Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dan Buettner: Daily Habits That Defy Aging, Boost Health, and Happiness | Health and Wellness | E366

Starting point is 00:00:00 Most people who are in my field will try to tell you to change your habit or change your behavior. Get on this diet, these supplements, this exercise program, and all of that fails. Dan Boutner, he's a world-known keynote speaker, National Geographic Explorer, Emmy-winning filmmaker, and best-selling author of the Blue Zones. Dan has spent decades researching communities where people enjoy vibrant health well into old age. The cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans. And if you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's worth about four extra years of life expectancy. So can you talk about the reason why we need to have a deeper purpose and how that actually can help us live longer? If you want to really know how to live longer, first thing is...

Starting point is 00:01:00 hundred years old and still feeling energized, fulfilled, and thriving, without strict diets, crazy workouts, or expensive biohacks. That's exactly what today's guest Dan Butner has discovered. He's a world-renowned keynote speaker, National Geographic Explorer, and Emmy-winning filmmaker. He's also the best-selling author of The Blue Zones. Dan has spent decades researching communities where people enjoy vibrant health well into old age, and he's uncovered the surprising habits, environments, and diets that support that vitality. In this episode, we'll get into Dan's longevity principles, explore why your environment matters more than your genes, and uncover simple dietary shifts to support healthy aging.

Starting point is 00:01:40 If you want to feel better, think clearer, and stay stronger for longer, then you better tune into this episode. And for those of you watching on YouTube, I'd love to hear from you. What is one small change you're excited to make after hearing this episode with Dan? Share it in the comments below, and if you're loving our content, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode that fuels your growth. Dan, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. I am delighted with my new microphone.

Starting point is 00:02:06 I feel like I'm going to sound better here than I have ever sounded in my life. Oh, yeah, you are. We're all about quality at Young Improfiting Podcast. There's going to be like 80,000 people that listen to this episode, so we want to make sure that it sounds perfect. So you are all about longevity.

Starting point is 00:02:24 You've written so many best-selling books. You were really the person who've created and coined the term blue zones. And so my first question is, what's the mission behind all of this? What is your purpose? Professionally, it's to reverse engineer longevity. So if you want to really know how to live longer, better, find populations who've actually achieved it. Instead of going with an Instagram influencer or some South Beach doctor, why not find places where people are making it into their 90s and 100s

Starting point is 00:02:55 without obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, and see what they've done, and that's my work. When I was studying you, I learned that you were really in the early times of something that we call now edutainment. That's not a term that people used back then, but when the Internet came out in the 90s, you did something called Quest Expeditions,

Starting point is 00:03:17 and you actually worked with students and did these really cool journeys. is. And so I want you to take us back to that time. What was it that you were doing? Why was it so innovative? And how did it later on influence the way that you thought about engaging audiences and also exploring and investigating things like how you ultimately found out about Blue Zones? First, I said three world records for biking across five continents. And realized that expeditions of the future, I work with National Geographic. I'm a National Geographic fellow and explorer. The expeditions of the future have to add to the body of knowledge, not just go to the top of

Starting point is 00:03:55 Everest for the 3,000's time. So for these quests, the idea was to harness the intuitive power of a huge online audience, many of whom were kids. We had a team of professional archaeologists and media people, about 14 people, laptop computers, which were new at the time, and satellite dishes that enabled us to receive a daily vote from our audience. We had over a million people. That vote would direct our exploration efforts, and then at night we would upload our findings, and we would count on the online audience to make sense of them and add to solving the problem, and it actually worked. We did 15 of those interactive expeditions called Quest. Maya Quest was the most popular. And so do you feel like you skill-stacked that experience?

Starting point is 00:04:44 helped you later on to then explore and discover all these different parts of the world, which led you to the Blue Zones. What was the lead-up to that? Is that your term skill stack? I love that. I've never heard it before. I use that term quite often. Oh, it's a great term, and that's exactly what we did. So the quest, we did 15 of them, and we solved mysteries, everything from Denmark-Polol, logo to China, to the origins of the human species, to the origins of Western civilization. And this required, A, the ability to read academic papers, which is almost like learning of foreign language.

Starting point is 00:05:17 And number two, getting good at networking your way to the very top scientists. So instead of screwing around with looking at popular interpreters of science, I went right to the source. And I got very good at it and developed somewhat of a reputation. I also got really good at courting the media. I found that the media loves a great story. They love footage, and they love solving a mystery. So I could go to Good Morning America or the Today Show and say, I will send you live footage, professionally shot footage, and I will also deliver a great mystery for your audience.

Starting point is 00:05:58 And we often collaborated with media to fuel our audiences, and that was a very cost-effective way of garnering attention. So you've had this really unique career, right? You're an explorer, you've written books, you're an entrepreneur. We're talking off this recording about all the different ways that you basically have monetized your mission. It's really good for the world, but you've been able to make it into an actual profitable business. So talk to us about all your different revenue streams and how you make money today. First, I'd like to start with the philosophy. I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell who suggests that you find your bliss.

