This is that middle-aged by the way, overeating say a blue zones diet. So this idea to do a blue zones kitchen and
For these recipes in these images was really an idea to appeal to a wider spectrum of Americans and kind of lure them into this deeper and more complex prescription for longevity. But the thing is, this is a 500 year old food tradition. That is disappearing because in all these blue zones the American food culture is coming and replacing this way of eating that has produced the statistically longest-lived people, you know.
Year olds aren't eating like this. So I was sitting with 70 80 90 even hundred year olds watching them cook the foods of their youth. So this is almost a project of anthropology as much as a food book.
That's Dan buettner this week
on the ritual podcast.
The Rich Roll podcast.
Hey everybody welcome. My name is Rich Roll. I am your humble host. I am grateful to be here and grateful. You decided to join me today first things first. Thought I do what I do from time to time and share a listener email. I got a few weeks back. This one is from a military pilot and a father of four. He's called Frank it slightly edited for brevity and it goes like this.
Rich, I wanted to let you know the influence you had on me my journey to Wellness and my gratitude for the knowledge you so freely share with those of us wanting to improve our lives on my 40th birthday two years ago. I came to much the same realization as you did in your book Finding Ultra that my life had taken a left turn. I didn't recognize the man that I saw in the mirror and knew that I needed a change. I was 5-9 and a hundred ninety eight pounds since then with the support of my insane.
Mainly awesome wife. I've made serious changes in my life that allow me to be a better husband father and person at least I hope so I've gone back to exercising adopted a plant-based lifestyle and compete in triathlons. I'm doing my first 70.3 this year in Tempe. This is my birthday a year and a half ago. I've been able to shed 42 pounds feel better than I did when I was in my 30s and devote more positive and intentional energy into my relationship with my family those at work are seeing the
If it's of my new lifestyle, I'm an instructor pilot in the F-16 and a squadron commander fellow pilots and the troops that I lead have noticed my positive changes and are beginning to ask questions about how they too can make these changes for themselves to sum this up you and your story have changed my life. I religiously listen to your podcast on my 40 minute drive to and from work and it continues to fuel my motivation to sustain my healthy lifestyle and continue to strive to be a better person for all of these.
These positive changes that you have influence in my life. I simply want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing what you've been through and thank you for continuing to care for all of us with your messages of positivity and growth signed Frank slap quote-unquote. Slap Lusher. I guess lapis is call name kind of like Maverick. Anyway, very cool. Thank you Frank it is this kind of feedback that keeps me going that it makes me proud to do what I do and really reminds me why keep doing it.
Your words inspire me and keep me motivated plus let's face it you guys it's just cool to hear from an F-16 pilot. Anyway, congrats man. Awesome work Frank and I appreciate you reaching out for all the rest of you looking to make that plant based upgrade. The best resource. I can provide is our plant power meal planner which basically sorts everything for you with thousands of customized recipes support tons more. It's super cheap. So check it all out at meals dot Rich Roll.
Dot-com. Okay. So what do Okinawa Japan Costa Rica's nicoya, Peninsula? Acharya Greece and Loma Linda, California all have in common. Well, I appreciate you asking the question. They are a couple of the very special select locations called Blue zones slivers of humanity that boasts the highest number of centenarians people that live past a hundred the term blue zones was coined by
His guest Dan buettner who is back for his third appearance on the show longtime listeners will well remember his debut that was episode 139 where we broke down blue zones the longevity research behind them and the keys to maxing out your years on this lovely planet. We call home our second exchange, which was episode 323 Dan took it to the next level teaching us not only how these folks have lived so very long but
Also How They Live Well live in happiness live fulfilling lives that continuously Propel their health. But today we're going to dive even deeper breaking down the factors that make you live long and live happily. We're going to synthesize all of it. So to speak and what I think is a pretty powerful primer on all things well being beginning with food and I got a bunch more I want to say about Dan and this conversation, but first we're brought to you today by 4 Sigma attic
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Again, go to health IQ letters iq.com / Rich Roll and finally, we're brought to you today by Squarespace. Holy smokes. It's March people. Where are you at with that biking blog you promised yourself you'd make at the beginning of the year that online store to sell your sweet swag. Look your 2016 website. I got bad news for you it no longer cuts it it's time to upgrade. So do it with Squarespace whether it's an online.
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Seven customerservice will be right at your side to help you out. So make the move start building the website of your dreams with Squarespace start your free trial site today and get a free domain. If you sign up for a year at squarespace.com forward slash Rich Roll listeners of the show can even get 10% off your first purchase if you use the offer code, which role at check out that squarespace.com forward slash Rich Roll All Right, Dan be the renaissance man for those unfamiliar.
Is a National Geographic fellow a longevity expert and a world Explorer with three endurance cycling World Records to his name. He's a seemingly constant presence on The Today Show. He's appeared on Oprah twice and has been profiled in every respected Global media outlet from CNN to David Letterman. The latest in his slew of New York Times bestsellers is entitled the blue zones kitchen. It's technically a cookbook with over a hundred recipes inspired by his deck.
Shades of research studying blue zones cultures, but what I think makes this book different and what I really love about it and what we discuss in detail today is that Dan really elevates the genre by a tuning his unique anthropological lens with extraordinary photography and stories on the specific foods and culture and cooking methods and lifestyle practices proven to increase longevity wellness and mental health in addition. Dan is the
Of blue zones project a community well-being Improvement initiative designed to help people live longer and better through Community transformation programs that lower healthcare costs improve productivity and boost National recognition as great places to live work and play. So this one begins with food it extends to the importance of building better communities how crucial it is to find purpose and sharing what you've learned for the betterment of others.
He's a hero. He's a friend. He's a mentor and very much a modern-day Visionary whose life and work has positively permanently and quite unequivocally improved the well-being of millions of people. I love this man. I aspire to his level of impact and service and I sincerely hope you take his powerful message to heart. So let's do this. Shall
we
so would you hit hard this time? I did. Here's the thing.
We got him preface this whole thing by saying that we took a stab at this a while back before the holidays and we had a technical snafu, which happens from time to time. Although I would say, I think it's only happened, maybe two or three times in the seven years that I've been doing it, and it's just when that happens the pit in my stomach, it's the worst. It's the worst feeling. So first of all, my apologies for our technical snafu, and thank you.
So much for coming back. No, no, no problem at all. Who you give me that another chance to hang out with the king. I realized where we went wrong now and and and why we had a technical problem. I don't know if you remember this, but I I did not wear the uniform last time you were wearing a black T-shirt and I almost invariably wear a black T-shirt for the for the podcast and for some reason I was wearing something else and I think that that just through everything through the yeah through the through the planet off its ballast a little
So anyway, here we are first of all congratulations on the success of the blue zones kitchen cookbook. I mean, it's you know, once again there you are at the top of the top of the bestseller list. It's pretty cool to see. Well, I spent years writing deeply research
books that were like to think artfully crafted when it came to the pros and only to discover what America really wants is beautiful
pictures and bean recipes. That's it. Right, but this is not an ordinary.
Free cookbook. I mean this this unfolds much like one of your Expeditions, you know, this is this is a deep dive into these cultures as much as it is about like here's the thing you can make in your kitchen.
Well, yeah, I cringed at the title cookbook because actually we tried to make it more like a 250 page National
Geographic article. So I wrote that the
introductions are all science driven the science of why these foods are
Helping these people make it to a hundred.
I think we have the best National Geographic
photographer in this genre David McClain shot all the photos. There's no Studio shots there. It's all editorial photography. So and the and the recipes none of them are recopied down. I sat on on a stool and watch these old ladies cook and captured the recipes and then sent them here to Los Angeles actually where they were corrected and Test Kitchen.
If they don't have table spoons and
measuring cups up you sense the actual people or just no just my observation.
Yeah, but the thing is this is a 500 year old food tradition. That is disappearing because in all these blue zones there the American food culture is coming and replacing this way of eating that has produced the statistically longest-lived people, you know, 20 year olds aren't eating like this. So I was sitting with 70 80 90 even hundred-year-old.
Old watching them cook the foods of their youth. So this is almost say a project of anthropology. Yeah as much as you know a food book
creating an historical
document. I like to think it is
in the 15. You've been doing this for 15 years sort of Blue Zone specific type work. What are the changes that you've seen specifically within the blue zones over the last decade and a half and which ones have been the most impact impacted by kind of Western development.
I'll start with the
The negative and then we'll move to the positive. So the place has been hit. The worst is Okinawa when I first started the I actually first went there 1999 which was 21 years ago and our
kind of test Expedition.
It was at the time producing the longest live people in the history of the world about 30 times more female centenarians in people over 60, then you'd have in the United States and now it is the least healthy prefecture and all.
