Blue Zones Founder and National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner defended the concept’s authenticity amidst skepticism.
Buettner discovered the world’s blue zones and has dedicated his livelihood to studying them for over 20 years. He is a New York Times bestselling author for his books that delve into the topic, a three-time Guinness World Record holder for distance cycling, and the host and co-producer of the Netflix limited series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. In an interview with Greek Reporter, Buettner defended the blue zones concept against recent attacks by Dr. Saul Newman, a researcher who won the Ig Nobel Prize for allegedly debunking the blue zones, by providing concrete evidence and recounting the research he and his team have done over the past two decades.
Blue zones are the special areas of the world where people live extraordinarily longer and healthier lives than average. The term was coined by Buettner when he discovered them in 2004 and has been used to identify the places where people live more than 90 years old on average.
According to Buettner, a stringent and thorough process is undertaken when investigating blue zones. They must identify the areas that have valid data to support the claim, and they conduct a deep dive into records, interviewing older people who are still alive, and studying the factors that go into making such long lives possible in a specific region.
“They [blue zones] were identified through demographic research and validated census data,” said Buettner. “To confirm a blue zone, we look for areas with verifiable longevity data and then investigate the lifestyles and environmental factors contributing to it. These zones include Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia (Italy), Ikaria (Greece), Nicoya Peninsula (Costa Rica), and Loma Linda (California)”
Newman used Okinawa, Japan as an example of the invalidity of the concept. However, recently Okinawa lost its status. According to Buettner, the reason the island lost its prestigious title as one of the five blue zones was its Westernization as they have incorporated unhealthy fast-food restaurants that have affected the lifestyle of the region.
When talking about Okinawa having high rates of obesity and diabetes, Buettner said, “Yes, it does. Now. I report on that on Netflix and my latest book and have delisted it as a Blue Zone. But Newman wasn’t around in 1999 when I first started traveling to Okinawa for this work. It was a different place—before the forest of fast food restaurants and the snarl of highways.”
Buettner continues, addressing Newman’s claims of invalid census records, “And yes, there were a few cities that have lost records to Typhoons. But the vast majority are intact.”
He also mentioned that a few times, he and his demographers have gone to investigate a location, only to find that it did not meet the standards needed to be considered a blue zone.
“One notable example was a community in Eastern Europe where initial reports suggested high longevity rates,” said Buettner. “However, upon further investigation, we found inconsistencies in age documentation and localized factors that didn’t align with the broader patterns of blue zones. This reinforced the need for thorough validation before drawing conclusions. Also, following leads in Vilcabamba, Ecuador and Barbados were possibly Blue Zones, our demographers traveled there. We found the record-keeping too shoddy to name it a blue zone.”
Buettner says that Newman’s paper attempting to debunk the concept he spent the last twenty years studying is harmfully misleading and purely based on opinion, as it has not been peer-reviewed. Indeed, Newman’s Blue Zones paper was published about five years ago and has still not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“Saul Newman’s preprint paper, which is a version of the one he pedaled to the media five years ago and has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, is deeply flawed and academically misleading,” said Buettner. “It does not contain new data, research, or a study: it is a theory – an opinion paper. Saul Newman is a plant biologist with no academic training or expertise in demography, gerontology, or geriatrics, and has no record of publication in these fields of study. He willfully omits or misunderstands the rigorous age verification and statistical analysis involved in identifying blue zones.”
Buettner goes on to rebut specific claims Newman made, such as supercentenarian fraud and regional census crimes.
When addressing Newman’s criticism of using supercentenarians, Buettner said, “I never made any Supercentenarian claims in any of my books. In fact, I point out that Supercentenarians are probably genetic freaks of nature. Our work focuses on people who have lived to 90-plus and over.”
Newman also pointed to Sardinia’s high rates of crime and poverty as a reason for potential pension fraud among the population. Buettner states that while Sardinia’s big cities do have high crime rates, it has little bearing on his work as his research in the area is more focused on rural areas with traditional and healthy lifestyles dating back to ancient times.