Starting point is 00:06:34 So I've been extraordinarily successful financially, but I've never chased. money. I've always done exactly what interests me, but I've paid attention to the money. It's a byproduct. It's a product of having done what I love and I get really good at it. So you start with books. I've managed to write six New York Times bestselling books, these Blue Zones books, including the latest one, Blue Zone Kitchen, One Palm Meals. I've sold two million books and I get a little piece of every one of those. And then it turns out that if you write a thought leader book, people want you to come speak to their groups. And I learned not to get an agent, a speaking agent,

Starting point is 00:07:18 because speaking agents tend to own you and take a really big chunk, but be a free agent out there and really court the people doing the booking. So I do about 50 to 100 speeches a year. I get paid a lot for them because I know what audiences want to hear and most people want to live longer. And then I have a line of, you know, I wrote this book, Blue Zone's kitchen, eating to 100, and it became a number one New York Times bestseller and seemed to hit a core. People want to eat for living a long time. And I thought, well, if people like

Starting point is 00:07:53 cooking from this recipes, why not develop ready-made food? And two years ago, I started Blue Zone's kitchen frozen meals formulated for longevity, so they're longevity foods, but I hired a team to make them maniacally delicious. The number one longevity ingredient in the world. People will say it's fermented tofu or kale. I'll tell you it's deliciousness because if you're not eating it every day for most of your life, it's not doing any good. So Blue Zone Kitchen frozen meals have that maniacal deliciousness baked into them. And it's now the top selling plant-based frozen food in America in all whole foods and Costco's and about 10 different grocery store chains. And by the way, this is all just an offshoot of what I'm passionate about,

Starting point is 00:08:43 which is as we start at this conversation, reverse engineering longevity and adding to the body of knowledge and putting it to work in people's lives. I have a lot of clients also who have written books and the main way that they actually monetize that is by speaking. And so before we get into longevity and I'm really just going to pick your brain on that for the rest of the conversation, talk to us about some of your best tips to engage in audience. If you're always doing all these speaking gigs, are always on stage. What are some tips? There's lots of entrepreneurs tuning in who are going to have to do speaking events like this eventually. Well, people have a very short attention span. So ideally 30 or 45 minutes speech is probably the longest. I always use

Starting point is 00:09:26 images. So I work with National Geographic. I have very strong images. But no words on my PowerPoint. I actually use keynotes. So I tell a story. The 60 minutes, which is the most successful news magazine story in history when the founding producer was asked what the secret to his success was it's four words tell me a story so even though my blue zone's work is investigative science reporting i always embedded in a story there's always characters that lead us through the science and deliver us oh wow really and that's the way my speech is put together you want to make sure that you come up with something that you've innovated, not just parody and other people's work. Ideally, you find your own discovery, but if you don't have your

Starting point is 00:10:19 own discovery, you want to at least put your own spin on it or you metabolize it. So it becomes whatever the insight is, it's new and adds to the body of knowledge. The internet and Instagram is full of people who just echo chamber things. Come up with something new. Speaking of coming up with something new. You're the first person, right, who coined the term blue zones. Is that right? Well, there was an obscure scientist in Sardinia who identified that blue zone. With his permission, I evolved the term to take it worldwide. And now we have five areas where people live the longest blue zones. There's a whole company around it called Blue Zones, which is actually a trademark. And I'm responsible for 99% of Blue Zones. You took it mainstream, basically. You took it

Starting point is 00:11:06 mainstream. So you've said that longevity isn't about genes or discipline. It's more about your environment that you were in. How did you first discover the concept of the blue zones? Well, it begins with something called the Danish twin study that established only about 20% of how long we live is our genes. So one-fifth of longevity is genes. But that still leaves four-fifths, which is something else. You look at the data at trying to change habits. And most people who are in my field will try to tell you to change your habit or change your behavior. Get on this diet, this longevity hack, these supplements, this exercise program, and all of that fails. It fails for almost all people, almost all the time. They're good business plans,

Starting point is 00:11:53 but they don't deliver longevity. When you actually find populations who are living a long time, it is not the result of heroic discipline or a sense of individual responsibility, these people are simply living their lives. So we know it's not genes. It's only one-fifth genes. So the other four-fifth has to be something other than habits. And my conclusion was that it was their environment. They live in environments that engineer their micro-decisions on what they eat, how they move, how they socialize on a day-to-day basis for years or decades. And the value proposition of the right environment is about 10 extra years and being biologically younger every decade by about 10 years. So it's a big deal when people turn 40 and they get their first

Starting point is 00:12:43 wrinkle, the blue zone solution offers you a way to be biologically a decade younger going forward. So you mentioned the benefit of telling stories to keep people engaged. So I want you to tell us stories about these different blue zones that you visited and how you ended up coming with the Power 9 principles in terms of how we should be more like the Blue Zones? I'm solving a mystery. So imagine you have this piece of data that shows you that these five areas are producing populations that are making it to 100 at 10 times the rate of, say, United States. Well, how do they do that? And how do you go about finding out how you do that? Well, to start out with, I landed these countries and I talk to the experts.

