He found out that they were following all of Okinawa’s principles. And this place had a crucial principle — that you never eat full. The rule is called 8 out of 10, which means you will have 10 small things to eat and after 8, you stop eating. That is the reason they don’t eat dessert as well. In most of these areas, there is no sugar and they use honey or juice as a natural sweetener.
These four places — Okinawa, Sardinia, Icaria and Loma Linda — have mostly rich people, whose diet is sophisticated. Dan wanted to find areas which do not have this sophistication and that is when he found Nicoya in Costa Rica which is a peninsula. The main diet of people there is called ‘three sisters’, which means three things are
given by God: pumpkin, corn, and squash, which is beans. They grow these things in a similar manner. These three things benefit each other. Apart from this, they have fish and a little bit of country chicken is also used.
Have you modified any of the food here?
It is mostly the same. I did a little bit of research in India also and I found out that in Arunachal Pradesh, there are people who live for 90 years and they are tribals. The main reason to have a Blue Zone diet is that the food which goes inside triggers the intestine to have healthy bacteria. The research done by scientists afterwards showed that unlike other places, all the Blue Zones have a lot of bacteria.
Can you explain about the bacteria in our body?
In our gut, there are 30 million good bacteria and without these bacteria, we cannot survive. Once we die, these bacteria are the first to be eliminated.
When does the Blue Zone menu end?
This food spread is there until the end of November. We will be doing a revision of our menu after this and in the new menu, we will have a special thing called Blue Zone. We are trying to educate people who eat here.