“There may be high crime and poverty in Sardinia’s big cities but this has nothing to do with the blue zone or my work,” said Buettner. “The Sardinia blue zone consists of a half dozen villages in the rural Oliastra Provence. This is a Bronze Age culture that migrated to Sardinia about 11,000 years ago and clustered in the hills. Newman has never been there and hasn’t bothered to understand that or point out the difference.”
Another arguing point of Newman’s paper was that Costa Rica’s “longevity effect” is vanishing, thus invalidating its status. The Ig Nobel Prize winner went on to cite 2008 census data from the country, which showed that 42 percent of people over 99 years of age were lying.
In regards to Costa Rica’s longevity effect disappearing, Buettner said, “Yes—another point I make in the Netflix series in the book. That process began in about 1940 but the population of men born before then—the cohort of longevity—was still alive in 2007 when we identified extraordinary longevity in Nicoya. The situation has deteriorated since then. Now, tragically, when you enter Nicoya, you’re greeted by a McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King.”
Buettner states that Newman’s citing of the 2008 Costa Rican census is yet another omission of the work he and Michael Poulain, fellow researcher and emeritus professor at UCLouvain, did in the Nicoya Penisula.
“Again, Newman hasn’t taken the time—or willfully omits—the age validations process that Poulain, Bixby, and I undertook, for which we received a National Geographic grant,” said Buettner. “In other words, Newman’s assertions that centenarians lie about their ages may indeed be true, but that’s irrelevant to our work and misleading: we didn’t rely on what centenarians say about their age, we rely on the registry. Citizens’ birthdates,—and their corresponding identity numbers—are entered sequentially into Costa Rica’s registry so it’s very difficult if not impossible to insert a false birth into the system.”
Buettner continues, going more in-depth about his investigation in Nicoya, “The global age distribution of centenarians by sex was as expected and the global statistical data received from the Statistical office in San Jose supported our hypothesis of exceptional longevity. We also cross-referenced the births to baptismal certificates (remember there were only about 40 centenarians in Nicoya at the time). Then for deaths, we cross-referenced the registry with death certificates and cemetery plots or we actually went to visit the living centenarians.”
Newman’s main argument against blue zones is that census fraud is allegedly more common than people believe. He cites a report in Japan that claimed that many centenarians were fake and were just opportunist relatives getting money from pension fraud.
Buettner elaborates on the report and why Newman’s argument on this point is flawed, saying, “Newman study cited a 2010 report on Japan having like 230k lost centenarians who are probably dead with some relatives taking their pension but a more rigorous search revealed that the number of missing centenarians in Okinawa was zero percent, unlike most other prefectures.”
He goes on to mention other peer-reviewed research that was conducted on the island that backs his own findings, “Additionally, other researchers have gone to Okinawa doubting it all and come back saying “They really are that old” after rigorously verifying centenarians. The paper also states that Okinawans are unhealthy today, not realizing the dramatic shift to Westernization in the younger population in recent years.”
Buettner brings up the investigations of his colleague, Dr. Gianni Pes, into the island of Sardinia and its Blue Zones claim.
“In a similar false framing, Saul’s preprint makes claims that there were no birth certificates in Sardinian centenarians, alleging inauthenticity,” said Buettner. “However, Dr. Gianni Pes who has been studying the area since the 90s, and other researchers similarly cross-checked civil and church records to verify elderly, records since the 1880s. ‘This double certification ensures that the probability of errors in the date of birth is virtually zero.’”
Buettner said that Newman’s paper and the allegations against the blue zones, while harmful, have helped Buettner and his team reinforce the research they have conducted.
“While they’ve created some noise, Newman’s claims haven’t hindered the core mission of promoting longevity and health practices,” said Buettner. “If anything, they’ve sparked conversations that allow us to reemphasize the rigorous research and data validation behind blue zones. Challenges like these only reinforce the importance of evidence-based storytelling.