Starting point is 00:13:32 I talk to the anthropologists, the historians, the geneticists, the dietary people. And I start putting puzzle pieces together and I share that with my audience, gradually getting insights. And then at a certain point, I have what I call the cake recipe. I have all the ingredients that explain longevity in these places. And then once I know that, I go out and I find care. characters, usually 100-year-olds, and you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the prince or the princess, but I want to find people whose life illustrates my cake recipe of ingredients. And then by telling their story, I essentially reveal the cake recipe. So it's story-driven

Starting point is 00:14:15 science. It unfolds little by little. I don't start with the power nine. I start with, here's the mystery I'm going to solve, and then I take people on the journey with me. And at the And they get the secret to longevity. Talk to us about one of these, how do you say? Centenarian, it's a tricky word. Centenarian, yeah, centenarian. Tell us about somebody that you met in the type of life that they lived.

Starting point is 00:14:38 You know, I did a Netflix series called Live to 100 Secrets of the Blue Zones, which won three Emmy Awards. I only tell you that because people are more likely to watch it if they won Emmy Awards. But I met a cowboy named Ramirez. And this is the guy who rides about 10 miles a day, day. He herds cattle. He throws a lassoe. He's a good dancer. He's got this wonderful extended

Starting point is 00:15:05 family. And we thought that he might be lying about his age. So in Costa Rica, everybody gets issued a ID card with a sequential number. So if I was born yesterday, from you, for example, a day earlier than you, my number would be lower than your number. And somebody, born a day after you would have a higher number. So it's almost impossible for people to lie about their age. So we first took his ID number and went to the National Archives and we found that indeed he is 100. And here's a guy who magically somehow, now he's 101, he's still living the life of a 50-year-old. And we spent a day or two with him and watched his life. And turns out he likes the ladies. So instead of taking his horse directly to his pastures, he always goes out of his way because this pretty

Starting point is 00:16:03 girl, who's about 30, is on her porch every day at a certain time, and he goes by and he waves at her. So I just love this idea that a 101-year-old guy has still got the romance in him, still got the fire, so to speak. So let's talk about some of these nine principles. One of them is called downshifting. And essentially it's rituals, naps, prayers. Talk to us about the concept of downshifting and why that's important to live a longer life. That's idea of power nine. They're the common denominator. So everywhere you go in the world, you see these same characteristics, whether it's Okinawa, Japan, the longest of women, the longest of men in Sardinia, the island of Ikaria, Greece, where there's almost no dementia, Nikoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, where

Starting point is 00:16:49 people have the best chance of reaching a healthy age 95, or Lomalini, California, where we find the longest-lived Americans, the Seventh-day Adventist. So downshift is this idea that in all these blue zones, they have rituals that help de-stress them. An important thing to realize when it comes to longevity is inflammation is the root of every age-related disease. We get inflammation from our food. You know, if you're eating lots of sugar, processed food, it inflames our body. People don't realize this. If you open up our digestive tract, it's the size of a tennis court. And if you're constantly bathing that digestive track into sugar or red meat or eggs and cheese or processed food, you get this low-grade inflammation constantly, being stressed or worried

Starting point is 00:17:46 or constantly in a hurry. This also generates inflammation. And what happens is one of the byproducts of stress or shitty food, it leaches into our bloodstream, this biochemical that hardens our artery, shrinks our brains, wrinkles our skin, makes it more likely we're suffering from dementia, heart disease, type 2 diabetes. And the important thing to do on a day-to-day basis to avoid that is to de-stress or downshift. In Blue Zones, they do that by number one, ancestor veneration in Okinawa.

Starting point is 00:18:22 They remember where they came from, their ancestors. Number two, they take naps like we see in Nikoya or Ikaria. Taking a daily nap, lowers inflammation, and also lowers your chance of cardiovascular disease by about 30%. Very important number there. The Adventists, they pray. When you think about it, real prayer, whether it's when you wake up in the morning or before a meal, it's like a meditation, lowers those cortisol levels. And in Sardinia, their main downshift ritual, they're big churchgoers, but also they

Starting point is 00:18:55 have a daily happy hour. Well, they'll get together with friends no matter how busy their day was, talk out their problems, have a glass or two of wine, lower that cortisol. I think it's a good practice for the rest of us as well. Very cool, because I never really think about, oh, I should take a nap because it's going to reduce my inflammation, but it makes sense. So you also talked earlier in this conversation about how you've got a really big purpose that's really been the stem of all your business models. And I know there's something called Icky guy that is very popular.

Starting point is 00:19:27 And you talk about it as one of your principles. So can you talk about the reason why we need to have a deeper purpose and how that actually can help us live longer? People are constantly trying to monetize their brand. I think that puts people off. Purpose is not something you really sell. I can't make any money from you by trying to help you find your purpose. Purpose is really your internal inventory of what your passions are, what you're good at, what your values are, and an outlet.

