In Healthy-living 'Blue Zones,' Secrets to Sustainable Eating

Apparently there are five places on Earth where residents live significantly longer and suffer far fewer diseases than people elsewhere.

Researchers have been studying these so-called "Blue Zones" for the last several years and have identified nine key lifestyles these communities share.

So what food secrets do the residents in these zones — Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; and Icaria, Greece — have up their sleeves?

The answer has already been guessed by one Michael Pollan, who popularized the phrase "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" with his "eater's manifesto" In Defense of Food. The people in Blue Zones tend to eat diets heavy in plants, especially beans, and have methods of ensuring that they don't eat too much.

Okinawans, for instance, have an ages-old adage that amounts to "only eat until you are 80 percent full." They learn through everyday practice to sense when they have had just enough but not too much, a skill that those of us in the Western world sorely need to learn.

The key element to these sustainable ways of eating is that they're not fad diets or trendy techniques for living a simpler life. These are lifelong habits entrenched in the cultures of these places.

If we in the U.S. are going to get more sustainable in the way we approach food, we have a whole lot more to change than what we put in our mouths; we need a new cultural understanding of food as powerful nourishment instead of a stomach-stretching commodity.

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