The Blue Zone Hoax (and Other Diet Myths That Won’t Make You Live Longer) | Ep 330
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Learn about one of the biggest nutrition hoaxes of our generation - the famed Blue Zones, where people supposedly live extraordinarily long lives due to their traditional diets and lifestyles.
When demographer Dr. Saul Justin Newman examined the data behind these celebrated longevity hotspots, what he discovered was shocking. Those regions with the most reported supercentenarians (people over 100) weren't the healthiest places. They were areas with poor record-keeping, poverty, and weak documentation systems. What's going on?
You'll also discover how regions celebrated for plant-based eating actually consume meat daily, and get a data-driven framework for spotting diet deceptions.
Main Takeaways:
Blue Zone supercentenarian claims are largely based on fraudulent data and poor record-keeping
Many "plant-based" Blue Zone regions actually consume animal products daily
Extraordinary health claims require extraordinary evidence - use the 5-point framework to evaluate nutrition advice
Real longevity factors are simple and well-established by the evidence without the need for "secrets," supplements, or hacks
Timestamps:
0:01 - The Blue Zone data fraud
8:17 - The plant-based diet deception in Blue Zones
10:10 - Other diet myths: alkaline diets, detox cleanses, dietary extremism
14:20 - 5-point framework for spotting nutrition nonsense
25:53 - What actually contributes to healthy aging
29:05 - Healthspan vs. lifespan
Why the Blue Zones Don’t Hold the Secrets to Longevity
The truth behind the myth
For years, we’ve been sold a story. A handful of remote regions across the globe—Okinawa, Sardinia, Nicoya, Ikaria, and Loma Linda—where people routinely live past 100, supposedly thanks to their clean, plant-based diets, strong communities, and healthy lifestyles. The so-called Blue Zones have spawned best-selling books, coaching programs, and enough recipes to fill an entire aisle at Whole Foods.
But here’s the problem: the foundation of this entire narrative is built on incredibly shaky data. In fact, once you actually examine the records, the story unravels faster than you can say “centenarian.”
Fake numbers, fabricated ages
Let’s start with the numbers. When demographer Dr. Saul Justin Newman analyzed Blue Zone data, he discovered massive inconsistencies. The highest reported concentrations of supercentenarians weren’t in places with excellent healthcare or low crime—they were in regions with poor record-keeping, widespread poverty, and high rates of pension fraud.
Take Japan, for instance. An audit in 2010 found over 230,000 “missing” centenarians—individuals supposedly alive on paper but either long dead or untraceable. Italy and Greece showed similar patterns. In Costa Rica’s 2000 census, after correcting age errors, the number of centenarians dropped by 90%. That’s not a typo.
You can’t base longevity advice on people who didn’t actually live that long.
But what about their diets?
Even if we (generously) ignore the sketchy records, the dietary narrative doesn’t hold up either. The popular Blue Zone pitch is that these populations thrive on a near-vegan diet, with meat being a rare treat. But in practice, meat and animal products are part of daily life in these regions:
Sardinia: Shepherds consume goat’s milk, cheese, and pork regularly.
Okinawa: Pork is central to the cuisine—every part of the pig gets eaten.
Nicoya: Beef and pork are dietary staples.
Ikaria: Lamb, fish, and dairy are common.
Loma Linda: Adventists follow a largely plant-forward diet, but many still consume dairy and fish.
So when people cherry-pick the “plant-based” bits and ignore the rest, it’s not science—it’s marketing.
Other myths that sound good but don’t hold up
The Blue Zones are just one example of how a compelling story can overshadow real evidence. Here are a few others:
Alkaline diets: You can’t change your blood pH with food. If you could, you’d end up in the ER.
Juice cleanses and detoxes: Your liver and kidneys do the detoxing. Starving yourself on green liquid doesn’t help.
The one-true-diet trap: Whether it’s vegan, carnivore, keto, or Mediterranean, any diet claiming to be the only solution is a red flag. What matters most is whether it’s sustainable, nutrient-dense, and personalized for you.
Most of these myths follow the same formula: take a small truth (like “vegetables are good”), blow it up into a universal law (“only eat plants”), and wrap it in a story designed to sell you something.
A better framework for evaluating diet advice
So how do you sort through the noise? Here’s a five-part checklist I use:
Watch for red flags: Any one-size-fits-all diet claim is probably wrong. Biology is complex and personal.
