This American diet could add 10 years to your life

what is the secret To live 10 more years? It’s not one thing. Rather, it is a set of mutually reinforcing environmental factors that cause people to reflexively do the right things and avoid the wrong things long enough for them not to develop chronic disease. For the past 20 years writing for National Geographic, I identified and studied The longest-lived areas in the world, which I call the Blue Zones. These places — Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and the Seventh-day Adventist communities in Loma Linda, California — have the largest number of centenarians and the highest life expectancy. why? Residents live purposeful lives in walkable spaces that keep people naturally active and socially connected. They eat a diet that consists largely of whole, plant-based foods.

In 2019, eg Coronavirus disease pandemic We, photographer David McLean and I came up with the idea of ​​researching an American blue zone diet. Believing that our great-grandparents might have eaten similar to people in the original blue zones, we looked for diet surveys conducted in the early 1900s. To our dismay, we found that our ancestors (who migrated from northern and central Europe) brought their cows, pigs, and pickles with them.

Determined to find food traditions that other cultures, indigenous and immigrants, brought to the American table, we crossed the country to find people who could tell us about these foods.

Here’s what we discovered: There…