Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, and you're listening to The Nutrition Diva Podcast.

A show where I take a closer look at nutrition trends and headlines, explain what the latest

research means for you, and answer your nutrition questions.

Welcome.

Nutrition Diva listener Sandy writes,

I'm reading Dan Butiner's Blue Zones Kitchen, and I ran across a couple of dietary

recommendations that contradict conventional medical or nutritional wisdom.

I really try to avoid cranked theories and junk science where nutrition is concerned,

but Dan Butiner, along with the scientists and medical professionals that he developed these recommendations with,

don't seem to fall into that camp, so I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.

For those who aren't familiar, the Blue Zones Project was an attempt to codify the dietary and lifestyle habits

of the planet's longest living populations, with the hopes that we might learn how to live longer ourselves,

and they focused on five communities, each of which was relatively isolated or insulated,

either by geography or culture, so that both the genetics and the cultural practices were somewhat homogeneous,

and they were the Japanese island of Okinawa, the Greek island of Icaria, the Sardinian region of Italy,

the Nikoyan Peninsula of Costa Rica, and the seventh-day Adventist community of Loma Linda, California.

And as Sandy suggests, this was a very serious and scientifically rigorous exploration.

But Butiner and the Blue Zones collaborators were not the first to tackle this question.

Other researchers have analyzed the traditional diets and lifestyles of Creetans, Icelanders,

Cameroons, and Pima Indians, in an attempt to pinpoint the secret to a long and healthy life.

At a glance, it might seem like health and longevity are about the only things that these cultures actually have in common.

The robust Tara Humara Indians, for example, eat a diet that's 80% carbohydrates,

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