Evaluate evidence quality: Anecdotes and testimonials are not proof. Look for randomized controlled trials and, most importantly, your own results.
Consider the source: Are they selling something? Do they have actual expertise? Just because someone has a million followers and a lab coat doesn’t mean they’re legit.
Understand the mechanism: Can they explain how the diet works beyond buzzwords like “toxins” or “inflammation”?
Seek nuance and balance: Good advice sounds like “it depends.” It acknowledges trade-offs and context, not absolutes.
What actually contributes to a long, healthy life?
Despite all the pseudoscience out there, we do know a few things for sure—because they show up over and over again in quality research:
A diverse, balanced diet with both plants and animals.
Regular physical activity (especially resistance training).
Good sleep, stress management, and community support.
Consistency over perfection.
You don’t need to live in a remote village or cut out entire food groups. You don’t need to chase 110 years on paper when 90 strong, healthy years would be a much better goal.
So instead of falling for feel-good longevity myths, focus on what’s real, practical, and doable. Train hard. Eat well. Sleep deeply. Build muscle. Spend time with people you care about. That’s the real longevity plan—and no fake census data required.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
What if I told you the so-called Blue Zone longevity secrets might be more about bad record-keeping and pension fraud than actual science that many of those 110-year-olds never existed in the first place? Today, we're exposing the truth behind one of the biggest nutrition myths of our time. You'll discover why the Blue Zone diet narrative is built on shaky data, how regions famous for plant-based eating actually consume meat daily, and the warning signs that reveal when diet advice is more marketing than medicine. We're also tackling other diet deceptions that promise weight loss and longevity but deliver disappointment instead, so that by the end of this episode, you'll have a data-driven framework for spotting nutrition nonsense and focusing instead on what actually works for your health and body composition. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
Philip Pape: 1:04
I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, philip Pape, and today we're applying that engineering mindset to one of the most persistent nutrition myths of the past two decades the blue zones. If you've never heard of these, they've been celebrated as proof that certain diets and lifestyles can dramatically extend human lifespan. There have been books, documentaries, media that have promoted these regions as having cracked the code of longevity. But what happens when you examine the data behind these claims, what we find is a cautionary tale about how poor record-keeping, selective storytelling and even confirmation bias can create very compelling narratives that just fall apart under scrutiny. And I know this was talked about recently on, I think, the Mind Pump podcast. I originally heard about it on a news podcast a few years ago and I wanted to revisit this today to talk about not just the blue zones themselves, but overall. How do we spot these kinds of problems out in the industry? Before we get into the myths, I want you to know if you're looking for evidence-based support for your health journey and want to talk to others who have the same level of skepticism and curiosity as you do. Join our Wits and Ways Facebook group. It's totally free. A community of like-minded people who value critical thinking over clickbait. We regularly discuss how to separate the legitimate health advice from some of these other things, and we often have people coming in asking about things like carnivore or longevity or things like this. Just search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in the show notes and join us in the Facebook group. We recently exceeded the 1,000 person mark, so it's a very vibrant and growing community you're going to love. Click the link in the show notes or search for Wits and Weights on Facebook.
Philip Pape: 2:45
All right, let's start with what blue zones claim to be. You may not have heard of these and if you haven't, they are five regions around the world where people supposedly live very, very long lives. Okinawa in Japan is the one often spoken about, sardinia in Italy, nicoya in Costa Rica, ikaria in Greece and Loma Linda in California, and the story is very, very compelling, as many stories are. These places allegedly have very high concentrations of centenarians and super centenarians, so people who live beyond 100 years, who attribute this long life to their traditional diets, to active lifestyles, to strong communities, and the story has been so powerful that it really has actually spawned an entire industry of cookbooks, of supplements, of coaching using the phrase Blue Zone. And here's where my mind kicks in, because, as extraordinary as the claims are, any extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, right, and when Dr Saul Justin Newman he is a demographer who won an Ig Nobel Prize for his work he examined the data behind the Blue Zone longevity claims, he found something that's pretty shocking, and I was shocked to learn this just a few years ago or maybe it was last year, actually, that the regions with the highest reported numbers of supercentenarians supercentenarians were not the healthiest places. They were actually correlated with poverty, with poor record keeping, with higher crime rates and with very weak documentation systems. So, in other words, the places claiming to have the most 110-year-olds were exactly the places where you'd expect to find errors in data and fraud. And Newman found that birth rates of the supposed supercentenarians were oddly clustered on days ending in zero or five, suggesting that many dates were approximated or made up when exact records weren't there.
