Despite all our technical wizardry our bodies are largely the same as they were thousands of years ago, closely related to our primate relatives, such as gorillas, monkeys and chimpanzees.
They are all vegan plant eaters – just like we should also be (plus mushrooms!).
Think about it: we have hands – not claws – and we don’t have large canine teeth. In short, we are not designed to eat meat (and certainly not designed to eat highly processed junk food). If you put put the wrong fuel in your car it will grind to a halt in a very short distance. So it is a tribute to the astonishing resilience of the human body that it usually takes decades before to effect of consistently giving it the wrong fuel starts to become apparent.
It is then that we pay a very heavy price for ignoring this inconvenient fact in the form of diabetes, dementia, cancer and heart problems. Yet this is generally accepted as the ‘norm’- and just part of ‘growing old’.
But once again human ingenuity comes into play with pharmaceuticals attempting – with limited success – to combat the effects of the wrong sort of diet while allowing us to carry on eating the very same food that created the problem in the first place. Despite the ability to ‘manage’ these conditions, the average health span (the number of years when good health is enjoyed) is up to 20 years shorter than the average lifespan.
Which is why there is so much excitement around the so called ‘Blue Zones’, first identified by scientists Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain and so named because they ringed in blue on a map the areas in the world – starting with Sardinia – where people seemed to live on average a good ten years or more than the general population and where the men bucked the worldwide trend by living as long as the women. More importantly, they we largely free of the debilitating illnesses that afflict folks eating a Standard Western Diet, with their health spans largely matching their lifespans. .
In 2004 this phenomenon was taken up by Dan Buettner, working with National Geographic magazine, giving the concept much greater exposure to the extent that there are now Blue Zones Tours to some of these longevity hotspots.
Sadly, Okinawa, dubbed by the Chinese as ‘The Land of the Immortals’, is in danger of losing its blue zones status because the younger generation are increasing indulging themselves on the various tempting fast food outlets on Okinawa due to the presence of a large American airbase located there.
But, as one door closes another one opens and Singapore has now adopted the Blue Zones lifestyle resulting in a saving on the healthcare costs of its citizens, proving you don’t need to live in a remote mountain location like on Sardinia to enjoy all the advantages of living a longer healthy life the Blue Zones way.
That concept that location is not important is further reinforced by the life of Bernardo La Pallo who lived to the age of 116, free of any debilitating illnesses despite living for many years in bustling New York.
Apart from Blue Zone, Loma Linda, in California none of the Blue Zones shy away from eating limited amounts of meat or seafood. But, contrary to the normal western dietary approach, that a meal needs to have meat as its centrepiece, meat is reserved for special occasions.
In Greece, for example, there are over 200 days a year when meat is not eaten for religious reasons. This coupled with the historic poverty of some of the remote islands, such as Ikaria, has resulted in vegetable dishes that rival any meat filled banquet.