Choices · Blue Zones food
Everybody who travels to a blue zone goes looking for the food. My son Alek and I did too. In Okinawa we took three local buses to reach Ogimi, the village famous for its long lives, and a local guide, Eiko, opened every door for us. In Sardinia, Paola walked us through the centenarians’ village. We sat at their tables, watched a grandmother cook from her garden at six in the morning, and asked a lot of questions. Here is what we saw, what the science says, and where the story is more complicated than the books. Every number has a source. Where a study only shows that two things go together, not that one causes the other, we tell you.
By Marek Piotrowski · Updated 2026-10-26
In short
The way the longest-living people ate is good for your heart, your weight and your mood: plenty of vegetables, beans almost every day, a little meat, stopping before you are full, and sharing the table with people you love.
In older people in four countries, eating more beans went with a lower risk of dying during the study. In a fair test, a Mediterranean way of eating, rich in vegetables, beans and olive oil, led to about 30% fewer heart attacks and strokes.
The famous villages are changing, and some scientists question the oldest ages, but the food itself has good science behind it. [1][2][3]
Longevity, as we mean it: more healthy, joyful years. What we mean →
Here is the good news, and the heart of this page: none of this food is rare or expensive. Beans, vegetables, a sweet potato, a bowl of soup, a smaller plate and a full table. Grandmothers all over the world cooked like this.
Science answers this question in two ways. In a fair test, people are picked at random to eat one way or another, so we can see what the food itself does. In a long-term study, scientists ask people what they eat and follow them for years. A fair test shows a cause. A long-term study shows a link. We tell you which is which.
In the places where people live longest, beans are the everyday food: soy and tofu in Okinawa, fava beans in Sardinia, black beans in Costa Rica, lentils and chickpeas around the Mediterranean. Scientists followed 785 people over 70 in Japan, Sweden, Greece and Australia for up to seven years. Of all the foods they looked at, beans and other legumes were the one that mattered most: every extra 20 grams a day went with a 7–8% lower risk of dying during the study. A link, not proof. People who eat beans may live differently in other ways too.
Based on: Long-term study · 785 people · 4 countries · a link, not proof [3][1]In Spain, 7,447 people at high risk of heart disease were picked at random. Two groups ate a Mediterranean diet, full of vegetables, fruit, beans, fish and olive oil, and were given extra olive oil or nuts. The third group was advised to eat less fat. After almost five years, the Mediterranean groups had about 30% fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease. This is the closest thing to Sardinian village food that has been tested in a fair test.
Based on: Fair test · 7,447 people · about 5 years · shows cause [2]Around 1950, the sweet potato gave Okinawans most of their energy (about 69% of their calories), with vegetables, soy, a little fish and very little meat. They ate fewer calories than people on mainland Japan, stayed slim their whole lives, and fewer of them died of the diseases of old age. A link, not proof, and it describes a diet of hard times as much as a choice.
Based on: Decades of population records · a link, not proof [5]In the United States, 218 healthy adults aged 21 to 50 were picked at random. One group ate about 12% fewer calories for two years. They lost on average 7.5 kg, and their blood pressure, bad cholesterol and blood sugar control got better than in the group that ate as usual. Here we can say the eating did it. Whether it makes people live longer has not been tested.
Based on: Fair test · 218 people · 2 years · shows cause [6]In Okinawa, many older people learned to stop eating when they feel about 80% full. It is called hara hachi bu. Very little research has looked at this habit on its own. One study of 330 people in Japan found that people who said they stop at 80% full tended to eat less, and the men ate more vegetables. One small study, and it can’t tell whether the habit itself made the difference.
Based on: One small study · a link, not proof [3][7]Words worth knowing
From our glossary. Tap a card to turn it over: the science on the back, and the people we met who explained it to us.
The places where people live the longest, and stay well while they do.
The Blue Zones
Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Nicoya in Costa Rica, Ikaria in Greece and Loma Linda in California. What they share is not a pill but a way of life: moving all day, eating mostly plants, a reason to get up, and people close by. On the quest we sat with the elders of Ogimi, in Okinawa. Read more →
Eating less, but not eating badly.
Caloric restriction and fasting
The body shifts from processing a constant surplus to maintaining itself.
For most people, time-restricted eating and the occasional fasting-mimicking cycle capture most of the benefit without the cost. Read more →
It came up most in our conversations with: Oz Garcia, Gary LeBlanc, Brianna Stubbs
A garden you did not plant and cannot see, which feeds you back.
The gut microbiome
While it is varied it looks after the wall between your gut and your blood. When it thins, that wall leaks a little, and the immune system spends its life mildly annoyed.
Plant variety is the strongest and dullest answer — the number of different plants in a week beats any supplement in the data there is. Read more →
It came up most in our conversations with: Guido Kroemer, Evelyne Bischof, Oz Garcia
Some scientists doubt the records. The demographer Saul Newman argues that many of the world’s oldest ages, in the Blue Zones too, come from paperwork mistakes and pension fraud. His study is a preprint, which means other scientists have not reviewed it yet. In Okinawa, many birth records burned in the war and were rebuilt afterwards, so one demographer asked for much deeper checks, while finding no proof that the ages were wrong. Another team checked the Okinawan centenarians and concluded: they really are that old. In Sardinia, the ages were checked one by one against town records back to 1866 and church archives, and the scientists who did it say the errors there are close to zero.