All of
Japan it's got the highest rates of obesity the highest rates of diabetes and it has undergone the the worst degeneration of any of the blue zones. But you also see it pretty hit pretty hard in nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica were nicoya itself this place where they have this beautiful simple elegant 3-ingredient recipe that is driving must have much of their longevity you come into town. The first thing you see is a KFC and it just makes you
Or your heart sink and at the same time longevity is plunging and the chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease that are killing Americans are rising there and within a half a generation or so. These blue zones will just be part of the
project. I mean, it feels like in the same way that certain neighborhoods within cities kind of protect their historical Heritage and will let you build and you know, you have to
Old to a certain way or you can't build or you can't renovate these buildings to protect and preserve the you know, the kind of historic nature of them is it not possible to go to the governments of these blue zones and you know, give them some kind of certification that that protects the Heritage there. Is that even possible or is that just a weird idea? No, it's a great idea.
And in fact, I've met with the presidents of Costa Rica and you know now onto the good news is
the government there has proclaimed nicoya Peninsula Blue Zone as a sort of a National Heritage sites, which is afforded it protections for older people and more funding to help preserve older people in the cultures of older people. You see that more organically and it Cuddy a grease which is another Blue Zone a real kind of tourist industry has has sprouted up around people interested in longevity. So what you see there,
Older people were in many cultures their kind of marginalized. They're the heroes. They're the the repositories of wisdom and kind of the local celebrities, especially the centenarians and in the Blue Zone of Sardinia. And this is where the world's longest of men come from. There are six Villages there in the Norrell Province and they're in one of them place called solo. There's a blue Zone Center and there's one street. It's probably a hundred meters long and there's like 12
Terry and houses on that 100 meters in front of the house, there's huge post posters photographs of the centenarians. So they're really celebrating. This is a national as a treasure and in these places. There's a kind of an act of will to you know, keep at Bay these these modern influences.
So it's not the positive side of this coin. When I asked you that question you said well start with the negative.
Yes. The positive is in some blue zones are seeing what
A resource there, they're older people specifically and and their this lifestyle and they're trying to preserve them
both. Yeah, are you optimistic that they're going to be able to kind of preserve and protect Heritage and you know sort of culture these places. No,
I don't think so because oh no, there might be inserting Museum sort of way and effort to do it, but
But it's I think the the forces of the the world we live in are too strong the urge to motorize mechanize engineer out physical activity out of our lives with ease and air conditionings and power tools and kitchen gadgets and electronics and packaged food and ultra-processed foods, and it's that that that tsunami is just too powerful. I think two to four, you know old
Hands to Hold up.
Do you have a favorite Blue
Zone?
I have two favorites the acarya
problem it koreas were my seems like the one you keep going down.
Yeah, it's I go back almost every year my son got married there. Oh wow, and there's a place called fayez Guesthouse and NOS, which I like to think is the center of the blue zones very, you know, you go there and during the day it looks the you don't see any furniture. There's kind of this empty terrorists and and there's nobody around but at night
The the the Terrace has a trellis which is lit up and you're overlooking the Aegean Sea and people from the village come in and you'll get Israelis and Europeans and Americans and it tends to be people or making a life transition and they all meet on this on this Terrace and they eat blue zones foods and they drink wine and and during the day they go out in the fields and they hike and they go by the Sea and and it's nice to see this.
This place in the world where you can go find your own Blue Zone. So to sum is
is are these places because of the work that you've done now becoming tourist destinations. Are there people that seek them out and want to visit them because they've read about them in your books or heard about
them. They're all tourist destinations in and for that I think they appreciate but you know, when tours comes it creates it, you know problems of its own, but but
Yes, they're all tourist destinations. I think nicoya peninsula of Costa. Rica is most made most Embrace blue zones. So there's lots of hotels are coming blue zones and you know you land in the airport Liberia. And the first thing you see is a Blue Zone store. Wow, and
but it's on the other side of the peninsula from like, we're all the fancy hotels are
isn't that know. It's on the same Peninsula. It's just the coil open insulates. It's Thomas.
Window and people also know of nasara, which is
kind of a right Tamarind o is the surf Village Place,
right? That's Montezuma Montezuma's on the southern tip of the nicoya peninsula and more towards the north is Tamarindo and that there's what the Four Seasons is. Okay and kind of halfway between or is Samara which is a hip see Dipsy Beach town and then nosara which is kind of a Vortex for Surfers and for the yoga
It's actually a cool place. Both of them are cool places. That's actually not the blues on the blue zones actually in land up in the highlands in The Villages and they're the type of villages were, you know, tourist drive-through and leaving a cloud of dust and don't really realize what they see to to find the blue Zone. You need to go into people's homes, and you need to stop long enough to
See detail and to get a feel for what it's like to live in these places to see how they cook to see how they don't shift see how they live out their purpose to see how they connect socially, there's all these sort of non-food characteristics that account for as much of their longevity as eating beans or
tofu. Yeah, I mean to do that work you would have to have a lot of emotional intelligence and a lot of patience. You know, you you I mean, you're a very
Charismatic personable guy you've got to engender the trust of these people to even get into the position where they're going to allow you to come into their home and participate in their
Traditions you do. I was Wes rich with curiosity and and a genuine affection for traditional peoples everywhere. I mean, they fascinate me so I'm not going and trying to get the story and get out when I did this original work. I was spending months at these places.
And not in a you know, I there's one there is a three-day stretch when I moved in with a hundred two year old woman in Okinawa neither of us had a Common Language and I just sat and watched her and what count it she got up and down off the floor 40 times in one day that's like doing 40 squats watched how she made her breakfast how she stood up on a stool and was washing your dishes a certain point. She pulled out her jet denture and scrub them with the same.
I said Put it Down juice back in but just saw this sort of constant movement and the flow of people who came and visit her and that she sort of toddle out to her garden and that range of motion and you don't really get you can't really just go in and ask them about their lives and leave because people don't really remember their lives to do this project, right you have to live with them and pay attention to the detail and the nuance and then you can sort of go into the academic.
Literature and say find out well, they're doing this one thing. Is there any sort of academic underpinnings or evidence for why this would be yielding
longevity. So in the example of that particular woman, what does she think is going on? Uh, yeah, just like she's behind the corner. Yeah, but what could I possibly be doing? There would be so interested that guy idealist.
Yeah. I remember it was a rainy like Tuesday morning, and I took off my shoes and you sort of
Up up to she's up one of these stilted houses and I sat cross-legged across from her on it's a Tommy Matt and we looked at each other and smiled and I knew like one Arigato one Japanese word out of got two and then we looked each other's stared and smiled and sat there for about 10 minutes. And finally she got bored got up and went about her day and I just followed her
like he's still there. Yeah. I don't know what he's doing. I'm obviously not going to get rid of
them. Uh-huh.
No, but no I later on her granddaughter came and we had translated conversations very
nice. Well just by way of background and context for for those people listening or watching who who are new to kind of your work. I think it would be helpful to just kind of provide a quick synopsis of what this whole blue zones thing, you know is about
it started out as a National Geographic project to innocence reverse engineer longevity something called the Danish twins.
The establish that only about 20% of how long the average person lives is dictated by genes. The other 80% is something else. So the project began by hiring demographers to find places where people are living statistically longus and that alone took two years cost about a quarter million bucks before I could even start but you know, you don't want to go to a place that's just hearsay and and try to distill all lessons so
With the demographers we found these these longevity hotspots, which I've dubbed blue zones and then brought in another team of experts to find the correlations and we use the methodology of anthropology epidemiology to kind of tease out the common denominators. So we found longevity hotspots in Okinawa, Japan Sardinia Italy it Korea Greece nicoya peninsula of Costa Rica and not far from here that long
Into California and The Seventh-Day Adventists and over the past 15 years. I've been studying these cultures in an effort to preserve this interconnected set of factors that are common to all these places that are yielding longevity and the first big breakthrough was a cover story for National Geographic secret to long life and then came a book blue zones 9 lessons for the living longer from the people.
Of the longest Blue Zone solution blue zones of happiness. And now at a certain point what really explains longevity complex and it's multifactorial but at a certain point I realized that when it comes to change in your health behaviors for most Americans, the change comes through their mouths. So this idea to do a blue zones kitchen and capture these recipes in these images was really an idea.
To I guess appeal to a wider spectrum of Americans and kind of lure them into this this deeper and more complex prescription for longevity. And it seemingly it's worked
right so amongst these populations and none of them are striving for longevity. They're not thinking about it. They're not going to the gym. They're not dieting their lifestyles are set up in a certain way.