Philip Pape: 4:38
So this is like a classic red flag when it comes to data analysis that anyone would recognize as not what I shouldn't say. Anyone like an engineer or mathematician looking at the data, I would say, would recognize it as a non-random distribution. Um, and honestly, if you saw this in a list and you're like, well, what's up with all the you know tens and 25s and tens and 25s, it doesn't make sense. Um, you'd probably notice that pattern. But it gets worse than that because in Costa Rica's 2000 census, 42% of people age 99 and above had misstated their age and after correcting the errors, the centenarian population of Nicoya that's the region in Costa Rica, right, that's a blue zone it dropped by 90%, and so the elderly life expectancy ranking fell from world leading to near the bottom.
Philip Pape: 5:27
And this is just a really shocking example of what happens when we accept these feel-good stories and don't validate the data. And then they persist for years and years and you might think these are just like innocent record-keeping errors, but sometimes there's something more nefarious at play, and Newman discovered that many of the supposed centenarians were victims of pension fraud, and that's where families don't report death, so they keep getting benefits. They get benefits from the loved ones Even though they've died, they think they're alive. They keep getting pension benefits. Japan is a really dramatic example of this.
Philip Pape: 6:01
There was an audit by the government in 2010 that found more than 230,000 listed centenarians were unaccounted for, so they were either missing or long dead, and that's a lot. That's 82% of their presumed centenarians were either missing or dead, some of them for many decades, and their families collected pensions. There's a particular case with a Tokyo man who was thought to be 111 years old and he was found mummified in his home. I know it's awful. He had actually died 32 years earlier, in 1978, and Newman said quote the secret to living to 110 was don't register your death. Kind of some very dark humor there, but that's what was going on, and this isn't unique to Japan.
Philip Pape: 6:43
Italy also discovered about 30,000 dead pension claimants in 1997. In Greece, at least 72% of the reported centenarians were dead or non-existent. And what this means is that all the data, the foundational data that supports blue zone claims is just totally unreliable. But now what if we set aside the age verification issues for a moment, although I mean honestly, that loses me right there. When I hear that amount of fraud and misinformation, I can't, really I don't even want to look at the data. I mean, I don't even want to like discuss the veracity of any of the dietary claims. Why would you? However, even when you do, it's problematic. So that's kind of.
Philip Pape: 7:22
The next turn I wanted to take for the show was the blue zone narrative. You know, from a nutrition standpoint, the story goes like this these regions follow primarily plant-based diets, with meat as a very rare indulgence, and that that explains their longevity, and this narrative has been used to promote plant-based eating as the key to long life. But when you look at, you know what these people in the regions actually ate rather than what the marketing materials say they ate. A different picture emerges right. In Sardinia, goat's milk, sheep's cheese, pork are common staples. The shepherds, who supposedly exemplify the blue zone longevity they consume animal products every day. In Okinawa, pork has been like the center of their traditional diet for centuries. They eat virtually every part of the pig, including organ meats, and seafood is consumed regularly. No surprise if you've ever been to Japan. I haven't been to Okinawa, but pretty familiar with Japanese culture and diet and yeah, there's plenty of meat there.
Philip Pape: 8:17
In Nocaya, costa Rica, beef and pork are widely consumed. In Icaria, greece, fish, dairy products, lamb are eaten. Loma Linda, california, there's one exception there the Seventh-day Adventists. They follow a largely plant-based diet, but they also consume dairy and sometimes fish, and they also abstain from smoking and alcohol and they exercise regularly and they have strong community. So you can say well, maybe that's why they live a little bit longer there.
Philip Pape: 8:45
No-transcript presentation of dietary patterns and that's what we see all the time in the industry today with what we call confirmation bias. Right, it's like the blue zone, the people promoting the blue zone diets. Again, aside from the whole data fraud issue, they emphasize plant foods and then downplay, or they cherry pick or ignore all the animal protein consumption because it doesn't prefer fit the narrative. What's so funny about this whole thing is they've done that, thinking that the blue zones actually have the output or the outcomes that they're claiming to have, and they don't. So it kind of like makes the whole thing fall like a house of cards.
