When Betsy Price was mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, she wanted to address childhood obesity and health problems plaguing the city's 900,000 residents. To do this, I looked for answers in a chart of the Blue Zones, the five regions of the world known for their longevity and vitality.
In 2014, during her term as mayor, she turned to Blue Zones LLC founder Dan Buettner and his team to create a roadmap for how Fort Worth could incorporate more plant-based diets, more movement and more healthy practices everywhere from schools to businesses to faith. Existing organizations.
Blue Zones emerged in 2004 when Beutner joined with National Geographic, the National Institute on Aging, and others to identify areas around the world where people live better and longer. Interest and popularity have boomed since then, with books, cookbooks, tours and docu-series appearing on Netflix.
Taking a page from the original five Blue Zones, Price learned about the importance of healthy dietary shifts, increasing mobility and creating spaces for people to walk, run and play. And it worked.
“This is beef country. This is ranching country. People said, 'You can't take our beef away,'” said Price, who was Fort Worth's mayor from 2011 to 2021. “We told them not to cut it out completely, but to cut it back. The whole goal was to help the city make good choices, not to force people. Take your kids to the park. Get outside.”
With the help of the Blue Zones Project, Fort Worth saw a 31 percent decrease in smoking, reducing the smoking rate to 13.5 percent, as well as a nine-point increase in residents exercising at least 30 minutes three or more days a week. To 62%.
“If you can change one neighborhood, you've made a big change,” Price said. “It's amazing in five to seven years how much change we've already seen. No one thought it was a short-term project.
Of the five original Blue Zone regions known for their strong longevity, only one is in the United States: Loma Linda, California. Other blue zones include Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; and Nicoya, Costa Rica.
“It's all inspired by places where people live for a long time. These people haven't tried to live a long life. They're not better people. But they live in an environment that encourages movement and health,” Buettner said.
“It's not a measure of superhumans. It's a measure of people avoiding illness. America is doing a poor job of this,” Buettner said.
In recent years, Buettner and his team have worked with more than 70 cities to help them achieve healthier lifestyles – becoming Blue Zones 2.0.
These efforts come as life expectancy in the United States is currently stagnant. The United States ranked 46th in the world in terms of life expectancy in 2020, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
In 2022, life expectancy in the United States rose somewhat to 77.5 years, up slightly from 76.4 in 2021, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that while life expectancy rose slightly, the gains did not fully offset the 2.4 years lost between 2019 and 2021 due to increased deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Life expectancy in the United States is not trending in the right direction. We don't see that we are frogs in hot water and just cooking,” Buettner said.
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“Pharmaceutical companies, Big Food companies, Big Beverage companies, the NRA, they're all in the ears of politicians. But we have a longevity crisis and no politician wants to address it,” Buettner said.
“Do I have hope? Not much,” Buettner said.
Buettner pointed to dire statistics related to diet-related deaths, car accidents and weapons.
According to the National Institutes of Health, an estimated 300,000 deaths annually in the United States are due to the obesity epidemic – making obesity or overweight the second leading cause of preventable death after tobacco use. More than 48,800 people died from firearm-related injuries in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the CDC.
However, for future generations, living to the age of 100 may become commonplace. But long years don't always mean healthy years. Americans will spend an average of 12 years living with a disability or serious illness, according to Age Wave, a research and consulting organization focused on aging and longevity. Stanford University's Center for Longevity predicts that an average lifespan of 100 years will be the norm for all newborns in the United States by 2050.
Referring to the success of Fort Worth, Texas, Buettner said: “It was one of the most unhealthy cities in America. Now, he's in the middle of the pack. They made downtown more walkable, offered 300 restaurants healthier options, and lowered residents' body mass index by 3% — saving health care costs and improving quality of life.
“America’s Next Blue Zone is a city whose mayor says our priority is healthy, active people. Does every law come – does it serve health? Buettner said. “Places that favor pedestrians and cyclists over drivers. That favor healthy food over fast food. This favors the non-smoker.”
He cited examples of cities such as San Luis Obispo and Pasadena, California; Minneapolis; Jacksonville and Naples, Florida; and Scottsdale, Arizona, as locations where efforts to encourage more walkable cities, parks, and healthy eating have been successful.
“We never fail to make the city healthier,” Buettner said. “We don't pressure people to do better. We create a living environment for people to thrive. We subconsciously push people to eat less and move more… Some mayors see their jobs as making people healthier. It takes looking at the problem and seeing The Big Picture.”
Butner said blue zones are fragile places that could disappear, with Costa Rica's blue zone seen as being 20 years away from disappearing.
“When the blue zones get Burger King, McDonald's, KFC, potato chips, soda and candy, they're going to go away,” Buettner said. “We captured them in a moment in time 20 years ago and they are gone.”
The Blue Zone effort is a local effort, because changing the country as a whole would be a big boost.
“330 million Americans won't agree on what's healthy. We can't rely on individuals. It has to be unconscious, part of the fabric of the city,” Buettner said. The $150 billion anti-aging and diet industry is making rapid breakthroughs . None of that will work in the long run. True longevity is small changes over the long term.
Until we start, America will continue to decline. We know how to reverse the spiral. We have a treatable cancer. “It just takes the will to do it,” Buettner said.