Way that is conducive to them becoming centenarian right the foods. They eat the manner in which they interact with their community and interact throughout their daily lives in a physical sense. All of these things kind of contribute to this set of parameters that you have kind of distilled down and
canonized. That's right. So the I would say the big Epiphany it took me 10 years to to make this realization, you know in
We tend to pursue
Health we find a diet or we find an exercise
program or we get a coach or we
get on a supplement
program and we think well, we got to find this program. We need the discipline the focus of
mind and and we're going to go after
it, you know and the vast majority 90-plus percent of people fail at what they start and within a year in blue zones. These people are eating mostly plant-based.
The food's they're moving every 20 minutes or so. They're hugely socially connected their suffused with purpose not because they've tried it's because they're a product of their environment. They live in places where the cheapest and most accessible Foods is peasant food. It's whole grains. It's not since greens. It's it's a tubers. So it's cheapest and most accessible and they have these time-honored recipes to make
Make them taste good and their kitchens are set up so they can make them easily. So of course they're going to eat that's a lot easier to eat that and you know travel to a big city and buy processed foods. They don't have these mechanized conveniences in their houses. So they're not turning to some, you know power tool to do their work their kneading
bread by hand or grinding corn
by hand. They're doing Garden Work by hand that
the option to implode into their homes under their Electronics is in there because within a day if you've not shown up to the Village Center or the party or church Somebody's knocking on your door to kind of fill up. Yeah be caught up. Yeah, there's a certain expectation and nobody wakes up wondering what their position is in their Community. There's always a very clear sense of purpose and sense of responsibility. You know that
The Okinawan juices were ikigai. People are starting to use that word a lot sense of purpose and it really does make a difference when it comes to longevity probably eight extra years of life expectancy, but the purpose experience in blue zones isn't the sort of Follow Your Passion purpose that we think of in America, you know, we think well,
we're going to retire
or we get wood and I way I got some free time on my hand. I'm going to travel or I'm going to play golf or or
or pursue knitting whatever it is purpose and blue zones is is spliced with responsibility. So when people think of purpose it's always connected to putting the focus back on somebody else. It's making sure the younger generation thrives. It's it's making sure that the community is taken care of making sure certain practices are preserved. There's always an alternative.
Realistic element to purpose and blue zones.
Yeah and of corresponding aspect of responsibility, right? That's right.
Yeah, so it's almost a hybrid between purpose of responsibility right you fuse those two and that's that's the blues on purpose
right and telescoping up from this what's really interesting is this perhaps somewhat counterintuitive notion that infuses the work that you now do with cities by virtue of
Of the blue zones project which is kind of a rejection of human self. Well in a manner of speaking to say look, you know getting people to exercise making them feel bad if they don't even if you incentivize them to do so whether it's dieting weight loss, whatever all of these kind of Health parameters that underpin how we think about health and fitness and well-being in the
developed world. Just don't work.
Yeah, I don't work and they solution can be extracted from these traditional communities by observing the way that they live their lives and trying to create environments that are conducive to making the right choice.
Yes. So, you know, it burns me up here in these these finger-wagging politicians saying that it's it's individual response, but it's your responsibility to be healthy, but then you unleash people
Belen the toxic food environment, you know, I were we Blues on the whole state of Iowa and there was a lot of sort of local politicians who were saying well when towards blue zones, but we think it's mostly individual responsibility. How are you going to ask a single mother who's barely making ends meet with with her 10-hour day job to go out into the food environment where 97 out of a hundred choices are bad and say go find good choices for your kids. I
I actually believe that if you're unhealthy and overweight this country, which is 71 percent of American populations. It's not their fault. You you go back to 1970 we had about a third the rate of obesity we have today and is that because there were better exercise programs or people were more responsibility around responsible and the you know, post hippie age nineteen seventy or because we had
better diets or would better educated know, you know, our environment is changed and the very clear lesson that we get from Blue zones is here's environments that we know are producing the statistically longest-lived and healthiest populations. And when I say longest lip, I don't mean they have better genes that are going to make them to live to a hundred twenty. What I am saying is they're avoiding heart disease cancer diabetes and dementia the diseases that
For shorten your life. So they're getting the full ninety five years or so, which is the capacity of the human machine. If you're listening to this right now, your body is right to the to the the extent we science understands the human body. Your body's capacity is 95. If you do all the right things these populations are achieving that ninety five year mark better than any other population in the world and they're doing it because they live in the right environment.
Mint
right. They don't have to go out of their way to do it. It's just right in front of them. So mindless that is the choice to be made. So when you look at the United States of America, I mean, where do we fall on longevity right now like for like 49, there's nothing like that do like right up there with you Bangladesh or something. No one else. We're not that bad. I mean and it dropped a link gooders to yeah it
drop it. There's been a lot of bump up word because we're seemingly getting this opioid.
Just a little bit under control, but the previous three years. We've seen life expectancy dropped for the first time in living history first time in a century since the the big flu epidemic in 1917. So no, we're going the wrong direction here and the percentage of our GDP. We spend on avoidable diseases about 3.7 trillion dollars keeps going up every year. It's a statistical certainty. It'll bankrupt our country.
If it continues on the trend and it's all because of diseases that that result because the environment we live in
and when you look at the environment the culprits that I see are subsidized cheap processed food suburban sprawl the the the Advent of the automobile. Like there are there are certain kind of like seismic forces cultural forces that have kind of led us to this place like people are more.
Separated geographically were reliant on on our own personal cars versus public transportation. We're not living in Consolidated well-thought-out Urban environments are access to healthy food creates socio-economic problems. And you know, we're dealing with with that. So with that kind of like Suburban, you know growth we see the degeneration of inner cities and thus the the kind of food deserts that spring
Yup, that further exacerbate that socio-economic and and health divided.
It's a lot like member that old experiment if you threw a frog in boiling water would leap out. But if you threw it in lukewarm water and turned up the water one degree and at a time the the sir it would cook the fraud. That's kind of what's happening to us. I mean in the 1940s 50s and even 60s the American food and built environment was actually pretty healthy. Most people walked, you know, you cooked at home.
There was a better balance between animal foods and plant-based Foods having a going out for a hamburger and french fries was an occasional treat not a daily event. And what's happened is first of all every city engineer since the Eisenhower Administration has been taught to build a street that gets as many cars as possible down it. So there's this sort of pervasive mindset in among city planner.
Has that, you know, we want to build for cars and traffic. So that starts modify marginalizing the human it's unsafe. There's no decent sidewalks. It's the streets are ugly their stressful because cars are whizzing by there. There are there are cities that are trying to reverse that Trend, but it's going to take some years our food environment ever since Earl Butz Nixon's secretary of agriculture.
He made trans trans fats before his time were used only as an industrial lubricant. He made them a food that's been a problem. But also this system we have that favors corn soybeans sugar beets and wheat, you know, none of those products are bad by themselves, but they're mostly grown in the service of feeding other animal feeding animals, and there's too much of it's a very cheap input.
So American Ingenuity takes these these cheap core products and they process them and they add value the market the heck out of them. They strip them of most of their nutrients and now the 10 billion dollars a year is spent marketing us things like sugared cereals and chips and sodas and crackers and and these things that actually have their roots in pretty good food.
By the time they get to us, they're stripped of the nutrients and their metabolically horrible for us and you can't get away from
him. Mmm. What about the car?
Well, we only cars but there's this idea of induced demand what happens in most cities is there's a popular part of town car start to traffic chokes at and the politician Under Pressure does the the intuitive thing widen the way nor put it to more Lanes in or or or make rise the speed limit from 30 to 50 so cars and what happens invariably is when you make it easier for car.
It induces the demand for more cars. So you put two more Lanes in and within three to five years those lanes are full because people say no it's easier to drive places. But when you do the counterintuitive thing and you narrow lanes and you slow down traffic, we call it a road diet and you widen the sidewalks and you make a bike lane, which actually causes cars to slow down even more at a certain point people do one of two things. They realize wow, it's actually easier for me to walk.
Take the bus or bike to these places or the driving pressure is such that they move closer to work or they move into a neighborhood and this happens gradually. We want things to happen overnight, but we could probably eliminate 20 to 25% of the Obesity problem in this country if we designed our cities for human beings and not just cars
and that's a big part of the approach when you go to these cities and and work with them to try to create, you know, a Blue Zone, sir.
Defied Urban environment. Yeah, like how can we create systems to promote, you know human movement over personal automobiles.
So let me just give you some content context and these blue zones project. So most of the time when people think of Community Health, they're trying to promote diet or exercise programs Etc. We don't do any of that. We assume that people are genetically hardwired to crave sugar fat salt and take rest whenever they can and instead of trying to fight.