Philip Pape: 9:20
So this blue zone myth is one example of how nutrition advice gets distorted, but I wanted to look at some other deceptions that promise weight loss and longevity but will make you disappointed if you try to follow them, let alone them being in many cases restrictive or unsustainable. Let's talk about something like the alkaline diet, which is that you can change your blood pH by eating certain foods, and that prevents disease and promotes longevity, and this is physiologically impossible. Like, your kidneys and lungs regulate your blood pH, and if food could alter it, you'd be in the emergency room. You wouldn't be living longer. And the reason some alkaline foods, like vegetables, are beneficial doesn't have anything to do with pH. It's because they're nutrient dense, they're high in fiber and they displace less healthy options. Right, that's just one example, and, by the way, you'll not I'm not going to hit on some of the big ones like carnivore in this episode.
Philip Pape: 10:10
I've done that a lot lately. I could definitely have included some of those and I'm going to do some future episodes on specific topics like fiber. I have an episode coming up on uh, whether fiber is necessary because carnivore diet claims it is not. Um, another example that comes to mind is detox cleanses, juice fasts that promise all sorts of things to reset your metabolism, to flush toxins, and this I always love to talk about detoxification, because the best detox fires your own body right your liver, your kidneys. They're detoxing your body 24-7. They don't need any help from anything else like a juice cleanse. And in fact those level of extreme approaches usually have the opposite effect long-term. They end up slowing your metabolism, they cause nutrient deficiencies, they cause muscle loss, all the things just because you're not getting in the things you need the protein, the nutrition, the fiber, whatever right.
Philip Pape: 11:01
And then there's the marketing war between low-carb, vegan diets, plant-based, which all claim that their approach is the secret to longevity. And again, all of these can work when they are, I'll say, well-planned out, well-thought out, structured and and here's the key word sustainable for you. If you can stick to the diet, it's good for you. I've heard the argument made lately that well, even if it's hard to stick to. That's not the point. Isn't health more important than anything? And therefore you'll do what it takes? Well, no, human psychology would beg to differ, because anybody who's tried not anybody, but the vast majority of people who've tried any diet that restricts things that they would otherwise eat, is going to be a problem, because you're going to binge on that later. You're going to miss it, let alone potentially unnecessarily cut things out that you could, uh, benefit from. You know, nutrient wise, fiber wise, taste wise, everything, um, what matters overall, I think?
Philip Pape: 12:01
I think the takeaway here is the dietary pattern is going to matter a lot more than the specific uh ratio of these things, and what I mean by that is like low carb is focused on what Lowering your carbs? Vegan is focused on just having plants, carnivore is just having animal products. In every single case, you're like flipping these ratios around to an artificial imbalance, let's call it, rather than having a balanced dietary pattern. You know, the funny thing is what your grandma said about eating in moderation actually holds up pretty well. Now there are some ways that you want to nudge that balance based on your goals. Right, like, most people aren't eating nearly enough protein, so when you eat quote unquote in moderation you're not really thinking about it you still might not have nearly enough protein for what you need as a lifter, as an athlete, as an aging person who's worried about muscle loss right. So there are ways to nudge it, but we're not talking about wholesale obliteration of one part of your diet, like carbs or plants or animal products, and so the pattern here with all of these is that any of these approaches.
Philip Pape: 13:06
What they do really well is they take a kernel of truth. They take a kernel of truth Like I did an. I just did an episode I think it was last week on fat loss versus fat burning, and the kernel of truth is that if you eat a low carb diet, you're going to burn more fat Guess what? That's actually true, but you're not going to lose more fat because you're actually eating more fat. So it all nets out and see, that's where you take the kernel of truth and you expand it and you say so it all nets out and see, that's where you take the kernel of truth and you expand it and you say okay, if you're burning more fat, it means you're going to lose more fat. No, that's not true. It just means you're burning more fat versus glucose. Somebody else is burning more glucose versus fat. It's all energy and all that matters is calories and calories out. And so they blow it up into a universal solution, right, some kernel of truth.