Starting point is 00:19:56 And by the way, that's usually with your family or volunteering. And I really actually avoid monetizing that idea because I think it's an open source insight that Okinawan mostly give us. Their word for finding and living their meaning is Ikigai in a Kost. Costa Rica, it's Planned Vida in Kauai, which is another extraordinary longevity hotspot, it's Kuliana. So in all these cultures of longevity, there's vocabulary for purpose. And the good research shows that if you wake up knowing what your life meaning is,

Starting point is 00:20:30 while you're on this earth and you have a way to put it to work and serve others, that's worth about eight years of life expectancy over being rudderless in the world. Part of it might go back to the existential stress of waking. up and saying, shit, what am I doing with my life? Or hating their job, which 30% of Americans do. It's so important. And it really underscores another important point to blue zones as opposed to say the Brian Johnson approach to longevity. For a lot of people, these injections and pills and supplements, 100 supplements a day and these extreme vegan diets, they may add years to your life. They may not, by the way, but they may. And even if they do,

Starting point is 00:21:12 They often prolong a crappy life. In blue zones, these places, they're joyful places. They're among the happiest places in the world. And they're also living the longest. And the insight here is that most of what really works at adding good years to your life are things that are going to make the journey worthwhile. And knowing your sense of purpose is one of them. Something that I laugh about sometimes is gym culture that we've created in our modern times, right?

Starting point is 00:21:42 I think 50, 60 years ago, there was no concept of exercise and working out. And now, even myself, like, I'm a gym rat. I love to go to the gym. I love to work out. I love to exercise. But you talk a lot about natural exercise and how the blue zones choose more natural activity. So what is your thoughts around working out and tell us how these different regions treat that exercise? Nobody in blue zones go to a gym.

Starting point is 00:22:09 There's no gyms in any of the blue zones, and they don't exercise. So the insight there is, well, maybe this quote-unquote common knowledge of exercise is misguided. You look at the history of exercise, which is born more or less in the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. He created the presidential medal of physical activity. Exercise has been a failure at the population level. Three-quarters of us don't even get 20 minutes of physical activity a day. Meanwhile, people in blue zones are getting the equivalent of 12,000 steps a day, even thinking about it. Why? Because every time they go to work or a friend's house are out to eat,

Starting point is 00:22:48 it occasions a walk. They don't have cars or they don't use cars as much as we do. Their houses aren't full of the mechanical conveniences to do housework or yard work or kitchen work or need their bread or grind their corn. They do it by hand. They have gardens out back. So they're spending some time, low intensity, physical activity, reaching and stretching and bending to harvest and to hoe and to water and to weed. And we vastly under-celebrate the value of these. First of all, almost all these activities are enjoyable. Secondly, they're mindless. They're just kind of baked into the daily. Thirdly, collectively, they burn way more calories than spending a half hour, or an hour in a gym over the course of the day.

Starting point is 00:23:34 It just adds up over the hours of constant movement. And the fourth and arguably the most important insight is that when you're keeping your body moving all day long, your metabolism is burning hotter. So you're burning more calories even when you're not, so to speak, working out or exercising. So the caloric burn is much higher. It's much easier on your body. You're less likely to get injured. But most importantly, if you look at the data of gym members,

Starting point is 00:24:01 You start with the 100 people on January 1st. You lose about 80% of them by September, at least to regular. So gym memberships, great business model, they don't pay off. On the other hand, and I'm like you, I do go to the gym. Why? Because I have a group of friends there, and it's a social occasion for me. And it is a good idea to have weight-bearing exercise in your daily life. I just enjoy it, so I show up.

Starting point is 00:24:31 not because I think it's necessarily essential to my longevity regimen. So I used to live in New York, and I used to walk all the time. I moved to Austin six months ago, and it's not that walkable of a city. And immediately I noticed, oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to figure out how to artificially get my walks in now. Talk to us about if somebody's a desk job, what are the ways that they can get this natural movement in? What are the ways that you get this natural activity in your life? Well, first of all, think about exploring public transportation ways to get to work. And I know you probably roll your eyes.

Starting point is 00:25:09 I'm not going to ride a bus. But actually, there's good research that shows that people who take public transportation have about 20% lower rates of cardiovascular diseases than people who drive to work. Why is that? Because you have to walk from your house to the bus stop and then the bus stop to your work and then you do that reverse. That's four periods of mindless physical. activity every day, every time you go to work. That adds up hugely over time. We

Starting point is 00:25:37 under-celebrate it, but it's probably 90% the value of training for a marathon. Number two, if you can bike or walk to work, I know that's even a bigger stretch for most people. Do that. People say, well, I live too far away. Well, you can always move. And if health is a priority, moving to work might be an important contribution. You know, if you go from being sedentary, how to just 20 minutes of physical activity a day, that adds three years to your life expectancy. There is no rapamycin or metformin or other snake oil supplement that's going to add three years to your life expectancy. So if you can figure out how to walk to work and back every day and you're sedentary right now, I would argue there's no greater way to add yours

Starting point is 00:26:23 to your life expectancy. Not sexy. I can't sell you anything, but it works. And there's plenty of academic research to show that it does. Well, I'm inspired to figure out how I can walk more often, even in Austin. So you've created this Blue Zones project, where you basically go into cities and you make them healthier. You make them optimized for longevity. Give us an example of one of the cities that you've worked with and how you've turned it around and help expanded the lifespan of the people that live there. You start by the insight that you're never going to convince a million people in a city to eat what you want them to eat. or get more exercise or socialize, but you can shape their environment so they do it mindlessly.

