For the past 25 years, experts and the general public have tried to figure out why people in so-called “Blue Zones” live to be 100 years old at a much higher rate than anywhere else. Saul Newman, a researcher at University College London (UCL), feels he knows the answer: no, they don’t.
Despite their popularity in news articles, cookbooks, and even a recent Netflix documentary series, the Blue Zones are really a byproduct of faulty data, claims Newman, who has spent years discrediting research on extremely elderly communities.
According to him, pension fraud, clerical errors, and a lack of reliable birth and death records can explain the apparent longevity of people in five regions: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California.
Dan Buettner, the American author and explorer credited with coining the term Blue Zone, did not respond to a request for comment.
For his research into the claims around Blue Zones, Newman, a senior fellow at UCL’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies, analysed reams of demographic data, including United Nations mortality statistics for 236 jurisdictions gathered between 1970 and 2021.
Kenya, Malawi, and the self-governing territory of Western Sahara were among the places with the highest number of centenarians, while having total life expectancies of only 64, 65, and 71 years.
Similar tendencies emerged in Western countries, with the London borough of Tower Hamlets, one of the most disadvantaged locations in the UK, reportedly having more persons aged over 105 than anywhere else in the country.