Philip Pape: 13:45
They take, for example, some compound in a plant is toxic at like massive levels and they say, well, that that means plants are toxic and all plants are toxic and therefore you get rid of plants, you solve all your issues autoimmune conditions, gut health, everything else. Go ahead and eat carnivore, and it just massively misses, um, the evidence. It also ignores individual differences between people. So anytime someone makes a claim that this is the one true diet, you're, you've got your skepticism. Hackles have to get raised because everybody's different your metabolism, your genetics, your lifestyle and there is no one true diet. So how do we protect ourselves from all of these deceptions?
Philip Pape: 14:20
Here is kind of an engineering-based framework, I would call it for evaluating nutrition claims. I'm going to give you five things to think about. Okay, this is for nutrition nonsense. First, you want to look for any red flag, and this sounds generic. So what I'm talking about is what I just mentioned Claims that a diet is one size fits all. That's the big red flag. Human biology is complex, it's individual. What works for one person may not work for another. So right there, right off the bat, if someone says this is the way to do it for everyone, boom, be suspicious. That's probably not true. Second, you want to examine the evidence quality. So not just the evidence, because evidence-based, science-based, gets thrown around a lot.
Philip Pape: 15:01
I use the term, and at this point it's become almost meaningless, because anecdotes and testimonials are not data. In fact, let me tell you something I was thinking about the other day. I'm all for anecdotes and stories. When they are used to disprove a one-size-fits-all claim, I'm all for that. In other words, if you say carnivore is right for everyone and then I say, well, what about these people over here who are not eating carnivore and they're thriving? Well, right there, you've just disproven that carnival's right for everyone. But you can't flip it around and say, well, this person, all his autoimmune conditions, gut health and brain fog went away because he went on low-carb diet. Therefore it's right for everyone. No, so you can't do that. You can't use one anecdote to make a universal claim. You can use an anecdote to disprove a universal claim, though. Right In general, in general. In other words, that's how the scientific method works is you make a hypothesis, you test it. If you find any evidence that doesn't support the hypothesis, well, your hypothesis is disproved and you need to adjust it right. You need to adjust it.
Philip Pape: 16:02
So when we talk about evidence quality, you know you want to look for, if you're looking at scientific literature, controlled studies, I mean some of the best would be randomized controlled studies, which are randomized controlled trials, rcts, which are very hard to find in the nutrition world. Usually we have observational studies that show correlation, not necessarily causation. That's where we get into real sticky wickets here we talk about, for example, people used to say look, diet Coke causes obesity because look at the correlation in the observational studies. Well, it turns out that people who have weight to lose will drink more Diet Coke because they're trying to lose weight. It's not because drinking Diet Coke causes weight gain. And we see those kinds of correlations all over the place. All over the place and everything you look at weight loss, you know well, they went on low carbon, they lost weight. Therefore it causes weight loss. Well, no, turns out that they cut their calories because they got rid of a bunch of processed foods and they were able to better manage their hunger signals etc. Right, so we have to be careful about evidence quality. Honestly, the best evidence I always say is N equals one. The N equals one sample size of one. You, you are your own best evidence. So I love starting with the foundation of what the science might suggest for you and giving you a ballpark or framework or guardrails, but then you need to try it out right.
Philip Pape: 17:18
I have clients all the time. I have one client in particular I can think of right now. He used to do fasted training and I said well, let's try eating some carbs before you train. He's like how much should I eat? I said let's try 20 grams. Okay, how did that feel? Wow, I felt like more energized. I was able to get more reps. I wasn't winded by the end. He's like should I eat more? I said what do you think? I'm like why don't we try double and tell me what you think? He tried double? He's like well, you know what? That was even a little bit better. And now that my training volume is increasing because I have the energy, I need more energy and that's what works for him. And now he might even try 60 grams and find out that that's optimal, and then 80 grams is too much or not necessary, right?
Philip Pape: 17:54
So your best evidence is yourself, and evidence quality to me is a hierarchy. You've got yourself in there. You've got, um, very controlled studies in there. You've got, you know, people you trust. I'll say then that that's kind of a thorny one. It's like I don't know if you trust me, right, if you just started listening to me, you don't trust me yet. But if you've listened to me for a long time and you've applied what I've said to your life and it works and I tried to come across, as I'll call it, sensible or flexible, if you will. I call out people all the time, but it's because they're trying to be restrictive and make universal claims, and I'm trying to counter that narrative by saying that nothing is universal, that it depends on you. So if you start to trust me and listen to my show, you're going to then give more weight to the evidence that I try to present in the future and which means I have a very large responsibility to deliver that to you. So that's evidence quality.
