Into the Blue

Costa Rica has its own site-specific quirks, of course (for instance, there’s a more liberal attitude toward marriage and sex than in the rest of Latin America, including younger girlfriends—that may have something to do with Nicoya’s exceptional longevity rates), and Buettner acknowledges that Blue Zone longevity can’t just be chalked up to common sense. For that matter, some of his talking points make audiences squirm. At Allianz, where the bread is buttered with life insurance, there was visible shifting in the seats when Buettner suggested that nursing homes and assisted-living facilities are not conducive to longevity. But, as team demographer Poulain notes, one of the reasons it took so long to publish his initial Blue Zone study was because of academic resistance to the notion that development and the modern world, with its TiVo, twenty-four-hour fast-food joints, and constant pressure to make a buck, might work against longevity.

Development isn’t all bad: The Nicoya Peninsula was selected as a Blue Zone in part because of the accurate birth records and IDs the government has kept on Costa Ricans since 1888—information that Louis Rosero– Bixby, a demographer at the National University in San Jose, worked from to publish a paper that initially captured the attention of Buettner’s team. The team’s stories rest on empirical demographic research, and it’s been easier to track down and verify the peninsula’s 129 centenarians than a similar task might be in, say, Pakistan. When I was there, Poulain was only halfway through the 129 surveys that he was conducting, but he was already reaching a conclusion. “These people don’t talk about being tired, they have no reason to be stressed,” he says. “They’re religious and they work hard, but they’re not pushed by the pressure to gain a large amount of money. And because of the dry weather, there is less chance for disease, and the water is harder with more calcium. The soil is productive, and everything is organic. These people have everything they need.” However, the barbarians are at the gates. Nicoya recently opened its first Burger King (some locals already derisively refer to it as “Belly King”). Poulain sounds a little like a continental version of Supersize Me’s Morgan Spurlock when he asserts, “Burger King will be the end of these people.”