2015 Presentation: Dan Buettner

No matter who we are, where we live or what we do, we all have to grapple with aging and its attendant challenges. Understanding that process has become the life’s work of Dan Buettner, a National Geographic Fellow who returns to Mountainfilm for the second time (after speaking at the 2012 Moving Mountains Symposium about population).

Buettner has written a series of bestselling books that explore regions in the world with pronounced human longevity, which he calls “Blue Zones.” Along with a team of scientists, he has traveled to these places — which include Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; and Loma Linda, California — to examine what people eat, how they live and what makes them happy. This research isn’t only academic, he also shares it with other communities in an effort to create new Blue Zones.

What Buettner has found is that “having a strong sense of purpose, a circle of healthy friends and living in walkable neighborhoods” are all important, but a healthy diet is indispensable to longevity. This is the subject of his latest book, The Blue Zones Solution, where he synthesized the eating habits of the people in the Blue Zones into what he calls "one über diet of sorts.” Not surprisingly, these people eat plant-based diets that incorporate whole grains, beans, nuts, starchy tubers and few animal products. The Blue Zones Solution also lays out lifestyle changes that induce longevity.