That by as you point out in sent them or guilt
them. It's shame
them we say no we're just gonna set this these individuals up for success to make the healthy choice. Not only the easy choice, but in some cases the only choice so how do you do that? So in each City I have three teams won. The first team is a policy team and we have experts on building streets for humans on changing the food environment.
Favor fruits and vegetables over junk food and to favor the nonsmoker over the smoker and we don't come in and try to Nanny state the city government we come in and say Here's a menu of 30 evidence-based policies that have worked elsewhere to make a city healthier. You've hired us to come in actually the insurance company hires us to come in we help them choose from each of these policy areas eight to ten policies, that would be feasible in that City.
And effective in that City and then our experts help make sure they can implement it. So an example.
If you live in a neighborhood where there are more than six fast food restaurants in 500 500 feet from from the average house. The obesity rate in that neighborhood is about 35 percent higher than the same neighborhood with fewer than three fast food restaurants. So one of our proposals is that you limit the number of licenses for fast food restaurants, if you live in a neighborhood where there are billboard advertising for junk food the
DC rate and that neighborhood is about 10% higher than the same neighborhood without Billboards ads. So one of the things that our menu is a ban on Billboard advertising and you know, nobody misses the billboard advertising and lo and behold the Obesity rates goes Downs in those neighborhoods. So we're going to try to get eight or ten policies passed. Then we have a second team that administers a Blue Zone certification program for schools restaurants grocery stores workplaces and churches.
And those it's sort of like Leed certification for health. And then we have a third team that gets 15% of individuals kind of a Tipping Point of 15% to take a Blue Zone pledge, and we get them to take checklists into their home to optimize their home environment for better eating and more movement optimize their social network. We create these moais and then we give them a free purpose workshop and get them volunteering and if you can orchestrate The Perfect Storm people places
And policies and keep enough energy behind it for five years in every case. Obesity drops diabetes drops life expectancy goes up and people's life satisfaction as reported to gallop goes on and it's not because we changed individuals or shamed individuals. It's because we optimize their
environment, right and the insurance companies love it. They got to then the phone rings. Again, Dan. You're doing a great job got a new city for you. We're saving so much money.
Well before yeah our biggest the Gallup estimates that our project occasion about a quarter of a billion dollars a year in avoided health care costs and that will continue to accrue because we change and now we're starting with Orlando, Florida. Mmm, Tom sent them over there and and the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan. We got a blueprint in place for Orlando, which is now three million people is actually all borange County. So the the
The challenge gets bigger every time but it's a worthy
challenge. Yeah, and you know, look we can talk about plant-based diets and a Korean stew and you know planning a garden in your backyard. But first we got to get the soda machines out of the schools. We got to get people, you know, walking and riding their bikes a little bit maybe not sitting so much, you know at their job like very basic simple things some of which I would imagine are kind of easy to implement when you go to these cities and other
Sirs, you know perhaps require, you know zoning and and other kind of regulatory changes in order to
implement. Yeah, see if you get focused on the silver bullet, you're going to fail we have what we call Silver Buckshot. So between our people policy and and places strategy. We probably unleash 80 to 90 long-term nudges and defaults that are going to favor the healthy.
Voiceover the unhealthy choice, we're going to fail with 20 or 30 of them, but the others 50 or 60 have enough influence enough of that sort of Adam Smith silent hand nudge that we you see behaviors change and that's the big secret, you know until we have the courage to take on our environment and stop with this fairy tale that were magically going to get 330 million Americans to a find the right diet be mustered.
Either the discipline to stay on the diet and three have focus of mine to keep on it for the decades necessary to avoid a common chronic disease. We're not nothing's not that we're not going to you know, as they say bend the curve we're not going to do much with this obesity problem. It's till we sort of take on the places. We eat our Foods where we go to work our city our city policies and the the our food and built environment where America is going to continue to spend needless money and
Suffer needlessly from chronic disease.
Yeah, I mean I just know it in my own life we live. You know, my life is an embarrassment of riches. We live in this beautiful, you know part of the world. I have an incredible View and I'm surrounded by mountains and sunshine and you know, it's phenomenal but I live very far from an urban environment. So I'm not doing a lot of walking and I'm also geographically distant from both most of my friends and I
Feel that in my life. I go to New York City. I'm walking from Soho to Midtown. I'm seeing tons of friends in a single day. You know, it's
it's a completely
different experience that is dictated. Not because I'm making choices but because the environment lends itself to me making different types of choices that then completely change how I live my life and experience that
day. Yeah, and they're not even conscious choice right now where you know, if you want a bottle of soy milk you got to get in your car.
Here and cry, but if you live in New York or you know downtown Minneapolis like me or Santa Barbara up the street you can walk to that and it's just easier to you know, walk to the corner store than it is to
and you probably know the guy in the store. Yeah, and you run into
your neighbor's on the way by and it you know fends off this other huge toxic epidemic were suffering America around loneliness, which is also
I mean friendship and connection is a
Huge part of your work and focus. So maybe let's spend a little time on that.
Well, first of all, I think your social connectivity is much is a function of your environment as well. If you live in a cul-de-sac and some Solace about suburb where there's no sidewalks to the neighborhood. You have to walk on the street to get the neighbor if you want to go to a church or a or a cafe to have a cup of coffee after you get your car the number of spontaneous social.
Which may lead to a connection or a friendship just the numbers go down by a factor of 10 as opposed to living in a in a more population dense walkable Community where people are bumping into potential friends all the time. But in our blue zones project cities to our earlier discussion people are imploding into their handheld devices and their iPads and and
we have this very intentional program called moais where we bring auditoriums of people and and we actually manually connect them with four or five other friends helping them connect on based on shared values shared interests and shared schedule and then we just get them walking together for 10 weeks or eating plant-based potlucks together for 10 weeks.
And about 60 or 70 percent of the time they stay together for so far we've been able to track them as much as seven years and so they're standing under seven years and we know you are hugely influenced by your friend. So if you're hanging out with people who are drinking or smoking, you're 60 or 70 percent more likely to drink and smoke yourself. Whereas if you're hanging out with people who are walking everyday or are gathering around great plant-based food.
Those behaviors are going to become the contagious. That's the same sort of nudge philosophy that pervades all of our work
Maori there. Is that an Okinawan word
muy Mala moai, right? It's it comes from an actually has its roots in agricultural past where there weren't Banks. So five Farmers would come together and they meet every week and they throw in money every time they met and then when one of them had a need to buy seed for the next
There is a fund of money that they could draw from that tradition exists to this day, but it's mostly social and it's essentially a committed circle of friends who travel through life together and support each other when the chips are down and share when the chips are
Bountiful. That's beautiful. I love that. It's not just about cooking the food together or participating in a healthy activity. It's the connectivity. It's the it's the the
healing of the group and the relationships that
are yes, and it's a constant thing. I sat with five women from the same mo i who get together every night drink Sake argue about who the hot guy
they like best back in
1941. This is another one
of you you found your way into the house and you're sitting against the wall. I yeah exactly.
I'm sure they have no idea what the hell I was doing there, but they their average age is a hundred and two they've been meeting.
Almost every day for 97 years and you could see that ice at that with them two nights second night. One of the ladies didn't show up and the other for put their kimonos on and shuffled over to their neighbor's house to check on him. So instead of a nurse or some sort of electronic Gadget checking on it's this beautiful social construct that worked without government intervention or without you no business getting involved it was you just you just create it.
Give it some momentum and inertia can keep it going for decades.
If you were given the task of creating a brand new city out of whole cloth. Like there's just a like a basically a blanket piece of land and you're charged with constructing an urban environment. You're the new, you know, Pierre L'Enfant or whatever looking at how to design Washington DC or whatever it is. Like what our how do you begin that process? Like what is the city of the future the ultimate blue zones?
Of the future look like and how is it kind of oriented around these
principles? Well, I can tell you when developments are developed at eye level, you know, you have this model and there's somebody looking up above down that always fails the design happens to it has to begin I think at eye-level but it it starts with a core of you know, you almost look at these.
Sort of Mexican cities where they have a Zocalo. You want to social Square in the middle of it, you know, these the waste cities evolved in Europe fairly consistently no matter if you're in Spain or or Italy or France and or grease or it's it's not a coincidence. There's a certain amount of human Ingenuity and
Observed wisdom that's baked into these City designs and in Europe so you if I had to design a city right here in the Hills outside of Los Angeles, I'd start with a social square around that I would have restaurants and cafes outdoor restaurants and cafes. I wouldn't let any cars in that Central Area you want mixed use so people can
I live upstairs and they can do their shopping or the socializing on the first floor. You would have the the streets would be designed first for humans. I would probably argue in the very downtown maybe six square blocks. There be no cars at all. It would all be pedestrian but at night cars can come in and delivery trucks could come in and deliver food, but people don't miss their cars if if they if they live close enough to the place.
