If you have seen the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, you know that the plot is that two men are invited to vacation at their boss’s swanky beach house for a weekend. When he dies, they pretend he is alive by propping him up and putting sunglasses on him in a farcical comedy so they can enjoy their weekend.
It’s a silly movie, but the plot might be at the real-life roots of why the famed blue zones have such a long life expectancy. People in these parts of the world regularly live into their 100s. People who live to 100 are called centenarians. People who live past 110 are supercentenarians. Scientists have studied their genetics, diet and culture to learn their secret.
“If you were somebody who read Sunday supplements of newspapers or if you watched National Geographic, they spent a lot of time talking about blue zones, which were areas where people lived remarkably long, like 110 years old,” said Tom Whitwell, who is known for writing a list of 52 things he has learned every year. “They’d talk about eating beans, drinking red wine, not too much food, little amounts of meat, natural exercise — not going to the gym, but gardening, having friends, having a sense of purpose.”
Now, a researcher from Oxford may have solved the mystery of how people in the blue zones live so long: it’s all a lie. According to Saul Newman’s analysis of past research into blue zones, some discrepancies simply don’t add up. In studies where people were required to provide proof of their age, the number of people over the age of 110 dropped by 69 to 82 percent. That suggests that people in other studies may have been saying they were older than they were. Only 18 percent of supercentenarians — people over the age of 110 — have a birth certificate.
There is also the problem of pension fraud. In Japan, in 2010, 230,000 pensions were stopped when the government realized that the centenarians who were supposedly receiving the money were dead, missing, fictional or in some other way unaccounted for. Greece stopped around 200,000 pensions for the same reason.
Some health advice from the blue zones is beneficial. Not overeating, having a diet rich in fiber, getting plenty of movement and having a sense of purpose are all proven ways to maintain health. However, some of it is counterintuitive. This work may explain why it has never made sense: it’s not helpful.
The Blue Zone organization is upset and disputes Mr. Newman’s work. He has won an Ig Nobel Award for his work. The award goes to scientific achievements that make people laugh before it makes them think.
