The term “Blue Zones” was coined to describe a region of the world – the Italian island of Sardinia was the first in 2004 – where people are said to live longer and healthier than elsewhere. The desire to live as long as possible has spawned a thriving business: diet and lifestyle advice, books, tech gadgets, and supplements that are supposed to help people live longer.
But for Saul Justin Newman, a researcher at University College London, the existing data on the oldest humans on the planet are simply "fake, to a truly shocking degree", he told AFP.
Fraud on birth certificates?
His research, which is currently under peer review, combed through data on centenarians and "supercentenarians" (those who reached age 110) in the United States, Italy, England, France and Japan. And he found that the "supercentenarians" tended to come from regions with poor health, high levels of poverty and poor record keeping.
The real secret to extreme longevity seems to be to "to settle where birth certificates are rare and to teach one's children to cheat in order to receive a retirement pension", Mr. Newman said in September when he received his Ig Nobel Prize, an award given to scientists whose research, while outlandish, provokes thought.
Among other examples, Sogen Kato was considered the oldest person in Japan… until his mummified remains were discovered in 2010 – it turned out he had died in 1978. His family members were arrested for collecting his pension for three decades.
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Centenarians Counted in Japan Missing or Dead
The government then launched a study which revealed that 821,000 of the centenarians counted in Japan, or 230,000 people, were in fact missing or dead. "Their documents are in order, they are simply dead," Mr Newman said.
Because confirming the age of these people involves checking very old documents whose very authenticity can be questioned. For him, all the trade that has given rise to the blue zones stems from this problem.
In 2004, Sardinia was the first to be classified as "blue zone". The following year, the Japanese islands of Okinawa and the Californian city of Loma Linda were designated "blue zones" by a reporter from National Geographic, Dan Buettner. But in October, Buettner admitted to the New York Times that he included Loma Linda only because his editor told him, "You have to find the blue spot in America."
The journalist then teamed up with demographers to create the "Blue Zones" brand, which added the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and the Greek island of Ikaria. But unreliable public records, such as those from Japan, have cast doubt on the real ages of the centenarians counted in these zones.
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Demographers who reject this work
In Costa Rica, a 2008 study showed that 42% of them had "lied about their age" in a census, Mr. Newman reports. In Greece, the 2012 data he collected suggests that 72% centenarians had died: "They are only alive the day they receive their retirement pension", he says ironically.
Researchers who advocate for "blue zones" have dismissed Mr. Newman's work as"ethically and academically irresponsible". Demographers have claimed to have "meticulously checked" the age of "supercentenarians" using historical documents and records dating back to the 1800s. But Newman says the argument supports his point: "If we start from an erroneous birth certificate, copied from other certificates, we obtain perfectly coherent files... and perfectly erroneous", he declared.
In conclusion, he said: "To live long, start by not buying anything. Listen to your doctor, exercise, don't drink, don't smoke, that's all."
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