Has that they socialize or shop or go to work. I would I would loosen up on the density as you get towards the periphery, but what you see in all of the happiest and longest-lived cities in America Boulder, Colorado, Portland, Oregon San Luis. Obispo is a green belt. There's a certain there's sort of design like a doughnut and the doughnut holes where the people live and the and the donut itself is places to
Eight green spaces places to go hike places to bike. So you want to keep the the development pressure focused Inward and lot let it sprawl outward which is what the mistake the vast majority of cities make in this country. And you know, if you have the economic influence pointing inward, that's when the Ingenuity comes in there's pressure to make high quality of life. You can't just create huge spaces and to make better.
Better use of the roadways in the walkways and and the retail space
so of all the cities in the world right now, which city do you think best captures that ethos? Like who's doing it?
Right? Oh who's Denmark is doing a great job, which is second biggest city in Denmark or Copenhagen to I mean, they 1970 they had they were choked with traffic like a lot of American cities are now over fifty percent of all trips are taken on.
Icicle. Yeah, and this in a cold area then they did that that didn't come about by coincidence, but it was a slow sort of pressure gently applied over over decades to favor the cyclist over the motorist Santa Barbara right near here. They're doing everything right? They're favoring a healthy food environment. They're favoring. They've hired a bicycle coordinator to come in and make sure that the agenda there's there's somebody always saying what
if you're going to design this new Street there needs to be a pedestrian place and right other great cities Naples, Florida believe it or not has done a very good job in the United States Boulder, Colorado. Yeah one of the best but they're always intentional. They're always stem from an enlightened group of leaders who shift their focus away from just Economic Development, which tends to be the thrust to
Quality of Life policies and they just sequentially bring on Quality of Life policies and get them implemented and lo and behold after about a decade or so. You see obesity plummeting dependably and you see people's reported well-being or life satisfaction go up.
I was in Copenhagen last summer. I was there right at Midsummer. So everybody's out. It's light out, you know until
11 o'clock at night and I was delighted and varied it struck with just how different their lifestyle is compared to the living mine. I mean I was like, we just have it all wrong. You know, they're everyone is together. The cafes are packed bicycles everywhere people sunning themselves and jumping them into the waterways and in boats, and it just I don't know it made a huge impact on me. And you said that
That it was once traffic choked. So what did they like what happened that they were able to like make that switch?
There's an architect by the name of Ian Gale J&G. Ehl who first one of the first in the world to realize the importance of walkability and bikeability and he went to city council and he sort of pitched these ideas for redesigning their streets so that
At in favored bikes. It's just literally you start with the bike lane. You slow down traffic if traffic moves too fast people get killed, you know that if you get hit by a car going 20 miles an hour your chance of living or 90% If you get hit by a car going 30 miles an hour your chances of living drop to 40 percent and if you get hit by a car going 40 miles an hour your chance of living drops at Ghent Bruges and 10%
So there's this whole sort of Playbook where you look at the streets through the lens of a cyclist calming traffic narrowing car Lanes creating a protected bike lane trees make a huge difference people like to walk on streets where there are trees. So it's minimizing the noise minimizing that the stress minimizing the danger and maximizing the Aesthetics and people come.
And Copenhagen just did that systematically over the course of 40 years and so quite frankly as Boulder, Colorado and San Luis Obispo.
Yeah Arthur all these crazy studies on sidewalks like just how wide they need to be or how tall the lip on the curb needs to be in order to kind of make it as conducive as possible to people making use of
them. Yes. Yes. So what in as a rule you want a sidewalk as wide enough to get a Outdoor Cafe on there?
If you're in a city, yes, if if there is add a new one dangerous curb or one dangerous intersection, even though you might have a perfect sidewalk but one dangerous intersection and you have you know, some old lady who would normally walk to church that way but there's that one dangerous place. They won't walk. So you really do need to have an expert who knows how to assess the whole built environment and
think of it as a whole Continuum. We have a guy on our team named Dan burden who is a direct descendants of that Ian Gillan in Copenhagen. So he he he knows all these techniques and develop them over 40 years. It's it's kind of a new science and it's counterintuitive because most Engineers want more traffic, but when you sit down and listen to him and you see the results of a walkable City over a
City that's that's overwhelmed with automobiles like Los Angeles. The quality of life is just vastly different.
Yeah, I mean, what about you know making space for Community Gardens like all these things where people can come together and participate in a joint activity grow their own food together right in an urban environment what would happen if if Manhattan
outlawed all cars except for perhaps delivery
vehicles or
You know a certain limited number of taxis and really amped up the public transport. What would happen to that City? How would it transform there would be
some there would be two or three years of getting used to it. And then they wouldn't miss
be chaos at first I would yeah, I mean you
have sort of you know people who can't walk eight blocks not being able to hail a cab to get to work, but then I think they would they would be replaced why these sort of Rickshaw cyclist what you see going up and down the Avenue of the Americas.
Eric is all the time. We would adapt I don't I think more people would take the subway, you know, if you just Singapore does this Singapore Singapore is far more densely populated than New York City Singapore's number two in the world with the highest population density. No traffic problem at all. Why because they only allow a fixed number of permits to drive and those permits are available.
BB auction so they get really expensive gas is two and a half times more expensive there than it is here and then they take the money that these programs generate and they invest in this world class subway system that's clean and it's on time and it's safe and it's Pleasant and it's comfortable and people don't you don't miss their cars because it's a lot easier faster safer and fun to get in the Subway or just walk a
countervailing.
Vacation though that I would imagine is undermining. This is the the growth of all of these semi human powered electric vehicles, like electric skateboards and electric boosted bicycles. Like now, it seems like you can get an electric motor and almost every form of transportation that used to be human power. Hey, so people aren't really riding bikes. They're riding things that look like bikes but actually are oh
wait,
People who own an e-bike actually get more exercise than people on a bike do they because at least they get out they're getting out. Well, yeah, but they get on a more and ebikes, you know, I own seven of them so they can be overcome bikes. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you know the, you know the formula for the ideal number of bicycles
Rich what however many houses you
have. I don't know. It's n plus 1 n being the number of bikes you currently own. Oh I
said the oh, yeah, that's a
Definitely cyclists joke. Yeah should be
everybody's jug, right but but e-bikes, you know, you get physical activity just it's just not necessarily it, you know in Santa Barbara. I live five switchbacks up from downtown and you know, you never go out to eat and then, you know do this mountain goat bike ride back home, but I can flick on my assist and I'll actually use my bike now to go out to dinner. That's because
As I can I can you know, it flattens it out for the right back. You still have to Pedal but just as easy. I'm a huge fan of e-bikes.
Yeah, I've never written
one. Well, I treat awaits. Well, I don't know
you got seven. So maybe yeah, when you look at these blue zones pillars, you know movement plant-based plants slant diet Faith friendship connectivity. All of these things is
Are they are they relatively evenly balanced they're certainly independent. They're interdependent with each other. But is there one that stands out it, you know, did you write this blue zones kitchen book because the diet component of it is so important or how do you think about the interplay of all of them? Yes to your
point. It is a mutually supporting web of factors. So people eat wisely. They move naturally every 20 minutes because their life
Underpin with purpose. They have a social network that makes this easy their friends are doing these things and they live in environments where the healthy choice is the Easy Choice. So they are definitely connected but the most important variable there is eating Americans probably lose six years of life expectancy eating the standard American diet. This is that middle-aged by the way, overeating say a blue zones diet, which is largely beans whole grains.
Grains greens nuts and tubers, you know and fruits and vegetables as well. So the problem is except for a few people like you with heroic discipline and a great Community supporting you it's very hard for Americans to go plant-based and with and and Whole Food plant-based, by the way, it's not, you know, twinkies and chips you need to its whole Whole Foods plant-based diet is the most important factor.
But the only way to do that for the decades necessary to avoid a chronic disease is have the right social network live in the right place having that sense of purpose where it's important enough for you to be around that you're going to make the sacrifices every occasionally to you know, not order the hamburger. Yeah
also in this is is stuff about you know portion size time of day when to eat like one of the things you noticed is like well the size of the plates that these people
People are using you know, as is different than in America, and how does that dictate long-term how we you know,
so I'll spend out a couple of the insights captured for blue zones Kitchen on how they eat. First of all their cooking no matter where you go there only using about 20 recipes or 20 ingredients rather over and over and over because they know how to combine these ingredients to create a symphonic deliciousness, but not a not a ton of different crazy Foods or superfoods know.