Starting point is 00:27:07 How do you change people's environment? Number one, policy. You can help a city adopt policies that favor healthy food over junk food and junk food marketing. You can help a city adopt policies that favor the pedestrian and the cyclist and public transportation over traffic and traffic jams. And you can also help a city pass policies that favor the non-smoker over the smoker. Those have enormous impacts on people's mindless decisions over the course of their day. And it sets people up for success. So when my teams come into a city, first of all, we audition them. They have to show us they're ready and they want us. We don't just show up and sell And number two, we help them identify the policies that will work for their city, that will make their environment healthier.

Starting point is 00:27:59 Number three, we have a Blue Zone certification process for workplaces, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and churches. And we can usually get 30 or 40 percent of all those places to optimize their designs and policies so people mindlessly move more, eat better, socialize more, and no one live their purpose. And then finally, we have in our blue zone cities, a program for about 10% of the people in that city to blue zone their own houses, their commutes, their social network, their workplaces. And then we recruit them to be part of a committee to help encourage their city government to pass healthier policies. So it's people, places, and policy for five years. We came into Fort Worth, Texas, a very conservative city. we were invited in, actually, by the hospital system and the mayor there, Betsy Price. And in five years, we lowered their obesity rate by 3% while the rest of Texas got heavier.

Starting point is 00:29:01 And by their own reckoning, we saved them a quarter of a billion dollars a year in health care cost. And they easily paid our fee from their savings. We've to date now worked with 70 different cities. We're in Jacksonville, Florida now, and Naples, Florida, Phoenix, Arizona. Tempe, Arizona, Riverside, California. It's really taking off. But it's only for cities that want to try something new and are tired of trying the same old memes

Starting point is 00:29:29 and trying to get people healthier. It's so interesting to think about when I travel a lot, and one time I went to like Ohio, and I was like, everyone is fat here. You know, like nobody's moving around. Everyone's driving their cars everywhere. And it's just interesting how, like, in New York, it seems like everybody is generally thinner

Starting point is 00:29:48 because there's so much walking going on. So if we're in a city that is having some of these problems where it's not very walkable and things like that, how do we blue zone our house, blue zone our life? Well, there's two questions there. So walkability, there's something called a complete street policy package. And essentially that is a city council agrees

Starting point is 00:30:12 and the city planner agrees that every new street, about once every seven years, the street is completely redone in a city. And they're on kind of a rotating schedule. But complete streets essentially helps the city make sure that when the street is up for redesign, that a bike lane, a sidewalk, trees, and safety. So in other words, it's not just a pathway for fast cars. It's a place for humans to move around too.

Starting point is 00:30:42 Adopting that policy is the first and the biggest. And then once you adopt that policy, we can bring in experts that help the city planner plan for walkability. And by the way, that saves money over time. We all think we want to drive places fast. But when you close your eyes and you imagine a street with cars whizzing by it 50, 60 miles an hour and the smell of their exhaust and the stress that it generates and the danger for us and our children, we actually don't want to live in a place like that. If you close your eyes the second time and you think of a walkable city where cars ease by at 30 miles an hour, there are people gathering on sidewalk cafes. There are trees overhead. It's safe for our children to play. It's easier to stop into businesses because you're not whipping by at 50, 60 miles an hour. That's the place you really want to live. And once you help people understand that, it's pretty easy to get policy to follow. So I would say that's a really big one at the population level. And then blue zoning your house, talk to us about that.

Starting point is 00:31:48 I'm of the belief that most of us are on what I call a seafood diet, which is to say that we eat the food we see. Cornell's food lab has shown that if you have a bag of chips on your counter, you know, with a clip on it, you're going to eat a lot more of that junk food than if it's out of the way, a junk food drawer, a place you have to stoop down or reach up high or around the corner in the pantry. we're all going to bring junk food into our houses, but one of the easy strategies is to make sure they're hidden. So we don't see those foods every time we walk through our kitchen.

Starting point is 00:32:22 Conversely, having a fruit bowl at the most prominent spot in our kitchen and keeping that fruit bowl full, one of the greatest nudges to get more fruit into our diet. Secondly, you hear a lot more about sleep lately. I'll tell you what, having blackout curtains, invest in blackout curtains that are easy to put up and down. Great investment. You'll sleep better, especially in the morning. We've all heard about getting rid of electronics in our bedrooms, but very few people understand. At 68 degrees, right around there is the ideal temperature for sleeping. So once again, setting up our bedroom, sending up the environment, not trying to set a habit because we're going to forget or other crap's going to get

Starting point is 00:33:07 in the way. We can set up our kitchens in our bedroom one time to favor better eating and better sleep. I wrote a book called The Blue Zones Challenge. You can get it on Amazon. It incorporates 30 different evidence-based ways for you to Blue Zone your home, your social network, your workplace, and your commute. So you set it up once and longevity ensues. I want to move on to talk about food and nutrition in more depth. So one of your principles is called the plant slant. I'd love to learn more about what you recommend that we eat and how you feel about fruits, vegetables, meat, beans, all that good stuff. It doesn't matter really how I feel.

