Are blue zones real? Answering that question is harder then ever

When French geneticist Jean-Francois Deleuze first launched the AGENOMICS study in 2022, he hoped to identify genetic patterns among 1,200 French citizens who’d lived more than 100 years and to compare those to centenarians hailing from one of the world-famous “blue zones.”

Then he started having doubts.

“Some recent articles questioning the very concept of blue zones have given me pause,” he wrote in an email last year. “What’s your take?”

It’s not our first time getting that question. If you write books — as we both did — about extreme longevity, people will ask you about blue zones. The term, now engrained in Western culture, originally referred to 14 isolated villages on the Italian island of Sardinia where, 25 years ago, researchers identified exceptional numbers of long-living humans whose health they attributed to active habits and simple foods.

In a wellness space increasingly crowded with billionaire-backed senolytics, hyperbaric chambers, antiaging drips, and stem cell infusions, blue zones are starting to look like the unpretentious OGs of the longevity movement.

But they’ve strayed far and wide from their humble roots. Skepticism over their foundational science, plummeting numbers of healthy seniors in the original regions, and a burgeoning business in blue zones products is making it more difficult to answer the question: Are blue zones real?

Belgian demographer Michel Poulain and Italian physician Giovanni Pes coined the term “blue zone” in the early 2000s to refer to the converging ink dots on the map they were using to validate longevity claims in Ogliastra, Italy. They published the results of the AKEA study in 2004. A year later, journalist Dan Buettner, who had joined their project, published a National Geographic cover story chronicling the “long life secrets” of elderly residents in Ogliastra, as well as Okinawa, Japan, and — controversially — Loma Linda, Calif. Shortly thereafter, Buettner trademarked the term “blue zone” to protect it, he insists, from misuse.

Over the years, Buettner, more so than the original scientists, has become synonymous with blue zones. He’s written nine best-selling blue zone books that have surpassed $1.2 million in sales and led “expeditions” to endorse new blue zones in Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula and Ikaria, Greece. He founded Blue Zones LLC, which consults with and certifies blue zone cities in the U.S., as well as offering cooking courses and retreats. In 2023, Buettner hosted the popular Netflix documentary “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.”

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