One evening, bored at no more episode to watch on our favourite YouTube channel called Little China Everywhere, we browsed food documentaries on Netflix. The image of bright purple sweet potatoes caught my eyes.
Purple sweet potatoes are the only root vegetable I miss the
most when talking about Vietnamese cuisine. Sweet potatoes are one of the staple
foods in Vietnam, cooked in stew, curry and dessert soup or simply boiled as snack and for breakfast. I used to snack on boiled purple sweet potatoes with a big appetite. Whenever I saw purple sweet potatoes, I always bought them in bulk. They are rich in tons of minerals and vitamins, but only the purple ones have much more antioxidant due to their deep purple hue. Purple sweet potatoes are small in
size, but abundant in flavour. Earthy, nutty, slightly sweet, grainy but silky
smooth too. I hunt for those deep purple gems in South Africa too, but I never see any.
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| Purple sweet potatoes were my favourite snack when I lived in Vietnam. I boiled them and ate them plain, without condiments or dipping sauce. They were so super delicious that I thought I could live on them my entire life. |
And then the phrase 'live to 100' piqued my curiosity. I suggested my husband that we should watch that documentary.
We were so hooked that we watched all of the four episodes
in one sitting. They were entertaining, informative and fun as well.
Talking about longevity, we don't only want to live long. We
want to live well and stay shape till our last breathes. Anyway, who
wants to live long if one can't live well to enjoy the beauty of life?
I don't want to live long or forever, because I know I need to give space to other tenants on Earth. But once I still breathe, I crave a meaningful life. A meaningful life to me is living with dignity and humanity and care. I care by sharing with my milieus what I have learned, watched, heard and seen. Long story short! This is the documentary I highly recommend you, at https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/live-to-100-secrets-of-the-blue-zones-documentary
If you can't access Netflix, the video embedded below is for you. It provides a grief summary of Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.
'If you’ve seen Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, you know that there are certain areas of the world — Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California — where more people live significantly longer than average. However, you don’t have to actually move to one of the blue zones to get to your hundredth birthday.
As The Blue Zones author and educator Dan Buettner explains: The habits, diets, and lifestyles of blue zone centenarians are simple, but they have the ability to change everything.
“I have found that most of what people think leads to a long, healthy life is misguided or just plain wrong,” says Buettner in the Live to 100 docuseries inspired by his book, pointing to our obsession with diet plans, gym memberships, and expensive supplements — aspects of life that are noticeably absent from blue zone lifestyles. As Buettner says, “The fact of the matter is that most of us are leaving good years on the table.”
So, what are these habits? They’re as simple as opting for a mechanical gadget rather than an automatic one, as pleasurable as having a glass of wine in the evening to unwind, or as intuitive as knowing what your purpose is in life and choosing to fulfill it every single day.
The truth is these transformations are possible and attainable. After all, as the docuseries points out, “the same things that help us live a long and healthy life are the things that make life worth living.” Take a look at the 12 patterns that emerged from the blue zones and find ways to integrate them into your life and community.
Make movement a habit: (1) By hand, (2) Walk, (3) Garden
A positive outlook is everything: (4) Unwinding regularly, (5) Finding faith, (6) Developing a sense of purpose
Eating wisely: (7) Plant-based: 95% of the meal, (8) Wine, (9) Moderation: stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full
Connect: (10) Family first, (11) Partnership, (12) Right tribe'
After watching the series and through my observations and reading, I understand why my 89-year-old neighbour, Mrs. Ollie, is still doing well with a sharp mind. Apart from lifestyle and diets which contribute to living long, we need to mention the fact that longevity runs on in some families. Mrs. Ollie's three sisters are still with her in their early 90.
In this frenetic pace of living, people tend to be easily dependent on modern household devices or maids to do the chores for them, and they eventually become couch potatoes without noticing it. Then they pay for membership cards to work their muscles at the gym. That's not a good way of living, but people blaim that they don't have time.
When it comes to potatoes and sweet potatoes, I wonder which one is healthier. Interestingly enough, I'm not the only one who asks that question. The answer I found out is that they are both healthy and low-fat root vegetables. However, sweet potatoes are a bit of a better option thanks to their beta carotene and vitamin A. 'Beta carotene is an antioxidant that works to protect your body’s cells from damage and diseases like cancer.'
'The best advice is to use them both.'
If you grow up in Asia, such as in Vietnam like me, you will consume more sweet potatoes. Likewise, if you grow up in Europe or South Africa, you will do more with potatoes. That isn't a surprise, but a matter of culture! We eat what we find in our environment.
To know more about the nuitrional values of potatoes and sweet potatoes, read https://health.clevelandclinic.org/white-potatoes-vs-sweet-potatoes-which-is-healthier.
Whether you choose to eat potatoes or sweet potatoes, never peel their skin. Their skin is full of goodness like vitamins and fiber. My husband and I never peel the skins of potatoes or sweet potatoes when we roast them or make soup, except when we make mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes.
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The following conversation between John Yang and Dan Buettner, broadcasted in December 2023, is worth your reading or listening. Click here if you prefer listening to the conversation.
'A lot of people do a lot of things in search of a long and healthy life, complicated diet plans, gym memberships and expensive dietary supplements. But in a four-part Netflix series called Live to 100 Secrets of the Blue Zone, Best Selling Author Dan Buettner says a lot of that is misguided.