Starting point is 00:33:51 What I've done with National Geographic is found the five areas where people live the longest. And then in my current book, the Blue Zone's One Pot Meal, you'll see in the introduction, I cite a meta-analysis we did. If you want to know how to eat to be 100, you have to know what 100-year-old ate their entire life. You can't just ask them what they're eating lately. You have to know what she was eating as a little girl and a young adult and middle age and lately. So to get at that, we aggregated or found 155 dietary surveys done in all five blue zones over the past 100 years. So we know what people were eating in the 30s, in the 50s, in the 70s, et cetera. And when you average

Starting point is 00:34:33 that out, which we did with Harvard, we found that about 90% of all the calories they consume, come from plant-based sources. So the five pillars of every longevity diet in the world are whole grains, corn, wheat, and rice, greens, and garden vegetables, tubers like sweet potatoes. In Okinawa, the longest-lived women in the world, about 70% of their calories came from one food and one food alone. Purple sweet potatoes. Nuts as a snack. And then the cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans. And if you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's worth about four extra years of life expectancy. People in blue zones did eat meat, but only about five times per month. So a little more than once a week. Meat was a celebratory food. And over the course

Starting point is 00:35:26 of the year, they ate about 20 pounds of meat. Most of it was pork from their own pigs. was an industrial-raised meat. We in America, however, eat about 240 pounds of meat a year, about 11 times more meat than they do in the blue zones. Put 240 pounds in perspective. That's like a bathtub of dead animal, which I guarantee if you're eating that,

Starting point is 00:35:52 you're doubling or tripling your chance of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, and about 40% of cancers. So not saying that you can't eat, meat. I'm just saying that the more you move to a whole food plant-based diet, the longer you're going to live. And my books, like the Blue Zone's Kitchen One Pot Meal, show you how to make these foods maniacally delicious. It's so confusing. You know, I've interviewed Dave Asprey a bunch of times. I've interviewed Ben Greenfield. I had Dr. Gundry on. Everybody gives all these different perspectives, contradictory perspectives. For example, Dr. Gundry says beans are bad, lectins. He says give fruit

Starting point is 00:36:31 the boot. too much sugar. So let's stick on that and then let's move on to meat after that and some of the controversy around me. All right. Okay. So Dr. Gundry, I know him. He's the nice guy. We both lived in Santa Barbara for a long time. But Dr. Gundry conveniently doesn't tell people that, yes, beans have lots of lectin. But as soon as you cook them for 10 minutes, 99% of all the lectins are neutralized. And also conveniently, he has an anti-lectin supplement he sells you. So where do you think that message comes from. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt. I am quoting 155 dietary surveys done in places where people manifestly live in the longest. And I can tell you,

Starting point is 00:37:14 beans are the cornerstone of every diet. So you have to consider the sources of the experts. Dave Asprey, another nice guy. He's a marketer. He's not a scientist. Nice guy. I agree with some of the things he says. But with these Instagram influencers, you have to go a step deeper than what they post on their Instagram posts. I work for National Geographic and our fact checkers occupy the corner offices. So anyway, nice guys. I don't want to bad mouth them. No, I totally agree. And I think a lot of what they say is great, especially Dave Asprey, love them. One of the things that we talked about in our most recent episode is how more people are eating red meat and how beef has gotten a bad rap. And nowadays, people are obsessed with

Starting point is 00:37:59 eating protein. I don't know if you've noticed this trend on Instagram. are absolutely obsessed with getting a lot of protein in their diet. And beef, ground beef, beef is really making a comeback. It used to be, don't eat any red meat. Now it's eat as much red meat as possible. You just said we shouldn't really be eating that much red meat. Give us some more color around why. People who are free to do whatever they want.

Starting point is 00:38:22 But I can tell you that the people who actually make it into their 80s or 90s or hundreds at the population level and don't have chronic disease are not eating much red meat at all. We've been here before with the meat crates. There was something called the Atkins diet when I was young, which essentially gave everybody permission to eat bacon and pork and meat, lots of meat. Well, Atkins, the great evangelist, dropped dead at age 68 of a heart attack. So this is a guy we're supposed to listen to. You know, meat tastes good. And if you're on a starvation diet like most of human history, you know, we evolved in an environment of hardship and scarcity. And yes, if you killed an animal, you had a big meat feed, you needed those calories,

Starting point is 00:39:08 you needed the protein. But we live in an environment where for every man, woman, and children in America, there are 4,200 calories floating around every single day. And marketers are dying to get us to buy and consume those calories. We only need 2,200 calories. So add on top of that, the calorically dense, saturated fat, laden meat. And no, it's not a good idea. If you look at the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, you'll see that the average American consumes between two and two and a half times more protein than they need. So we tend to think, yeah, we're going to eat a bunch of protein and our muscles are just going to get bigger and bigger.