Based on: Demography · scientists disagree [8][9][10][11][12]The same scientists who defend the Blue Zones now write that Okinawa no longer meets the Blue Zone rules. The generations born before 1940 made Okinawa famous. Since then, war and fast-food culture have changed the island. In 2020, Okinawan men were 43rd of Japan’s 47 prefectures for life expectancy, and Okinawan women 16th. Researchers link much of the loss to the change in diet. Our host in Nanjo told Alek the same thing, in fewer words.
Based on: Official statistics and reviews [12][4][13]In the long-life villages, food sits next to family, friends, faith, daily movement and a purpose. Nobody can separate the beans from the neighbors. No study shows that one food on its own adds years to a life.
Based on: Limits of what we know [3]We are deeply grateful to everyone who opened their door and their kitchen to us. Our first days in Okinawa were in Nanjo, in the south. On the beach there, our friend Tina Woods, who first told us that longevity starts before we are born, explained what she noticed from her very first breakfast in Japan.
“As soon as you arrive in Japan, you can almost feel how it’s different than in the Westernized world. For example, just even the food that you’re eating, I mean, breakfast, you can see they eat, and this is what you hear about when you talk about the Blue Zones, but you can see it even in the hotels as a tourist. You can see that they eat a lot of fresh food, a lot of fresh vegetables, a lot of fermented foods, which of course for the microbiome is really important. Lots of plant-based foods. They eat very, very little fat. They eat lots of beans and of course things like miso soup. These are all part of even breakfast, right?”
In plain words: The long-life food is not a secret recipe. It is fresh vegetables, beans, fermented foods like miso, and very little fat, starting at breakfast.
Alek asked our host in Nanjo, Mikiko Kumagai, about the famous rule of stopping at 80% full. Her answer surprised us.
“About 10 years ago, Okinawa is famous for longevity. […] But recently, ranking has fallen. ’Cause they eat too much. […] Okinawa was occupied by the United States. So their culture have come. So hamburgers. […] So younger people, like, love hamburgers and donuts, and not so healthy.”
In plain words: The Okinawa in the books is the Okinawa of the grandparents. Many younger people now eat like the rest of the world, and the island’s lead has slipped. A blue zone is not a museum.
“And of course the portion sizes are much smaller as well. […] In fact, in Okinawa, apparently there’s a rule that most people follow where you only eat till you’re 80% full. […] So I was starving for the first couple of days in Japan as well, because literally everything is just on a much smaller scale.”
In plain words: Small plates are part of the culture, not a diet. You simply stop before you are stuffed. For hungry travelers it takes some getting used to, and we were no exception:
“We can feel it in the hotels, that we are never even 80% full. So we are hungry all the time, but that’s what we have to learn.”
A few days later we reached Ogimi, at the north end of the island. Eiko, our guide and interpreter, 83 and full of energy, had worked for years as a nurse in the United States before she came home. Over breakfast at her house, we asked her whether the old way of eating kept her family living longer.
“Yes, because they eat fresh vegetable, fresh food, and then work mostly outside. […] If you go earlier morning, they go to the farm and they cultivate the vegetables and anything. And then come home and then evening, they go again for the farm to take care of the vegetables or whatever growing.”
In plain words: The old diet worked together with the old life: fresh food from your own field, and a day spent outside, working and moving.
Eiko was honest about the rest too. In the villages, she told us, people eat a lot of pork, and in the old days, before refrigerators, food was kept with salt. The next morning we watched Emi-san cook at her little restaurant in Ogimi. Almost everything she uses grows a few steps from her kitchen door: papaya, bitter melon, sweet potato. Little oil, some soy sauce, a few flakes of dried fish for taste. Even so, I said what we had felt for days:
“As we came here to Okinawa, we love this place, but it’s really hard to find places with healthy foods on Okinawa. It’s usually very fat, a lot of pork, a lot of noodles.”
Ten months later we were in our second blue zone, in the mountain villages of Sardinia. Paola Demurtas, who grew up there, told me how the food had changed.
“In the past, to be honest, they didn’t eat so much meat. It could be, like, even sometimes twice a month. […] Today, our diet has changed, especially with the industrialization, and we eat a lot of meat. […] But now if you come in Sardinia now, yes, meat is a big part of our diet.”
In plain words: For the old shepherds, meat was a treat, not a daily meal. The long lives we admire grew on simple food and little meat. Today’s Sardinian plate is different.
Earlier that day, sitting under a tree above the bay, Alek had asked her what makes it work. She used a line she credits to the Blue Zones writer Dan Buettner.
“Here, the healthy choice is the easy choice. So if I wanna go to a fast food, let’s say, I can’t, because there are not fast food here. So when I was younger, I was craving to go to fast food or to do something that I used to see on the television, but there was nothing around. So I ended up eating, like, healthy local thing that at that time for me was really boring. It was the only choice. And now I realize how lucky I was and I am now.”
