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Issue No. 4: The Blue Zones Christmas Menu
How to „Hara Hachi Bun Me“ like a Centenarian
New Zapiens
December 14, 2023
Happy Thursday Zapien 👋
We're hurtling toward the holidays. For many of us, December is the season of sweets and chocolates, spicy wines and expensive meats. Mmm, delicious! And, well, pretty much the opposite of what you should be eating to live to 100.
Our gift to you: Use this issue to plan your holiday menu. Still delicious, but with a side of longevity superpowers.
LONGEVITY BEAT
If you've been on Netflix lately, you may have encountered “Blue Zones” and their name-giver, the mildly irritating Dan Buettner.
Back in 2005, Dan introduced us to places around the world with the highest number of centenarians (people who live to be 100+ years old).
From then on, Buettner's journey has been about uncovering the secrets of longevity in these areas, with diet emerging as one of the key factors.
Here's a rough breakdown of Blue Zone longevity foods and eating habits:
• Eat 95-100% plant-based, with lots of leafy greens like spinach or kale. Not a fan yet? Read this recent twin study on how a plant-based diet can lower LDL and insulin in just 8 weeks.
• Eat sweet potatoes regularly, they may have superpowers
• Minimize meat consumption and dairy, go easy on fish
• Eat whole, unprocessed grains
• Add a daily dose of legumes like chickpeas, beans and lentils
• Snack on nuts
• Minimize added sugars
• Drink mostly water
It’s quite possible that the Blue Zones are an act of great storytelling rather than solid scientific research. Proclaiming that there’s a universal healthy diet ignores that there’s a high variability in response to identical meals. In other words, what's healthy for you may not be healthy for someone else.
Still, there's enough evidence beyond the Blue Zone research to make it worthwhile to see if it's right for you.
We've scoured the web for delicious recipes that are both holiday-worthy and Blue Zone compatible.
This is it, the New Zapiens Holiday Menu:
🥙 Starter: Green Salad with Pecans and Orange
Add Kale and grass-fed goat cheese if you’re a fan, Pro-Tip: Replace wine vinegar with apple cider vinegar.
Starting with greens and apple cider vinegar can help stabilize your blood sugar. Your microbiome may like the fermented goat's cheese. Nuts add fiber, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Polyphenols from extra virgin olive oil are the longevity wonder drug, with positive effects on cardiovascular and cognitive health.
Ingredients:
• Mixed Greens
• Pecans
• Oranges
• Dried Cranberries
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Apple Cider vinegar
• Optional: Goat cheese
Cooking Time: 30 min
Category: Vegan/ Vegetarian (add goat cheese)
🍠 Main: Lentil & Bean Roast on Cranberry Sauce with Roasted Purple Sweet Potatoes
Replace butter with extra-virgin olive oil. Enjoy with a glass of red wine, if you feel like it.
Beans and lentils act as a source of protein and complex carbohydrates in this recipe. Purple sweet potatoes contain fiber and plenty of antioxidants.
Ingredients:
• Kidney Beans
• Green Lentils
• Purple Sweet Potatoes
• Rolled Oats
• Portobello Mushrooms
• Carrots
• Garlic
• Onion
• Herbs
• Cranberries
• Orange
• Maple Syrup
Cooking Time: 1 hour (+40 min baking)
Category: Vegan
🥮 Dessert: Caramel Pecan Bites
You may have guessed it, but there is no such thing as a truly healthy dessert. Still, it's a holiday meal, so you might want to try this nutty option.
Ingredients:
• Rolled Oats
• Pecans
• Almond Flour
• Dates
• Cinnamon
• Vanilla Extract
Cooking Time: 30 min (+25 min resting)
Category: Vegan
SHORT HACK, LONG LIFE
腹八分目 - “Hara Hachi Bun Me” is a Confucian instruction to stop eating when you’re 80% full. You’ll quickly figure out that this will lead to a consistent 20% calorie reduction.
Generally, this is great for losing weight. Also, not eating until you’re full lets you focus better at work. Maggie Thatcher’s famous credo was: “Keep yourself a bit hungry and cold…”
And it may even extend your life span (proven if you’re a lab rat; only maybe for humans - nobody tries as hard as Bryan).
Some tricks to stop at 80%:
🚰 Drink a large glass of water before eating
🐌 Eat very slowly (satiety kicks in at some point)
🍽 Use red plates
🍵 Take a smaller first portion (and don’t take a second)
So enjoy whatever rings your jingle bell. Just stop at 80%.
RECOMMENDED VS. FISHY
Recommended: Calorie Tracking Apps
Examples: Lifesum, Yazio, MyFitnessPal
Unless you're swimming every day like Michael Phelps, who burned 8-10k calories (!) in his prime, it's likely that you'll have to watch how much you eat.
Christmas cookies don't make it any easier. If you’re already a little overweight, we strongly recommend that you try an app for at least 4 weeks. Why? It will give you an understanding of how many calories are in your regular meals and snacks.
Which app is better? It doesn’t really matter. They all have their pros and cons. In general, it’s handy to have a barcode scanner (e.g. Lifesum) so that you can simply scan the food package to see macros and calories per 100 grams instantly. Regarding food databases, MyFitnessPal is better for North America, while Lifesum would be recommended in Europe.
Fishy: Photo Calorie Tracking Apps
Examples: Avocado, SnapCalorie, Calorie Mama
These products try to solve the main problem of all calorie trackers: Manual input of ingredients and amounts. Just take a picture of your food, and everything is (supposedly) correctly identified and logged.
Hold onto your money: The general problem is that these photo calorie counters miss the correct amount of calories by an average of 20% to 40%. No matter how accurately the image recognition algorithm detects the broccoli on your plate, it can't figure out how many French fries you're hiding underneath.
HEALTH & LONGEVITY NEWS
More than one Bioage: New blood biomarker-based age clock for individual organs leads to Nature publication and founding of a new longevity startup.
Preprint of a Finnish twin study that ran for several decades suggests that the isolated effect of exercise on longevity might be smaller than previously thought.
German stealth startup Mirror raises several Million pre-seed round to build health management app.
ZAPIEN OF THE WEEK
Rita (Spain)
What are you currently optimizing?
Currently, I'm focused on optimizing my sleep routine, and I've found a sweet spot by blending ancient remedies with modern technology.
What’s your favourite tool?
My go-to tools include a custom mix of chamomile, linden blossom, and mint tea, sourced meticulously for quality, and I complement it with the Calm app for meditation and soundscapes pre-sleep and when I wake up in the middle of the night. To track and analyze my sleep stages, I rely on the Oura ring, which, in my opinion, stands out as the best wearable for this purpose.
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BECAUSE WE LOVE NUMBERS
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ABOUT US
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New Zapien’s products and services are not intended to substitute for professional medical guidance. Our content and media offerings do not aim to diagnose, cure, or address any medical issues.
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