Starting point is 00:39:48 But that's not how it happens. Most of us are getting plenty of protein to begin with, and when we add more protein, it's hard on our kidneys. Most of the time, we just piss it out, and it's not doing us any good. and it's hard on the environment, half a billion or so sentient creatures suffer so we can have our pork chop or our hamburger every year. It's not good for us. It's not good for the environment. It's not good for the creatures we share this planet with. So I would much rather spend the time, effort, and ingenuity to make beans taste delicious, which offer just as much protein,

Starting point is 00:40:22 offer much more fiber, which 90% of Americans are deficient in, and build the soil rather than tearing it down and photosynthesized carbon dioxide into oxygen and don't cause any cruelty at all. And by the way, everybody can afford beans. Inner city, welfare people, and lots of poor people recognize the deliciousness of beans and rice or beans and a corn tortilla and some delicious hot sauce. Why not make that cool again? Cool. There you go. See? Hala says it's cool. I'm quoting that. Beans are cool. We're going to eat more beans. I'm going to eat more beans. I'm putting that all over my Instagram. All right. Let's play a game. It's called Blue Zone or Nah. Okay. I'm going to rattle something off.

Starting point is 00:41:10 You tell me, is this Blue Zone approved or no and why? Okay. First one, interminate fasting. Blue zones, yes. In every Blue Zone, people went through periods of hunger. And typically, they ate all their calories in an eight to ten hour window, which has been rebranded to intermittent fasting. Absolutely. Probably the best Blue Zone strategy. Cold plunges. No. In no place in Blue Zone are they cold plunging. And although cold plunging might be good for reducing inflammation temporarily or it might be good for recuperation, the half life of somebody who starts cold plunging is about two weeks. I actually looked it up. So it's trendy, but people never do it for long enough to make a difference, even if it did work.

Starting point is 00:42:02 Alcohol. I'm going to address red wine. I can tell you in all the Mediterranean blue zones, they're drinking red wine. 80 to 90% of people making it to 100 are drinking organic red wine every single day and more on fiasis. Now, I'm not saying rum and Coke or I'm not saying shots of tequila. I'm saying red wine. Red wine, moderate drinking is associated with about a 10%. drop in all-cost mortality.

Starting point is 00:42:30 In other words, very light drinkers live longer than non-drinkers. Blue zones, yes. Protein powder. No. In no blue zones are people taking protein powder. You can get all the protein you need from a whole food, plant-based diet, and that's the best way to get your protein. Macha Lates.

Starting point is 00:42:49 The Lotté part, no. The machet part, yes. So green tea is definitely a longevity food, and it was a regular beverage for the longchevents. longest live women in the world in Okinawa, Japan. Okay, so the last one is dairy. Dairy's a tough one. So in Blue Zones, nobody's drinking cows dairy at all.

Starting point is 00:43:09 Cows dairy is absolutely not. But you do see sheep's milk cheese in Sardinia, Pecorino, and you do see goats milk cheese in Ikaria, Greece, as feta. But it's really strong cheese, really flavorful. So they're only eating a piece about the size of a marshmallow very sparingly. Cheese is on the fence. What is your personal diet right now? I'm vegan plus some fish.

Starting point is 00:43:39 Yeah, it's a blue zone diet, actually. That's what people in blue zones largely eat. If you invite me over to your house and you have meat, you're serving meat, I'll politely eat a little bit of it. But at home, I never cook meat. Okay, let's move on to modern hot topics and things like that. that in our last minutes together. So OZempic is really taking over these days. And you mentioned Brian Johnson earlier. And he had a video that went viral that said olive oil is actually more

Starting point is 00:44:09 effective than Ozempic is. Any thoughts about that? Brian gets it right. I actually like Brian Johnson. And I saw his documentary. As a human, I like him. And I agree with olive oil. You know, we need fat and I think it's the best source of fat even better than avocado or coconut oil but no it's not as effective at ozempic i'm not a fan of ozempic either while it may deliver some short-term relief to obesity there's no proof that it's a long-term solution and you know it's just no fun jabbing a needle in your belly a couple times a week in pursuit of health i would much rather have everybody over to my house and I'll cook you a beautiful blue zone banquet, mostly whole plant-based foods, and we'll sit around and we'll connect as human beings. And you'll want to come over time and time

Starting point is 00:44:59 again, I'll guarantee you that's a better approach to dealing with weight issues and longevity than a thousand dollar a month pharmaceutical habit. Have you thought about AI and how it might impact longevity positively or negatively? The pace of discovery is increasing. And I have to admit AI is likely to help produce some major breakthrough, probably at the genetic level or the nano level or creating some sort of a drug that helps prevent the fundamentals of aging. We don't see it yet. We can see the pathway. I don't think AI is going to make the human experience better. We evolved for 25,000 generations doing what you and I are doing right now, Hall, we're making contact, we're communicating, we're sharing ideas, we're doing that human to

Starting point is 00:45:51 human. Ideally, we'd be in the same room. We'd be doing this over a nice meal. I think that's never going to be fundamental to the human experience. And I just don't think AI is going to replace that. And also, part of what is making America sick, and we have a sick culture here, at least 80% of Americans are suffering from some metabolic disease. Seventy-five percent of us are overweight. wait, we live in a sick culture. That comes from the ease and overabundance of our lives. Most of what drives longevity requires a little bit of effort. It doesn't satiate our appetites for meat and sugar and processed foods and calories and rest.