In plain words: Willpower is hard. Where the only food around is simple and local, eating well happens by itself. Alek put it in four words: “Less options, more health.”
Two months earlier, walking with us through Central Park in New York, the nutritionist Oz Garcia told us which way of eating he would point most people to.
“If you were to ask me, ‘Can you give me an idea of what would work generally better for most people?’ I would look at the classic Greek Mediterranean diet. […] So when you combine those elements, what you find is a very rich assortment of vegetables, a very rich assortment of fruits, very low glycemic impact grains, high amounts of beans, which we now know have extraordinarily protective effects over the human heart.”
In plain words: Oz describes the same kind of plate we saw in Sardinia: mostly plants, with beans at the center. The Spanish fair test above backs up the heart part.
In the Live Beyond family we have one rule for everything we share: if it brings no joy, nobody keeps doing it. The best news about the longest-living people is that their food was never lonely. Okushima Kikue, 97, who teaches the village to dance, told us in Japanese that the foundation of her days is laughter, talking with friends, cooking her own three meals and eating them, walking and sleep. And Eiko told us why she came home to Ogimi.
“My friend, my elementary school friend, since we grow up together, nearby, if I want a coffee, I say, ‘Come over coffee,’ and we drink coffee every single day. […] And my brother and my sister-in-law and we eat 3 meals a day here. We eat together. So I don’t eat by myself.”
In plain words: She left a house with a garden full of fruit trees in America so she would not have to eat alone. In Ogimi, a meal is a reason to see the people you love every day.
Scientists followed more than 37,000 people over 65 in Japan for three years. Men who lived alone and also ate alone were more than twice as likely to become depressed as men who ate with others. Women who ate alone were more likely too, whether they lived alone or not.
Based on: Long-term study · 37,193 people · a link, not proof [14]Emi-san could not sit down with us, because her restaurant was about to open. So she packed the whole meal into boxes and sent it to Eiko’s house, and we ate it there together. Standing in her kitchen at six in the morning, watching her cook, I said without thinking:
“I feel like in my grandparents’ kitchen.”
For us, longevity means more healthy, joyful years. Everything that is good for your health is part of the longevity game. And a simple meal, cooked with care and shared, may be the most delicious move in it.
| Eating less | The fair test of eating less included only healthy adults aged 21 to 50. Children and teenagers, people who are pregnant or breastfeeding, and older people who are losing weight or muscle need enough food. Talk to your doctor before you eat less on purpose. | Fair test · who was included [6] |
|---|---|---|
| Medicines for diabetes or blood pressure | Changing how much or what you eat can change your blood sugar and blood pressure. If you take medicines for them, ask your doctor first. | Common sense, and your doctor |
| If food has been hard for you | Counting how full you are may not be helpful for everyone. If eating has been a struggle, talk to someone you trust or to your doctor before you change anything. | Common sense, and your doctor |
| The old diet wasn’t perfect | Before refrigerators, Okinawan families kept fish and pork with lots of salt, and Eiko remembered stomach cancer from those years. Copy the vegetables and the beans, not the salt. | What Eiko told us |
We won’t give you a plan we made up. Here is what the long-life villages did and what the studies above actually looked at. It is information, not a plan for you.
| Beans | Beans, tofu or lentils on most days. The long-term study counted steps of 20 grams a day. | Reports from the villages · long-term study [3][1] |
|---|---|---|
| Vegetables first | In old Okinawa, sweet potato, vegetables and soy made up most of the plate. In Sardinia, simple local food from the garden and the shepherds. | Population records · reports from the villages [5][3] |
| A little meat | About five times a month, in small portions, in the Blue Zones reports. Paola told us the old Sardinian shepherds rarely ate meat at all. | Reports from the villages [3] |
| Stop before you’re full | Hara hachi bu: stop at about 80% full. The fair test of eating less used about 12% fewer calories. | Reports from the villages · fair test [3][6] |
| A Mediterranean plate | Vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains, fish and olive oil, as in the Spanish fair test. | Fair test [2] |
| Together | Older people in Japan who ate with others were less likely to become depressed than those who ate alone. | Long-term study [14] |
We wrote this page from Live Beyond’s own recorded interviews and the published studies listed below, with gratitude to Eiko, Emi-san, Mikiko, Paola and everyone who fed us and taught us. Now we’d love to hear from you: who will you share a meal with this week? Tell us on Instagram, @longevityadvocate. You are part of this family.
Before you change anything
This page shares what research and the experts we met say. It is not medical advice, and it does not recommend any medicine, supplement or treatment. It knows nothing about you. Before you start, stop or change anything — especially if you are pregnant, live with a health condition or take any medication — please talk to your doctor. In an emergency, call your local emergency number.
Every number on this page, by the number in square brackets. Quotations come from Live Beyond’s own recorded interviews, cleaned only of “um” and “uh”. Not medical advice. Talk to your doctor before you change anything.