Sacramento Considers Designating ‘Blue Zones’ to Promote Healthy Living

Sacramento, Calif., on April 19, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Sacramento County health officials are moving forward with a plan to promote longer life and healthier living in select neighborhoods.

The program, a first for state officials, also promises to improve the lives of residents with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The county’s public health department has contracted with Blue Zones, a private wellness company, to help develop the initiative.

“They’ve been onsite all week meeting with community members, stakeholders, and county officials,” Sacramento County spokeswoman Samantha Mott told The Epoch Times.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Task Force on Alzheimer’s Prevention awarded the county $1.7 million in grant funding this year to create the program, which is in the initial stages of assessment and plan development, according to Ms. Mott.

Maria Shriver, former first lady of California and the chair of the governor’s task force, applauded the project’s goal of caring for people with dementia.

“As one of the most diverse regions in California, Sacramento County is the perfect place to break ground on this life-altering initiative,” Ms. Shriver said in a statement about the funding last summer. “Thank you to Governor Newsom and state leaders for their enduring dedication to reshaping the way we care for individuals with dementia and create a future where everyone can age with dignity.”

The county’s public health agency will focus on two regions of the county, which include the neighborhoods of Robla, Del Paso Heights, Hagginwood, Woodlake, Arden-Arcade, Lemon Hill, Parkway, Meadowview, and Florin.

The Blue Zones company, based in Minneapolis, will create a report for Sacramento’s “blue zones,” which will be implemented as a joint project between the county and company, Ms. Mott said.

Sacramento County’s board of supervisors has approved the grant funding and the contract with Blue Zones.

“Sacramento County is steadfast in its mission to enhance the health and well-being of all residents, irrespective of zip code, so that they can live a happy, healthy and long life,” Rich Desmond, chair of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, said in the July statement.

According to the county, deaths in Sacramento County caused by Alzheimer’s disease have more than doubled from 387 in 2011 to 814 in 2021. The highest life expectancy in the county is nearly 83 years and the lowest is 72, the county reported on Nov. 8.

The plan will focus on ways to increase healthy living, including how grocery stores can highlight healthier foods, such as promoting more fruits and nuts and eliminating candy at cash registers—a move that many communities in California have already made.

Blue Zone Concept

The “blue zone” concept was developed by author, explorer, and public speaker Dan Buettner, a vegan, who claims he has discovered a handful of regions across the world where people reportedly live longer-than-average lives in his 2008 book “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.”

He co-founded the Blue Zones company based on the book’s findings.

Mr. Buettner, who also stars in a new Netflix series called “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones,” has identified five communities in which people live long and vibrant lives: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Icaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California.

The Adventist community of about 9,000 in Loma Linda outlives the average American by a decade, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They take their vegan diet from the Bible and eat leafy greens, nuts, and legumes. They also recognize the Sabbath and take a 24-hour break once a week.

One Loma Linda resident, Marge Jetton, aged 105, woke up every morning at 5:30 a.m. to read her Bible and have a breakfast of slow-cooked oatmeal, nuts, and dates with soymilk and a prune juice shooter. She would then ride a stationary bike for half an hour and then drive her Cadillac to volunteer with seven different organizations, according to the NIH.

To live long and healthy lives like those in Loma Linda, Mr. Buettner suggests people take regular breaks from daily life, maintain a healthy body mass index, get regular exercise, and spend time with “like-minded” friends.

Mr. Buettner also suggests snacking on nuts, volunteering in the community, following a vegetarian diet and eating in moderation, eating light dinners and more plants, and drinking plenty of water.

Creating New Blue Zones

Albert Lea, a community in Minnesota, was the first region in which Mr. Buettner applied the Blue Zones experiment. The town was chosen because it represented a “typical” American city with about 18,000 residents, the NIH noted in a 2021 review.

The project developed walking groups and worked on assessing how grocery stores were laid out. The Blue Zones team rearranged the produce throughout the stores and replaced sweets that were visible at the checkout points with fruit and nuts. The team also highlighted sweet potatoes and beans using “Blue Zone” labels to signify healthiness.

In schools, the team replaced snacks, soda, and junk food in vending machines with healthy food.

Mr. Buettner also worked with residents, of which about 4,000 pledged to become involved with the project and restocked their homes with healthier food, according to the NIH review.

The Blue Zones team also involved city leadership, business groups, school officials, and the media to invest in the project.

“The impact witnessed a 40 [percent] reduction associated with healthcare costs and 12,000 pounds lost in weight,” the NIH reported.

So far, “blue zones” have been activated by community members in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach in California; Albert Lea, Minnesota; Spencer, Iowa; and Fort Worth, Texas.

The Fort Worth Blue Zones Project began in 2015 as a collaboration with Texas Health Resources and is the largest in the nation.

The program includes a concept called “Power 9,” which uses nine habits to help people “live much longer” with less disease. These habits encourage residents to have more movement in their daily lives, find a stress-relieving strategy, wake up with purpose, stop eating when they’re 80 percent full, eat more fruits and vegetables, put family first, belong to a faith-based community, surround themselves with people who support positive behaviors, and have more social time with friends.

So far, the project has decreased smoking in the community by 31 percent and increased exercising among residents, and participants have increased fruits and vegetables in their diets, according to a survey done by Blue Zones.

“Pride in Fort Worth also increased,” according to the health resources department.

On its website, Blue Zones claims that communities that have adopted the Blue Zones Project have seen double-digit drops in obesity and smoking and a reduction in employee absenteeism and have saved millions of dollars in health care costs.

Mr. Buettner said the Sacramento County project would use the same techniques used in other U.S. cities but will be customized to also target Alzheimer’s disease.

“Some of the original Blue Zones suffer one-fifth the rate of dementia as we do in the United States,” Mr. Buettner said in the July statement. “In Sacramento, we’ll be deploying the same Blue Zones approach we’ve used to raise life expectancy. This time, however, we’ll be customizing it to also drive down the rate of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Controversy Around Blue Zones

Mr. Buettner’s findings have been disputed in the past, with some saying fraud and data errors might explain why people reportedly live longer in “blue zones.”

Saul Newman, a researcher with the Australian National University, published a study in 2019 suggesting that the records in some of the designated “blue zones” aren’t kept well and that some people interviewed may have been dishonest about their ages.

For instance, the designated “blue zones” of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Icaria are in regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rates, and short life expectancy relative to their country’s national average, according to Mr. Newman.

Others point out that while Mr. Buettner promotes a 95 to 100 percent plant-based diet in his “blue zones,” most in the designated “blue zone” regions eat meat.

In Arizona, one group pushed back against nonprofit organization Equality Health Foundation’s plan to implement “blue zones” in South Phoenix and has refused to participate.

The Collaborative for Black and Indigenous Land Restoration and Reparations chose to oppose the project.

In a letter to the community, the group claimed that the project had a “white savior complex” and lacked community roots.

“The people with the decision-making power are not community members, but insurance companies and healthcare organizations that helped fund the project.”