Super Foods except for beans beans is probably a superfood number two. They tend to consume all their food and about an eight-hour window breakfast like a king lunch like a prince dinner like a pauper number three, they tend to say say say something before the meal that marks a punctuation between their busy life. And now we're slowing down to eat like a prayer Adventists or the sardinians or Hara Hachi boo, which is an Confucian adage that the
now and say before every meal to remind themselves to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full they tend to eat with their family. They tend to not have Electronics in their kitchen. So they're not eating to their favorite song or eating to their favorite TV show. They they tend to cook at home as opposed to going out. These are all things that I would argue add to the ecosystem of eating that produces.
live people and the core of which being this this make knowing how to make plant-based food taste delicious
to me the most interesting Blue zone is Loma Linda because when you look at the other ones they are they've just sort of matured over time as a product of this environment, you know, the surrounding environment contributed to that whereas Loma Linda is in contradiction to the surrounding environment, you know, so it's almost more it
It's so much more impressive to me that they've been able to do this, you know in the context of you know, where you find this city
and that presents the great. Hope doesn't it? Because
that's exactly right because if they can do it, well, yeah, they love, you
know to get there from here you drive down Highway 10, which is six Lanes often under a call to smog you exit at Loma Linda. And the first thing you see is a wiener Hut and a Del Taco and it's like what this is.
Lose own but you go in there and a little bit and you see this community of Seventh-Day Adventists and their conservative methodists who evangelized with health and they celebrate their their Sabbath on Saturday, not Sunday, which makes them, you know, the other blue zones are kind of geographically remote. These guys are a little bit culturally remote because you know, the kids aren't playing football on Friday night or going to dances and Saturday there, you know, focusing on their religion and
doing nature walks, but it shows a few things number one that your social network. The people you hang out with has the biggest influence on your health behaviors anything else. They're hanging out with people who other vegetarians they know they get their diet drug me from the Bible Genesis chapter 1 every plant that bear seed every tree that bears fruit. So they're eating mostly a plant-based diet. They're deeply spiritual.
A hardwired right in their religion as a nature walk on Saturday afternoon. So because of this environment that that's created around their religion, they are living seven to 10 years longer than the rest of us and we know that demographically but it just goes to show you don't have to be an Adventist to get this benefit. You you proactively curate a group of four or five friends, you know.
Oh, you want one rich roll out there who get you running and you want a friend or two as a vegan or vegetarian? Because when you're hanging out with them, you're going to be learning how to eat plant-based food and you want two or three friends. Who when you have a crappy day like we all do you can call them and they'll care about you and of course vice versa and it's this building and Adventist like I think social network is a takeaway.
You got to make your moai. That's right, right. Yeah, so I'm just imagining somebody who's listening to this.
She lives somewhere where they're like, I don't I've never met anyone who you know eats that way or aspires to live any differently than how we live. Like how does somebody who finds themselves perhaps, you know geographically, you know distant from these two ideas, you know, and and and and can't find that in their own Community. Like how does that person proceed? I guess they can they can at least start making the food out of your cookbook. Yes, right zones kitchens is started.
Lace,
well first I would think about getting very clear on what my passions are what I like to do and what I'm good at and once you're clear on those those three things I would volunteer when you show up in a volunteer. First of all, we know that volunteers are happier than on volunteers, but also you tend to meet other people who are passionate driven and that's a good pool from which to make new friends
service-minded
service minded people and you know if you're a dog person you
you're for the Humane Society and walk dogs with other dog lovers, you know, and people who love animals are more likely to be plant-based, you know, more like that and not eat animals than than, you know, people shoot animals for example, but I would find the vegetarian restaurants and try those or the vegan restaurants and try those in a community and then I would you know actually have a tool on the blue zones website that allows you to go through
Through your social network, you know, if we really take kind of inventory on the friends we have in our lives and this inventory actually asks the questions about how active they are. What kind of food they eat what their temperament is we often don't do that. We often just you know phone rings and you know our
buddy Jim come on down to the bar, you know, we're meeting
and you just sort of follow inertia as opposed to sort of proactively looking back in your own group of friends to find the ones who are going to
Help Propel healthier habits than the island.
Hi sissy like doing this inventory of one's relationships and going. Holy shit. Haha. I could just see the red pan. I don't like speaking of being a product of your environment. Like holy cow. Look, these are the people I'm hanging out with
like well Rich. Let me ask you. I mean you have you have this terrific history and you know your New York days where you were a big partier and eight.
The I mean I have to guess you left the lot of the pels you were hanging around then
behind. Well, yeah, I mean in in 12-step they call them lower companions, but I will say this like I had plenty of lower companions, but I also like I have like what I was in New York, I like a lot of that was fun like in a lot of the people I was running around with are like really cool people. They just didn't have the problem that I did and I'm still friends with those people.
But certainly, you know, when that when that like addiction thing turns and it starts getting dark you find yourself spending time with you know, not the best not not the greatest crowd of people. So yeah, when I got sober I had to like completely change my environment and I invested in the 12-step Community here in LA and I knew I was like, I need new friends, you know, I got a whole new set of friends because left to my own devices that phone is going to ring and somebody's going to say hey we're doing this and that's
I'm going to go do exactly thought I had to in my own unconscious, you know, semi Blue Zone way. I suppose had to like reconfigure my environment without moving geographically, but socially
well and that's the other thing. I mean it making new friends is is a it's probably the most powerful thing you can do to improve your happiness and your longevity and there's actually very good research around.
The impact of of the people you hang out with but the other thing is you say well without moving your geography probably the most powerful thing to do if you're unhappy is moved to a happier place and we know that by following immigrants from unhappy places like muldavia or unhappy places in Africa in Southeast Asia when they move to Denmark very happy place or Canada a very happy place.
Within one year their age doesn't change much their education level doesn't change their sex doesn't change and marital status status usually doesn't change their their sexual preference doesn't change nothing about them changes. But within one year, they start reporting the happiness level of their adopted happy homes, and that often represents a doubling of Happiness. So, you know, if you're not happy where you're living when
You think about it? What's more important than the health and happiness of you and your family you want to really think about moving and you know, I was on this Mel Robbins show this week. I know Mel tape
its kind of mine full of cheese a kick in the pants. Yeah. She's
got a lot of energy. She
died. You were TV show. Yeah. Oh cool. Yeah. Yeah
great. It's gonna be out soon. But but at the end of the I was on there the for a whole show and they brought out three divorce women, you know, we're having a really tough time and one of the women
Is you know 57 or husband at 30 years did kind of a crappy thing and you know ran off with another woman left her in this house and it's a house on the beach. You know, she kept saying it's a beautiful house on the beach, but it's really isolated
and she can't find new
friends and she's really lonely and and I said to her probably the best thing is move away from this house where you have these 30 years of memories with this guy who did this, you know crappy.
Thank you and move it to a community where there's other people like you homophony. We like people like us where you can walk places, you know, instead of trying to find a pill or you know, even like joining a club or something like that move. You know, that's the biggest most powerful thing you can do is so counterintuitive the average American moves 10 times in his or her adult life. So it's not like something we don't do but we I think we under
celebrate the power of it.
Yeah, I think that's great advice. I would I would add one caveat to that which is is another thing. I've learned in sobriety like alcoholics and addicts love the move. They love the movie. I didn't know that. Yeah. Well first of all, you know, because they've burned a bunch of bridges so they got to get out of Dodge, but there is this sort of perverted idea that that moving your geographic location is going to save your problems. Like if you're if you have some kind of emotional
And all you know disorder or situation or addiction moving your geographic location is not going to solve that because you the thing the thing that you don't realize is you bring yourself with you so you got to kind of work on that as well. But I other than that, I agree with everything you
said. Yes, it's not going to change the person you are in the inside and if you're addicted or you know, emotionally trouble moving not necessarily going to address that but it's going to if you're just a normal person struggling with
the things I would argue even a mild depression and anxiety can be ameliorated by moving and it's one of these things that it's it just Stacks the deck in favor of a better life. It doesn't promise a better life. It's not going to release all of your demons. It just puts you in an environment where you're more likely to bump into people. You're more likely to get physical activity or more likely going to socialize and you know, everybody else is going to come on and
say I got
This product that's going to help you and I'm going to say forget all the damn products. I'm the sort of disruptor and say no it's not your behavior. It's your
environment. What did what did Mel say when you offered up that advice on the show.