Philip Pape: 18:48
The third way to protect ourselves from diet deceptions is consider the source. So I kind of just started talking about this already in my last few statements. But is the person making the claims trying to sell you something? Do they have relevant credentials, relevant expertise? You know they don't necessarily have to have a degree per se or a certification. It really depends right, like in the medical field, they might need to be licensed and stuff, for you know legal and liability reasons, but it's up to you to kind of decide whether it's the appropriate level of credentials. I know lots of strength coaches who don't, who never got a personal training certification, but they're far more experienced and helpful than the vast majority of people who have personal training certifications. You know what I mean. Just just cause I know what it takes to. You know, get a cert is super easy. It's, it's a test, it's easy, whereas to become an actual, effective strength coach takes years of working with clients and you might do that without certification. So you just have to understand the source.
Philip Pape: 19:40
You look at the big scandal with the liver King and steroids and Paul Saladino and the supplements and all those guys out there. Generally people have millions of followers. You got to watch out like the ones that have the biggest followers I'm the most skeptical of. It's not, again, not necessarily the case, right? This is just a correlation that I'm making for you. Um, I'm just saying that the ones with the MDs behind their names and 2 million followers, you've got to got to make sure that they're saying what they're saying for a reason and it's not for trying to sell something, right? And having said that, the vast majority of people educating online probably have a business tied to that education in some way. So of course, they are trying to make a living. They might have a business. They're trying to make money. Guess what? That's what I do. I provide coaching, right. But I don't make claims that are not true to try to get you to sign up for coaching. You know that wouldn't work too well because if that worked you would sign up for coaching and then all of a sudden I wouldn't be able to deliver on the result because it doesn't line up with the evidence, right? So, again, you have to. You know I'm thinking more like people trying to sell supplements or, you know, rapid weight loss programs or something like that.
Philip Pape: 20:47
The fourth sign on spotting nutrition nonsense is you want to ask about the mechanism or the method, or the what should I say? The physiological means by which the intervention actually works in the body. Can they explain how it works? Vague claims about boosting your metabolism or alkalizing or diet cleansing, detox, whatever, or even inflammation that's the big trigger word these days, guys inflammation.
Philip Pape: 21:14
I think I'm going to do a whole episode just about inflammation how it is misused as a label, but also how it is misunderstood biologically, because inflammation can be measured in blood markers in some ways and in many ways it can't. But inflammation is directly tied to lifestyle and there are a lot of influencers that scare you into thinking that inflammation is tied to specific foods. That's just one example and no matter how hard you try, you can't find anything anywhere in the evidence that would support their claim, for example, seed oils being inflammatory. The evidence does not support that claim and I bring that one up specifically because it is so often repeated that it's inflammatory, it's inflammatory, it's inflammatory. What's inflammatory are dietary patterns and movement and sedentary behavior and stress and smoking and alcohol and lack of sleep and so on. There's a lot of things. I'm going to do a whole episode about it, but the point is you have to be able to understand the mechanism. Again, going back to last week's episode fat loss versus fat burn or lose fat versus burn fat. I tried to explain the mechanism behind how we store and lose fat on our body and how we actually burn fat in the moment, and how these are different mechanisms that lead to understanding the language we use around them.
Philip Pape: 22:32
Okay, and then the last thing here, number five, is look for balance and nuance. I think I've alluded to this several times, but legitimate nutrition advice is probably gonna start with something like it depends or multiple approaches can work, or individual factors make matter, or this is personal. You know those that kind of I try to use that language. Now, sometimes I get on my high horse, I get on my rants, my rambles, and I might make a statement with a lot more confidence and definitiveness than I intend to get across, or maybe I do intend to get it across, depending on what I'm talking about, but I try not to make a claim about something that is universal to everyone other than what's universal is that nothing is universal, right, in other words, that I'm definitely confident about that, that multiple approaches work. Yes, human physiology is universal, but your lifestyle and all the other epigenetics and phenotypes and all the other things that come into play as you live your life are what causes us to diverge and requires a much more nuanced application of the info.