He traveled to places he calls blue zones where more people live significantly longer than average, trying to figure out how they do it. Recently, I spoke with Buettner and asked him why he chose to start a series on longevity in a cemetery.
Dan Buettner, Executive Director, "Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones": I think it's facing the inevitable, we're all going to get frail. We're all going to die. But when we — how long we want to be on this earth, we have a lot of say in that matter. So we started at the end, and then went back from there.
John Yang:
When you found these blue zones, where there's some themes running through all of them?
Dan Buettner:
Yes, if you want to know what 100-year-old ate to live to be 100, you have to know what she was eating as a child and middle aged and newly retired. So to get at that, we found 155 dietary surveys done in all five Blue Zones over the last 80 years. And we average them with the help of Harvard. And we found that 90 to 95 percent they're eating a whole food plant based diet, meat only about five times per month and contrary to a lot of sort of keto slash Paleo diet advice, it's mostly carbohydrates, complex carbohydrates, which I think shocks a lot of people.
When I first started writing about this, I did a cover story for National Geographic in 2005. Nobody was connecting loneliness to longevity. And I was pointing out the importance of strong social connections and social circles and turns out that's worth about seven years of extra life expectancy.
But the big revelation and you'd never hear about it because it's not saying exceed marketers can't sell you things but like an extra 10 years of life expectancy is the sum of lots of small improvements, we make in our lives mostly in our environment, applied for decades.
John Yang:
Are these blue zones in any way endangered you talk about Okinawa now having an obesity problem that family in Costa Rica with a young boy just want cereal? Are these endangered locations?
Dan Buettner:
As soon as the American food culture comes in the front door, longevity goes out the back door. And I'm giving most of these blue zones a half a generation before they completely adopt our way of life and therefore started adopting our obesity rates and diabetes and heart disease rates to tragedy actually.
John Yang:
But at the same time, he also tried to create some blue zones in Albert Lee, Minnesota and Fort Worth, Texas. What lessons did you learn from that?
Dan Buettner:
The big lesson is don't try to change your behavior you'll fail for almost all the people almost all the time in the long run. You change people's environments. In other words, you design for health. Our Blue Zone projects unleash a swarm of healthy nudges and defaults that are put in place for years. They're mostly environmental, making cities walkable policies that favor healthy food over junk food and so forth.
And setting Americans up for success, as opposed to the failure our food environment portends right now. Every city we work in, we've seen major improvements in people's health. And we've seen obesity drop, and we've seen health care cost savings in the in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
John Yang:
So it sounds like it's not just personal behavior. But it's also as you say policies making cities more walkable, designing, you know, streets and neighborhoods like that.
Dan Buettner:
I have no faith. And I don't know of any research where you can change a populations health by trying to convince individuals to change their behavior, or somehow imbue them with responsibility. We're genetically hardwired to crave fat, salt and sugar and take rest whenever we want.
So unless we set up an environment where it's easy for us to eat, basically whole food plant based, easier for us to walk than it is to drive. We're going to continue to see health care costs in the trillions as we're seeing today in America.
John Yang:
You talked also about in the series about something we've talked about on this broadcast the fact that life expectancy is becoming shorter. And a lot of it is because younger people are dying from suicides, homicides, drug overdoses and car accidents. All preventable. There's none of this as is an organic problem. Did you learn anything in your work? That would relate to that?
Dan Buettner:
The number one killer in America is our diet. We lose about 660,000 Americans prematurely to the way we eat. If we don't take aim at that, these other things are more peripheral. In Singapore, which I dubbed ouzo 2.0, individuals cannot own guns. In America, we lost 55,000 people to gun deaths last year that dragged down the life expectancy. in Singapore they lost two, where they're very tough on drugs in Singapore, I mean, if you could be put to death for selling drugs in Singapore.
But the other side of that equation, only 15 people died last year and drug overdoses, whereas we lost almost 110,000 Americans and drug overdoses last year of drug related deaths. So yes, there are lots of things on the fringes. But the big thing we need to take aim at is our diet. And until we get that squared away, the rest of the stuff is a rounding error.
John Yang:
Toward the end of the series, you see the same things that help us live a long healthy life are the things that make life worth living. Are you saying that if we concentrate on the quality of life, that the quantity of life will come?
Dan Buettner:
The concentrating on quality of life helps, but these silicone multimillionaires shooting themselves up with a young people's blood, and working out six hours a day and taking all these weird pills and genetic interventions. People in Blue Zones are living a long time because they're socializing, because they know their purpose. And they live their pure purpose. They live near nature. They keep their families close by and we can map all these to higher life expectancy.
So the big point for Blue Zones is if you adopt the Blue Zones way of life, you not only stack the deck in favor of longevity, but you can be pretty sure that journey is going to be pleasurable.
John Yang:
Did you change anything in your life based on what you learned?
Dan Buettner:
Yes, I become mostly plant based. I don't eat meat anymore. I used to be a ultra-marathon cyclist and now I do things like play pickleball and take walks because I know that favors my longevity more than hardcore physical activity.
I got very clear on my purpose. It's very hard to get me to do things that are right down to the strike laying up my values and what I'm good at and what I like to do and how I can give back. And I've also prioritize family because I know keeping your family nearby adds three or four years of life expectancy over being single and alone.
John Yang:
The series is Live to 100 Secrets of the Blue Zones. Dan Buettner is the host and one of the executive producers. Thank you very much.
Dan Buettner:
We'll see you when you're 100, John.
John Yang:
It's a deal, all right.'