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Team Leader
Not that we planned it this way, but we saved the best for last.
Yesterday one of Europe's great nutritionists, the grand dame of the Mediterranean Diet, Antonia Trichopoulou, M.D. joined us on the Blue Zones Quest to help us assess the Ikarían diet. She and her husband, Dimitrios, have spent 30 years studying the popular Mediterranean diet. Dr. Trichopoulou and Dr. Gianni Pes have been conducting surveys with people over 90 years old to find out what they’ve been eating most of their lives.
The Mediterranean diet, which Trichopoulou describes as a "vitamin cocktail," is rich in olive oil and vegetables, low in dairy and meat products, and also includes moderate amounts of alcohol. Here we’ve found that it also includes lots of potatoes, goat milk, honey, and beans, but comparatively low levels of fruit and fish consumption. Also, Ikaríans regularly gather many of the over 150 varieties of greens that grow wild in Greece for their salads and to bake into pies. Some of these greens have over ten times the antioxidants that red wine does.
But it's not just the food choices alone that help people here live longer. "It’s how Ikarians eat it," Trichopoulou speculates. “Eating local food means eating your food fresh rather than processed or preserved—and that means fewer dangerous chemicals and more health-giving nutrients, which degrade on store shelves.”
Dr. Trichapoulou’s recent studies show that people who consume the regional diet in Ikaría are less likely to die from coronary heart disease. They also have stronger bones and lower cancer rates. In fact people who most closely adhere to the Mediterranean diet live about six years longer that those who don’t.
Her most important diet advice? Learn how to cook with olive oil. “Vegetables by themselves often don’t taste good, so people won’t eat them,” she told us. “But combine them with the right ingredients, like antioxidant-rich oregano, and fry them with olive oil; they taste wonderful. Eating, after all, should be a pleasure.”
The Ikarían diet is just one of 18 factors that our science team believes contributes to longevity here. To vote on eight factors that are most significant to you, click here.
Why are the lessons from the Ikarían Blue Zone so important? Our team has discovered that over one-third of everyone living here in the northeastern end of the island reaches age 90. They suffer 20 percent less cancer and half the rate of heart disease. And there’s virtually no dementia. In other words, they’re getting the good years many of us are missing, years we could possibly have by just adjusting a few simple habits.
Here's the big picture: Cancer costs our country $250 billion per year, heart disease another $500 billion, and dementia yet another $175 billion. If we could follow the Ikarían lifestyle, we could, at least in theory, save nearly a half-trillion dollars.
Now there’s a stimulus package we can live with.
Live Large,
Sabriya Rice and Dan Buettner
AARP The Magazine
No one here seems to have a street address,
so when I went to interview an old leftist yesterday, my interpreter and I sought his house in the usual Ikarían way: we went to his village and asked for help from the first person we saw, who in this case was a car mechanic in Wedgewood-blue coveralls.
The mechanic took my interpreter across the road, through an iron gate, and up to an overlook, where he pointed out an apricot-colored stucco house below. But when we backtracked a bit, parked the car, and hiked about 50 yards uphill to what we thought was the right house, we found it empty and its shutters screwed shut, as if it were closed up for the season.
This is when I experienced a moment of true Ikarían zen: I was already 20 minutes late for a meeting I'd requested, I had no idea when I was going to get there, I hadn't called to apologize for the delay, and I was not freaking out.
Ordinarily, of course, I'd stress about inconveniencing my interview subject. But here, I knew he wouldn't care. Times are approximate on Ikaría; most people don't even wear watches. As one local chef told team leader Dan Buettner a few days ago, "On Ikaría, when you invite someone for lunch, you don't say, 'Come at noon.' You say, 'Come on Tuesday.'"
A couple of cell-phone calls later, we found the right house (also apricot-colored) and sat down for a chat—accompanied, as I have come to expect, by what amounted to a meal: olives, cheeses, peppers, and freshly made meatballs to munch on, plus delicate etched shotglasses full of locally made tsipouro, a clear liquor made from the grape dregs left over from winemaking. I only took a few sips of the drink, though, because it was barely 1:30 p.m., and I had work to do. The cocktail hour comes early here. In fact, it's just about the only thing that does.
The other day, I received an emailed tip from a woman who will remain nameless. "Find the meaning of the word 'anestisia,'" she wrote. "Many of us American-Ikaríans believe it is the true secret of male Ikarían longevity."
Intrigued, I went looking for a translation. "Anestisia"—related to the English word "anesthesia"—seems to mean everything from being cool and carefree to being oblivious, clueless, or blotto. In Ikaría, anestisia is a relaxed state of mind to be admired in a man, provided this man was not supposed to pick up milk from the store for you (assuming you get your milk from the store and not from a goat). In my moment of calmness about being late, I may have felt a flash of anestisia, that cool unconcern.
Life in Ikaría doesn't look easy to me. It's largely dependent on physical labor, with few of the resources and conveniences of modern city life. So when people here first started telling me that the secret to their longevity is a lack of stress, I had a hard time understanding how they could think themselves so carefree. But the more I started living on an Ikarían schedule, which is to say almost no schedule at all, the more I recognized how much of the internal stress we feel is created by our expectations and surroundings. If you don't know exactly when something is supposed to happen, you can't feel tense if it doesn't happen on time. And if no one around you is monitoring the Internet for bulletins about the swine flu situation—and no one here is—it's hard to be anxious about it.
I showed up for lunch at Thea's tavern in Nas at 2 p.m. today, which is about the time she usually starts serving it. There was a sign out front that said the restaurant was closed, but there were Blue Zones people inside, and Thea said she'd fix us something to eat. The food didn't appear for a couple more hours, but when it did, it was plentiful and tasty, including winter-squash fritters and tender cross-sections of a small swordfish.
While I was waiting, instead of stressing about the delay, I chilled, because I knew there'd be food at some point … and because I didn't have anywhere else I needed to be. During the wait, I had enough downtime to nearly finish my writing for the day, which meant I could have some red wine with my 4 p.m. lunch. It's good for longevity, you know.
The Blue Zones quest is at an end, and the researchers are returning to their home bases around the world. If you have any questions for me, you can write me at
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