Philip Pape: 23:34
Like, let's say, we're talking about training, not even diet. We're talking about strength training, and someone says how should I train? Oh, that is such a huge discussion. There's so many aspects to that. I can throw out generalities. I do all the time on podcasts, like you know, hit the big muscle groups two times a week using compound lifts and train like three or four days a week, like that would be a nice way to say it. That's just general, general principles right, principles, that's a good way to put it. Principles are universal, methods are what change.
Philip Pape: 23:59
And if someone doesn't talk in that way, if they talk, if they instead go into the grocery store on their Instagram reel and say you see this food, don't eat this food. It's got all this stuff. This is inflammatory, it's going to kill you, it's toxic. They don't know what they're talking about, right? They have no balance, no nuance, they don't put it in the context of your dietary pattern, they don't know who you are, what you eat, what you do. If I'm an athlete eating 4,000 calories, I could darn well eat 100 calories of just about anything, I don't care how quote-unquote toxic it is. You know, other than alcohol and, frankly, even alcohol if you just want to reduce it to calories there are other problems with alcohol, of course and have great results. Live a great life, feel great, thrive, live a long life. All of that right, because in the context of my 4,000 calories, or 3,000 calories or whatever, it's a tiny fraction of an overall dietary pattern. That's nuance, that's balance, right.
Philip Pape: 24:48
It's not promising miraculous results or claiming to discover the secret that thousands of researchers somehow missed, right. And the blue zones are really a great example, because they've become something that everybody just clings to and it's become quote unquote, common knowledge. And even that was completely wrong. Now you might be wondering if the blue zone claims are exaggerated, does that mean we should ignore everything out there about healthy aging and be very skeptical that the data is correct? I wouldn't say that. I would say this is where the mindset. When you examine what actually contributes to healthy aging, we do find consistent patterns that don't require believing in the kind of logic that the blue zones would have you believe, and these are very well supported by the things I talked about earlier, like randomized, controlled trials. We know these things, so I'm going to share them in a second. But my point is, if something new comes along and says here's the secret to healthy aging, you've never heard before boom red flag. Probably not true, right? Yes, we're discovering new things all the time, probably not true?
Philip Pape: 25:53
The real common factors among long-lived, healthy populations are very straightforward they eat nutrient-dense foods, including both plants and animals, so a diverse diet. Think about something like the Mediterranean diet, for example, which has lean meats, seafood, whole grains, seeds, nuts, fruits, vegetables, all of it. They stay physically active throughout their lives, they manage stress effectively, they get adequate sleep and they maintain strong social connections. And that last one is probably underrated. I don't talk about it as enough as I probably should, because we don't often think about that as health and fitness, right, the health of it, but really relationships, social connections, community is a big part of health, happiness and wellbeing, and I mean the the uh scientific term wellbeing used today in psychology literature, happiness and well-being. You know, self-reported happiness and well-being is highly correlated with strong social connections being the top factor. So nutrient-dense, diverse diet, which means a very flexible diet that gives you a lot of choice physically active, managing stress, adequate sleep, strong social connections.
Philip Pape: 27:00
Notice that none of these require any extreme dietary restrictions, expensive supplements, following the exact eating pattern of a village or an ancestral diet or whatever. They're principles that can be adapted to virtually any food, culture or lifestyle, which is beautiful, right, because food culture. Think about it as human beings. Food is part of our culture, it's part of the social experience, it's part of the social connections, in fact, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying food and having it be part of our ethnic culture, our religions, our spirituality, just our fun, our everyday fun, all day here. Getting to grill some meat with the family becomes an experience. My daughters love to help out, season the food, figure out how to cook it just right, how do we all like it, enjoy the meal together. It's wonderful.
Philip Pape: 27:51
And of all the blue zones, I would say the Loma Linda blue zone is a really good example of this, where there is reality, there is some truth there. It's the Seventh-day Advent is there and they don't have unusually high numbers of very old folks like super centenarians, but they do have higher average life expectancy overall. And if you look at their lifestyle, they don't smoke or drink, they eat a balanced diet with plenty of protein, they stay active and they have strong community support, and that's what longevity looks like. Right, it's not magical 120 year olds, it's not people reaching their eighties, but it is people reaching their eighties and nineties in good health. I always joke I want to die doing a deadlift in my nineties, maybe in my hundreds. That would be great, and that's actually far more achievable and valuable than trying to chase these extreme longevity things. And I didn't even talk about all of the longevity and biohacking podcasts out there that make claims using devices and supplements and talk about telomeres and all of these crazy things. Right, maybe I'll get proven wrong and some of those people will be here and they'll all be walking around at 120 years old, but I doubt it and I wonder how great of a life they lived, you know, and and whether they actually enjoyed it.