She liked it. Actually. She let me go on and on, you know, she's got this count to five right strategy
second rule the five
second rule, which is not just for dropping your toast on the floor, but apparently whenever your stress
stout or or you count to five and and what I love about her show is she so many Americans are struggling or half of Americans don't have 400 dollars saved and she brings him on our show and she's trying to you know, not the dazzling celebrities. She's trying to bring on. I think she's trying to address a growing number of people in this country are suffering and
You know doing the best she can and education. I mean entertainment format, but nevertheless, you know, there's a true carrying on her part in a Marshland of the available
expertise. Yeah hundred percent. I mean she has an incredible talent and facility for being able to communicate inspirational practical ideas to that certain type of person who is suffering in that way and I think it's profound like yeah very talented.
Ahmad what she does she's great. So I'm interested in you know, you were talking about happiness like you're not happy move.
So much of the work that you've done, you know, we've talked about blue the blue zones of longevity, but you've also spent a lot of time working on these blue zones of happiness and in the Venn diagram of longevity and happiness very much overlaps, but it doesn't overlap completely nuts in and of itself is interesting.
Yeah if you can if you can
Situate your life. So you're among the twenty percent of the happiest people in America. It's worth about six years of life expectancy over being in the least happy 20 percent. So they're highly correlated. It's very hard to be happy. If you're not healthy and vice versa and the blue zones of longevity by the way are in the top 10% of the happiest places and in the world, but the places I profiled for blue zones of Happiness are different places and
Once again, my Approach on happiness is if you want to be happier, don't try to change your behavior, you'll fail and you're probably become a neurotic because none of these interventions most of them don't work and the ones that work don't work for long enough to make a real life change difference. Once again, I are you changing your environment happiness itself is a meaningless term because you can't measure it but social scientists can measure life satisfaction.
Action, which is how you look at your life in the rearview mirror and scale one to ten how satisfied are you with your life and you can think of your whole life and yeah, you know, I got a good job. Give it a number then there's how you experience your life, which is how often you smile and felt join the last 24 hours. And then the third one is purpose. How often do you get to use your strengths to do what you do best and those three strands come together and they weave together to make what I think
A of a rope of sustainable happiness. So I found the statistically happiest place in each of those three areas. And then I went and told their story in an effort to Marshall in the science and blue zones of happiness is really because we have so much data now it was really trying to tell a character-driven story of places that represent the data.
So in other words things you can do that stack the deck in favor of happiness.
And how do those where do those diverge from the pillars of the blue zones on
longevity?
I don't think they necessarily diverge. I mean there's so much overlap. For example, we know that people are eating six servings of vegetables every day. They're not only living longer, but they're also reporting 20% more happiness people have a strong social network. Arguably. The biggest thing you can do for happiness. Also favors your longevity having a sense of purpose purpose is one of the pillars we measure when it comes to happiness. So the best crossover in the world is Costa Rica, so,
Tarik is home to not only nicoya, which is a longevity Blue Zone but cartago which is up in the highlands near a San Jose, which is a happiness Blue Zone. Mmm and Costa Rica interestingly produces more, you know, there's a correlation between GDP so generally the Richer the country the happier it is to a point but it's not the whole picture right but Costa Rica produces more
unhappiness per GDP dollar than any place in the world and it produces more Health per Healthcare dollar than a place in the world so demonstrates that when it comes to happiness and Longevity money is not that important. It's not nearly as important as we think here in the United
States he needs to cure it sort of security over Prosperity.
Well, it's they focus on the things that really lead to happiness. So if happiness work,
Cake recipe the important gradients. So you need food. You need shelter. You need some healthcare those all costs some money. You need some education flattens off after about a two years of college. So you don't not everybody needs a college degree trusting environment is really important having the right partner in life having a job with meaningful work the feeling of giving back. These are all measurable.
In the happiness and move, you know, if your where you live is the one with the biggest variance so cartago the happiest places, for example, people are socially interacting between six and seven hours a day and not on Facebook not on social media. They are sitting across the table from their friend or so the place I profiled in Qatar toggle was the Central Market these these produce salesman and it has the air of a
Bunch of 50 year old Frat Boys in a way and frat girls. It's a they kind of tease each other. They they help out each other. They joke around when when somebody gets sick they all pitch in to help for that person the cheapest and healthiest foods or plant-based Foods. They that they sell they live on walkable distance from home. They have easy access to Nature. These are all things that are going to favor happiness. They're not going to guarantee happiness
there so at odds with
With everything that we've kind of, you know, premise star American Dream upon, you know the idea of like you get a house in the suburbs and you got two cars in the garage and you got the job downtown and your you know your it's just everything you don't like you're climbing the corporate ladder and it's about getting ahead and that promotion and the two weeks off and putting the money aside for the retirement. There is nothing about that that speaks to what we actually have what you have actually discovered.
To know about what makes people live long and live
happily. That's exactly right when it comes to happiness. Most people in this country are misguided or just plain wrong and it's not because they're stupid but because we're relentlessly marketed this idea that if we have more if we look better if we're younger if we could just get this one thing Financial Freedom better-looking partner a bigger house that that's going to deliver us the happiness and that's always
misguided happiness is always a cluster of factors that need to come together. It's never just one thing and we miss calculate the amount of Happiness. Any one goal is going to give Bible 50% So in other words this thing we think we want we're
wrong half the time. Yeah. Well the thing is then you were constantly being presented with evidence that were wrong. Right like when you get that job or that promotion or that car or
Vacation you have that kind of momentary, you know excitement around it or sense of feeling good, but it's so quickly Fades and rather than challenging the whole setup or dynamic we say well, yeah that were off but like I just need to get that next one. I get the next thing then
it'll yeah, it's not bad to have goals, but it's bad to think that that to rely wholly on that goal and sacrificed too much. Let's just take the context of a day.
And I'll tell you exactly what statistically the the things that you can do that plant that stack the deck in your favor for happiness. First of all, wake up without an alarm the happiest people are sleeping between eight and nine and a half hours a day. If you're sleeping six hours. You're about 30 percent less happy. Number two eat a plant-based breakfast. If you eat a big fatty breakfast or sugar cereal breakfast, you're going to you're going to be hungry. Midday. You're going to have less.
Energy throughout the day now number three a make sure you you have coffee with a friend you have lunch with a friend you want to make sure to engineer in four or five hours or 6 if you can of social interaction with people you like where am I number five volunteer find a little time to give back every day worldwide statistically speaking volunteers are happier than on volunteers take a nap work part-time.
Time instead of part full time we know from every place in the world people are working less than about 35 hours a week. They report the highest level of happiest equals. You need to make enough money to cover your basic needs belonging to a faith doesn't matter what the faith is but belonging to Faith Stacks the deck in favor of Happiness watching TV and social media. It seems that about 30 minutes a day of each is optimal. Actually that provides a little bit more happiness than no social.
And no TV at all, but after about an hour and a half of either one of those your happiness starts to drop off the drop off a cliff. So you don't you want to spend about an hour a day exercising at least and that can be something as simple as walking and gardening or it could be, you know, like you do, you know running a mini marathon every day, but do we know things are going to stack the deck in favor of Happiness way more than shooting for this
Financial
Freedom or you know, I want a house in Beverly.
Beverly Hills or I'm going to get that promotion damn it no matter what it takes wrong-minded.
Yeah, where does risk come into this? Like you're somebody who who very early on, you know developed a certain kind of relationship with Adventure and exploration and risk that that is somewhat unusual in our culture and has kind of birth this career that you're on most people. I would characterize as you know, more fear-based and and risk-averse in
Terms of trying to find that purpose in your life and and and the sort of willingness required to place yourself in uncomfortable unpredictable situations. Like how do you think about that in the context of Happiness? Well, I go on Expeditions not adventures and I never had much
respect for the sort of Adventure
risk-taking. I don't you go if you Google you it's like National Geographic Explorer. I'm like, I want to be like that guy. That's like the coolest job.
However, it has pretty cool and like listen, you know, you've been on the show a number of times. The first time you came on you went into detail on this previous chapter of your life where you said Guinness World Records for for endurance cycling and you've ridden your bike and you've done a lot of other stuff prior to this. So I would characterize you as an Explorer.
Thank you. I am explore but not an adventurer, you know, even though I biked across Africa I biked Alaskan Argentina. I biked around the world through the Soviet Union.
Claps right after I left I'd like to
see you spent three days with a hundred and two year old woman. Yes. It's like I would I think that's an
adventure it is but you know, what they they weren't risks. They were all very carefully planned out and calculated to mitigate risk and every but every
Explorer and adventurer says that Alex Honnold said across from me and said like he doesn't think of what he does as being risky because the people there you've done so much work ahead of time to prepare for that kind of thing.
I think it's
more risky is sitting in front of your TV and eating hot dogs and chips because that that will Mount to a certain death and probably a certain, you know, kind of misery through life or he check.