Starting point is 00:46:34 In blue zones, they're sort of nudged into these foods lower on the food chain, nudged into movement, nudged into human interaction. And that's what makes life rich and wonderful. that's what actually produces longevity, and AI is not going to produce an alternative to that. Dan, this was an awesome conversation. I really enjoyed it. I think our listeners are going to love it. I end my show with two questions that I ask all my guests. The person listening in right now is typically 30 years old or so. So what is one actionable thing our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? The first thing is do what you love. Forget chasing the money.

Starting point is 00:47:14 the money will come why because if you're obsessed about something you love you're going to get good at it you're going to build your social network around that you're going to think about it all the time rather than just money money money which at the end of the day doesn't deliver much happiness the second thing for greater profitability is really think about your immediate social circle i call that a moai this is from an okinawa term we really do become who our three best friends are so we can let into our immediate social circle people who sit around and bitch or people who eat junk food or sit around and watch TV. And guess what we're going to do when we are with them? There's good research that shows that if our three best friends' idea of recreation is physical activity, pickleball, biking, golf, whatever it is, that's what we're going to do when we're with them. We mimic our friends and what they eat. So it's a good idea to have a vegan or vegetarian in that immediate social circle. So they'll teach you how to eat whole plant-based foods. and also success is measurably contagious.

Starting point is 00:48:16 If we hang around people with low expectations and no goals, that tends to be contagious. Conversely, if we're adding friends who are on fire to change the world, on fire to make a difference, not just make money, that's going to be contagious too. And I would argue that's the most important thing you can do for stacking the deck in favor of not only success, but being around to your 100th year to enjoy that success. I love it. Dan, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? Well, I would love it if you check out my new book. It's called The Blue Zone Kitchen One Pot Meals on Amazon at Dan Butner on Instagram. I answer all my own DMs. And I have a website,

Starting point is 00:48:59 Danbutner.com, where by the way, there's a recipe, free recipe for the minestrote soup that fueled the longest-lived family for over 100 years. They ate it every day of their life. I got the recipe. It's yours for free at Danbutner.com. Oh, I'm going to try to make that. We'll stick all those links in the show notes. Dan, thank you so much for coming on Young Improfiting Podcast. Hala, thank you.

Starting point is 00:49:22 And thank you for my swag box and my new microphone. So if I sounded good, I have to thank you. I really applaud what you're doing. I think it is fabulous. I think the way you're creating community is very blue zones. I love your energy. And I'm going to consider you part of my success circle from here on out. Oh, thank you so much, Dan. You're always welcome back on the show.

Starting point is 00:49:43 I'm here for you. Well, guys, Dan offered up such a wealth of information on longevity today, and he reminded us that longevity is something that we can actually design. In fact, only 20% of how long we live is determined by our genetics. The rest is up to us. It's influenced by our surroundings, the environments that we live in, the people around us, and the structures that quietly shape our everyday choices. This is the essence of the blue zones, and Dan gave us the tool so that we could mimic how people live in the blue zones and so we could live to be 100 years old. Firstly, downshift. Dan reminded us that chronic stress leads to inflammation,

Starting point is 00:50:26 and inflammation is the root of most age-related diseases. In blue zones, people manage stress through simple rituals like naps, prayer, and quiet moments. Entrepreneurs, I want you to hear this loud and clear. Rest is not a luxury. It's a performance strategy. Next, move naturally. In the longest living regions, people don't exercise in the traditional sense. They walk, they garden, they cook, they move often without tracking steps or scheduling workouts. So look at your space. Rearrange your life so gentle movement becomes more automatic. Then there's dieting. Dan's food philosophy is refreshingly simple. Eat mostly plants, especially beans. Blue Zone diets center on beans, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, and also snacking on nuts.

Starting point is 00:51:12 Meat becomes an occasional celebration, not a daily staple. This isn't about restriction. It's about abundance from Earth's most powerful longevity tools. And maybe most importantly, know your purpose. People in the blue zones live with intention. They have a why that pulls them forward every single day, whether it's family, creativity, service, or faith. Purpose can add up to eight extra years to your life.

Starting point is 00:51:37 What Dan showed us is that thriving into your 90s or past 100 isn't out of reach. It's within your design. You can design a life that enables you to live longer. If you want to stay energized and mission driven for the long call, start with your environment. Build a life that makes well-being your default. So take what you learned today and start creating your own version of a blue zone, one that supports your energy, protects your health, and fuels your future. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting. If you listen and learned and profited from this conversation, please be sure to share it with a friend or family member.

Starting point is 00:52:11 And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something, then drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to this show. Nothing helps us reach more people than a good review from you. And by the way, all of our podcasts are uploaded to YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel if you like to watch your podcasts. And our Yap Live series is now on Spotify video. You guys can also find me on Instagram at Yap WithHalla or LinkedIn by searching for my YouTube. My name, it's Halataha. Of course, I got to say thank you to my Yap Media production team.

Starting point is 00:52:41 We produce all of our podcast in-house here at Yap Media. I have a rock star team, so thank you for all that you do. This is your host, Halataha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dan Buettner: Daily Habits That Defy Aging, Boost Health, and Happiness | Health and Wellness | E366

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