Philip Pape: 29:05
And by enjoy I don't mean the opposite extreme of being a heathen, a heathen right, where you're over consuming, you know, ultra processed foods and smoking and drinking and all that. I don't mean that at all. I mean having a thriving, healthy life where you're lifting weights, you're being active, you're getting off your butt every day, involved with your family, with your community, you know, making social connections and just being positive. I mean, it's kind of the way to put it. Put it so, by debunking these myths and having your own skepticism checklist, then you actually get more clarity on what works, because it gets rid of the noise when I talk about the BS and the noise in the industry, that's what I mean. Instead, you can just focus on the simple things at work building muscle with strength training, eating adequate protein from yes, both plant and animal sources. Eating your fiber, eating your carbs, your plants, your fruits all of that good stuff in a reasonable balance, whatever makes sense for you, whatever your goal is, maintaining the calorie balance appropriate for your goals. So, yes, even if you're trying to lose weight or fat, you got to understand that you need to eat less than you burn. Prioritizing sleep and stress management two of the biggest factors in all of this, including things like visceral fat accumulation as we get older, hormones, et cetera and then cultivating meaningful relationships.
Philip Pape: 30:19
And the problem is, these are not sexy marketing messages. They're just not. They're not. They're based on solid evidence. They actually work, but they're not sexy marketing. So I hope those of you who listen to this podcast appreciate where I'm coming from when I talk about this and that you'll share with others who need to hear a similar type of message and just take a more reasonable, sensible approach and do the thing that works. And guess what? The thing that works sometimes takes effort. No, it does take effort. It can be hard, right, but it pays off in the end. The hard of doing the right thing now is far less than the hard of not doing it later.
Philip Pape: 30:52
So if you're going to evaluate health advice in today's very, very much information saturated world, just remember that the very compelling stories, the viral content that spreads really fast, is often not accurate. Let's just put it that way. It's the careful science and the evidence takes time and it tends to be more simple in terms of the ultimate solution. And then it blinds us to red flags in the data because we want to latch onto these amazing stories, us to red flags in the data because we want to latch onto these amazing stories. So when you apply these principles to nutrition claims, when you demand good data, when you look for consistent patterns, when you question extraordinary claims, the picture emerges that the secret to healthy aging is not in remote villages in the blue zones, which have obviously questionable birth records. They're found in the well-established principles that have already been validated across multiple populations and studies over decades, and we have it right in front of us, right.
Philip Pape: 31:49
And that doesn't mean we should become cynical about all health advice. I don't want you to go the other extreme and just never trust anything. We just have to become critical thinkers. Question the data behind any claim that is a bit too impressive. Look for balanced, evidence-based approaches that have nuance, rather than this is the one true diet or way to work out, and if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is Like that is a time-tested adage and I don't know about you. I want to optimize my health span. I want to optimize the years that I spend healthy, strong, capable. You know not just my lifespan, I don. I want to optimize the years that I spend healthy, strong, capable. You know not just my lifespan. I don't want to just live a long time, I want to optimize my health span, and that is totally achievable when you have the right approach, all right. So if you want to connect with others who share this thinking, this evidence-based, critical thinking for health and nutrition, you want to learn and you're curious and you're willing to put in the effort, you're not just binging content, you're willing to do what it takes to, yes, lose the fat, build a muscle, look better, feel better all the things you want.
Philip Pape: 32:48
Join our Wits and Weights Facebook group Totally free. That's where we discuss how to separate legitimate science from hype. There's a lot of engagement there. There's fun questions being posted. I do live Q&As. There's sometimes early podcast drops all sorts of fun stuff. You're gonna find a supportive community. That's the best part about it is the other people there that value critical thinking over quick fixes. Just search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember the best health advice isn't exotic or complicated. It is nuanced and personalized. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