Yeah, I hear you
but I think rather than risk. I've been blessed with this irrational optimism that you know, you can do these things that most people don't think about doing or
Fact people tried to dissuade me from doing them but very few of them require any risk,
but in terms of how you think about finding your purpose, right? Like you have to you have to be willing to try new things and and perhaps even cut Against the Grain if you're in search of what that might be that will lead you to your you know, ikigai.
Yes. Well, I think
it's a fairly simple exercise to take a piece of paper and people want to have them reflected on this most Americans have never reflected on this you put four columns this all the things that you love to do that then right next to it same line your passions what you're good at and then you look at the commonalities on where where your gifts are. Where can you put
These passions and skills to work and once you're clear on that if you then design your career around those the intersection of those things you're setting yourself up for success in life. Not because you're going to enjoy the journey and as you know, it's we doing what we love. We're more likely to be successful. It's like your podcast. I remember, you know, first time we met you came over to my house with a little tape recorder right? I got this
Podcast that I didn't know what it was that, you know sounded like, you know something you keep makeup in or something. But anyway the and you you've grown it into this Empire and I know enough about you that you're living your passion every day by not only talking about your altar endurance. But also using the life lessons you've learned in the life lessons the people you bring on to better people's lives and lo and behold grows. So it's getting clear on your
Purpose and and then going from
there. I think it I think it also is about, you know finding that thing that you click with that you connect with that that you not only have some kind of natural affinity for but also has been a transformative influence in your life and then figuring out a way to translate that in service to others to perhaps have a positive impact.
That's right large. That's what point. I've
heard you speak about that in so many words before
that service to others is
Is really important too because if it's just a selfish Pursuit it rings Hollow after
all. Well, that's I mean, I think that's the secret sauce of happiness and it's so counterintuitive because we're in a selfish culture where we're taught that happiness is a is a direct result of pursuing what's ours or accumulating but in truth when you can transcend your ego Get outside yourself and invest yourself in somebody else's problem or issue all
Bullshit tends to evaporate and you find yourself more present grounded grateful. All of the things that were seeking in wrongheaded ways come by virtue of doing that. I've heard it's I have to I'm saying that to remind myself. Yeah. Well, it's like it's not my natural inclination. You
know, I've heard it summed up really elegantly this so the four key ingredients to happiness are someone to love something to do.
Something to look forward to and something to give back. Hmm. And if you can get those sort of four things into your daily life your you're pretty well set up.
That's pretty good. I think it's a good place to I'll take pretty good style takes pretty damn. Good Rich Roll. What's your favorite recipe in the blue zones kitchen book?
It's the mlis minestrone. So I met the longest live family in the history of the world nine siblings Collective age 861 years.
Every day of their life, they have the same lunch a sourdough bread a small two or three ounces of red Canal wine in this minestrone, which is made from Black Eyed Peas lentil beans garbanzo beans cruciferous vegetables onions garlic tomato little bit of olive oil some pasta.
And together it creates this absolute longevity stew. That's an absolute Feast for our microbiome. And it's also do it freezes. Well, it's delicious. I fed that to an entire city Albert Lea Minnesota. I made 2500 dishes and this was a meat packing Plant City and their definition of vegetables before this. This minestrone was like the orange Flex on Hamburger Helper and I had to I had to
Boiling cauldrons of in this in this in this city ate every last drop. Wow, that's
cool. That's amazing. So you're working now you've worked now with like over 40 cities, right? 50/50.
Yeah. We just had 50 cities today. Orlando Florida is a big city coming on in Jacksonville Austin Texas there with their buddies at Whole Foods. Nice.
That's exciting.
Citing man how many people are working for blue zones now about
200? Yeah, so it's grown. So is that
like looking forward over 20 20 is that occupying most of your time? I mean, I know you do a lot of public speaking and the like like what's on tap for
you? Yeah, the the
And we started out with an idea and now it's grown and and the challenge now is scaling this and bringing enough top-notch Talent. So it's it's almost like an adventure of sorts to to build this this team so that it can handle the size of the cities that are inviting us in and you working on another book. Not yet. I'm taking a break from I have to do one more addition of Blues.
Owns and we think there might be one more Blue Zone and I'm I'm I'm trying to confirm that if I do I'll come out with another story in Geographic and
and super secret super secret. Wow, that's exciting. Yeah, if it
is, I guarantee it's the last one on Earth but
you've milk this thing for a lot of books my friend. I don't blame you though. It's amazing work. How's Kathy? Is she good Kathy,
Fresca?
My cruciferous girlfriend who says hi. She's the vegan Vixen, you know, she's been a great influence on you know, really early Pioneer and making plant-based eating cool. Yeah for sure. Yeah yuge huge
influence on mainstreaming what we now kind of almost take for granted like oh vegan options pretty much everywhere you go, but like Kathy played a huge part in yeah, you
got Oprah to go vegan for a while and now Ellen Degeneres and
Crossword kitchens, which I argue is one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles is all plant based off. That would have been seen as heresy. Yeah, 15 years. What kind of a also a big
influence on you personally? Like I think even in the time that I've known you you had an evolution in terms of your plant based diet, you know relationship.
Yeah, you know I come I've come to a plant-based diet by observing the the diets of the world's longest live people and 95% of what
They Point their mouth is whole plant-based food, but she comes at it and sort of the animal cruelty and I never even thought of the you know, that the occasional piece of meat. I ate occasioned know this just horrible pain and suffering from another sentient being my favorite statistics. She told me that an adult Pig
Has the intelligence of a three-year-old human spends its entire life in a cage a can't turn around and lives in its own feces connects with its its young the same way. We connect with our young wants to socialize feels pain in the same way yet lives a miserable life and has a horrible death at the end all in the service of you know, bacon or pork chop, and it's you know, when you add that to the fact that you know,
eating a plant-based diet is probably worth
six to eight years over heating up.
Standard American diet. It's just so overwhelmingly right that
not too kind of what environmental
considerations that's the third prong. Yes. Yeah.
Well we got around this out here. I just want to say for the record and publicly that you have been a huge inspiration to me and a bit of a mentor. I appreciate you as an individual as a human being as a friend and I have so much respect for the
the work that you are doing and will continue to do you are truly changing millions of lives and the ripple effect of that will be seen for generations to come because of what you're doing in these cities and it's really no small thing. I mean, you've you've basically created a term that has entered the modern lexicon, like everybody knows what the blue zones are right now and it starts with you and so thank you for that. You're a gift to humanity. Well, very glad to have you in my life, brother.
Another mother I consider you the core of my
moai rich. I'm gonna have to get up to Santa Barbara then and solidify that so thanks man. Thank you for the kind words come back anytime and I think that we got this for ya. I think he got recorded. I think we're good. All right, man. Peace.
All right, what'd you guys think Dan is a charismatic one, isn't he eat plants? Love your neighbor find purpose be connected move more live longer live happier. This guy rules. That was awesome. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Do me a favor. Let Dan know what you thought about today's conversation. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram at Blue zones. You can go to Blue zones.com to learn more about the work that he does. Please pick up the blue zones kitchen, you won't regret it and to Avail yourself of everything we discussed today. You can dive into the show notes on the
Page at Rich world.com if you'd like to support the work we do here on the show subscribe rate and comment on it on Apple podcasts or Spotify for you Android people YouTube for the visually inclined you can share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. I love seeing all the screen grabs on Instagram and you can support us on patreon at Rich world.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today Jason camiolo for audio engineering production show notes interstitial music.
I like Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the show for YouTube and all the clips. You see on social media Jessica Miranda for graphic Sally Rogers for portraits DK David Kahn for Advertiser relationships and theme music by analemma. Appreciate the love. You guys see you back here next week with a fireworks Laden episode courtesy of Robert F Kennedy Jr. This is a conversation. You're not going to want to miss people. Here's a taste to take you out until
then. Peace.
Plants, it's become kind of a religious Orthodoxy that any question of it is forbidden and interest and you know by way of illustration. I'm not any vaccine. I'm pro-science. I think we ought to have safe vaccines. We ought to have real Safety Science and we ought to have robust Regulators who are independent from Financial conflicts with vaccine companies.
On average, there's 22 ads on an evening new show and about 17 of those are pharmaceutical the for companies that make all 72 vaccines that are now mandated for our children. Those four companies collectively have paid over 35 billion dollars in penalties fines damages for violating the law for falsifying science for auditing Regulators blind doctors and for killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Why does
Anybody think and what kind of cognitive dissonance does it require to believe that they're not doing out vaccines, you know, you have to look at the science and you have to read it. Critically. There's a huge difference between the scientific establishment and establish science.
