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In what is likely to be seen as the health and fitness equivalent of something like the Watergate or Monica Lewinsky scandals of US political history, a demographic researcher has found that famous places around the globe studied for their remarkably high number of residents over the age of 100 are actually ground zero for pension fraud and bad record-keeping rather than any special diet and lifestyle choices they make.
These so-called ‘Blue Zones’ became a field of study unto themselves after the concept was established in 2004, as researchers sought to discover in their populations a secret to living long lives. Dieticians began modeling the residents’ diets, as well as their very way of life, and Blue Zone science flourished such that a Google Scholar search today with the keyword “Blue Zone” returns 5.35 million results.
The traditional Blue Zones include the island of Okinawa in Japan, the island of Ikaria in Greece, the mountain area of Nuoro on the island of Sardinia in Italy, and the peninsula of Nicoya in Costa Rica.
Now however, Dr. Saul Justin Newman of University College London who won the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize for Demography, has revealed the secret to these populations’ seemingly superhuman ability to live into their 100s: pension fraud.
Dr. Newman says the field of study is plagued by “junk data” and that most of the centenarians are actually dead, though they merely appear to be alive in government records because of family members claiming them as such to continue taking out pension money.
His research has also shown that areas that claim to have high numbers of centenarians, or people who live past 100, are also areas with higher levels of poverty, fewer levels of individuals in their 90s, worse average health outcomes, lower per-capita incomes, and higher crime rates.
“Most of the extremely old people in the world come from places that have lots of errors in record-keeping and lots of pension fraud,” he told The Times of London. “Costa Rica was held up as an example in the Americas of a place that had extraordinary rates of survival to age 100 — until 2008, when it turned out that 42% of centenarians in Costa Rica were lying about their age”.
Something similar happened when Dr. Newman took a look into the demographic data of Greece in 2012, right in the heat of the Greek pension crisis and restructuring.
“I found that 72% of Greek centenarians were missing,” Newman said. “It turns out that thousands of them were collecting the pension while they were dead. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what’s really going on there. This happens over and over again to the point of absurdity”.
Looking in the wrong places
“The term ‘blue zone’ was first used in 2004 in an article published in the academic journal Experimental Gerontology, about Sardinia’s centenarians,” writes Rhys Blakely, science correspondent for The Times, who interviewed Dr. Newman. “Since then, it has been trademarked and attached to eight books, a Netflix series, several pre-packaged foods, and a for-profit venture that invites cities to apply for ‘blue zones certification’— all underpinned by the idea that the lifestyles seen in these areas have life-lengthening qualities”.
Part of all this branding came when Blue Zone scientists supposedly were able to quantify uniting characteristics between the various Blue Zones, such as low levels of red meat consumption, wine in moderation, and higher consumption of vegetables, legumes, and whole grains.
If one looks at the classic descriptor of the Mediterranean Diet, a glaring contradiction emerges. This diet is prescribed to Americans as a way of replicating the long-lived nature of countries in southern Europe, but the diet thus prescribed doesn’t match the eating patterns of those countries.
The New England Journal of Medicine states that the traditional Mediterranean diet is characterized by a high intake of olive oil, fruit, nuts, vegetables, and cereals; a moderate intake of fish and poultry; a low intake of dairy products, red meat, processed meats, and sweets; and wine in moderation, consumed with meals.
Anyone who has spent time in Italy or Spain for example will know how uncommon it is to meet anyone with this kind of eating pattern. Breakfast across most of Italy and Spain consists of a sugary pastry like a jam-filled croissant, a coffee, and a glass of orange juice. Lunch is dominated by bowls of pasta, perhaps a fruit or vegetable item, and sliced processed meat, while dinner is almost always some kind of grain and meat. Vegetables aren’t included in main courses in restaurants, have to be ordered separately, and not always are.
Yet despite being so out of sync with the American healthcare’s definition of the Mediterranean Diet, Italy and Spain, with all their cheese and ham, enjoy 5th and 6th place in the world for average life expectancy.
Similar contradictions emerge between what is sold as a Blue Zone diet, and what the people in the Blue Zones eat. Dr. Newman again told The Times that Okinawans are often hailed for their longevity diet of fish, fermented vegetables, and sweet potatoes — a vegetable the award-winning demographer says are eaten at lower rates on Okinawa than anywhere else in Japan.
“They’re also dead last for vegetable consumption — for root vegetables, leafy vegetables, everything. They’re way up the charts in terms of meat consumption. So this whole idea that vegetarian diets [are fuelling longevity] — it’s just trivially easy to show that there are huge problems,” he said.
Plant-based diets in particular seem to be prescribed to all the Blue Zone inhabitants. Speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Piras, heads of a traditional, countryside agriculturalist family of four in Sardinia’s Villanova Monteleone, WaL found minimal evidence of plants in their diet.
Furthermore, it was common for a week to go by without any fish or seafood being eaten, as beef, lamb, pork, and chicken, made up their protein intake along with dairy. At lunch, WaL attended a local gathering where the menu was cured bacon, sheep’s milk cheese, and suckling pig with wine and spirits.
More than just Islands
The same sort of poor social markers that characterized the supposed Blue Zone in Costa Rica were also found in a London neighborhood that had gained notoriety for the large number of centenarians. Tower Hamlets in east London had the highest concentration of people aged above 105 in the UK despite having one of the lowest concentrations of people aged 90. It is an economically deprived borough and was likely benefiting from welfare fraud, as recent adjustments to demographic data have seen it fall to the bottom of the London charts for centenarian residents.
In short, the same statistical pattern that calls into question the veracity of Blue Zones as such can also identify pension fraud in areas not touted as Blue Zones, but despite this scandal in longevity research, Dr. Newman says he isn’t getting many emails about it.
“If equivalent rates of fake data were discovered in any other field — for example, if 82% of people in the UK Biobank or 17% of galaxies detected by the Hubble telescope were revealed to be imaginary — a major scandal would ensue,” Dr. Newman wrote in his paper which won him the Ig Nobel Prize. “In demography, however, such revelations seem to barely merit citation”.
Like the failure of the Mediterranean Diet to explain longevity in France, Italy, and Spain, a possible collapse in the entire concept of Blue Zones further calls into question whether any particular dietary pattern aids in longevity or not. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Okinawan lifestyle and diet have long been touted as beneficial to longevity. PC: SLNC via Unsplash
