The Happiness Lab: Eat Like the People Who Live Happily to 100

Summary

The Dan Buettner Podcast

Episode: The Happiness Lab – Eat Like the People Who Live Happily to 100

Release Date: November 27, 2025
Host: Dan Buettner (with guest host Dr. Laurie Santos)

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the relationship between eating habits, happiness, and longevity, framed by Dan Buettner’s decades of Blue Zones research. Joined by Dr. Laurie Santos, the conversation explores how the world’s longest-lived and happiest populations eat, live, and connect, all contextualized through Dan’s new cookbook "One Pot 100 Recipes to Live Till 100." The discussion provides actionable strategies for listeners to bring the Blue Zone lifestyle into their homes and communities, revealing the powerful impact of environment, habits, and purpose.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Origin of the Blue Zones Concept

• Dan’s Inspiration:

  • After graduating university, Dan spent eight years on cycling expeditions across the globe, setting world records and gaining a unique worldview ([02:39]).
  • Sparked by a National Geographic editor's challenge to add to the body of knowledge, he conducted interactive, crowd-directed scientific explorations—eventually focusing on unlocking the secrets of longevity.

• Definition:

  • “A blue zone is a demographically confirmed, geographically confined area where people live the longest. But now it's grown into a movement … a way of life that focuses on setting up your surroundings so you're more likely to live longer and a happier life.” (Dan, [04:25])

Healthspan vs. Lifespan

• Healthspan Explained:
  • The focus has shifted from just living longer (lifespan) to enjoying more healthy, active years (healthspan or “health adjusted life expectancy”—HALE) ([05:34]).
  • In the US, people average 64 years of full health; in Blue Zones, it can reach 77 years.

Where Are the Blue Zones?

• Original Blue Zone Regions: ([07:44])
  • Noro Province, Sardinia (longest-lived men)
  • Okinawa, Japan (longest-lived women)
  • Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica (lowest middle-age mortality)
  • Icaria, Greece (virtually dementia-free, longer lives)
  • Loma Linda, California (Seventh Day Adventists with longer US-based life expectancy)

Social Insights from the Blue Zones

• Lessons from Centenarians:
  • After interviewing nearly 500 centenarians, Dan observed that those who live longest are curious, engaged, and generally positive ([09:00]).
  • Positive attitudes toward aging are linked to longer lives (citing Becca Levy’s research).

Myth-Busting the Anti-Aging Industry

• Skepticism on Supplements and Fads:
  • “There's an $84 billion anti-aging industry out there that has failed to produce even one pill or supplement or hormone or stem cell that is shown to reverse, stop or even slow aging in humans.” (Dan, [10:50])
  • The real solution isn’t in quick fixes or products but in adopting sustainable healthy habits and social environments.

Core Longevity Habits in Blue Zones

Four Key Factors:

1. Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet:

   • 90-95% plant-based (whole grains, greens, tubers, nuts, beans) ([12:28]).
   • “If you eat a cup of beans a day, it predicts about four extra years of life expectancy.” (Dan)

2. Natural Movement:

   • Residents don’t “exercise” per se, but daily life requires movement—walking, gardening, chores ([12:28]).

3. Purpose:

   • Every culture has vocabulary and rituals around purpose ([12:28]).
   • “People who can articulate why they wake up in the morning live about seven to eight years longer than people who are rudderless in life.”

4. Strong Social Networks:

   • Loneliness is rare; extended families and frequent, casual social interactions are the norm.

Environment as a Driver of Habits (Not Willpower)

• Healthy and Happy Environments:
  • In Blue Zones, healthy choices are ingrained in the environment ([18:12]).
  • “They're not pursuing health and longevity. It ensues. They live in environments where they're nudged to move more, eat better, socialize more without really thinking about it.” (Dan)

Secrets of the World’s Happiest Places

Notable Findings:

• Happiness is not the result of individual positive psychology practices, but rather supportive systems and policies ([20:14]).
• Highest happiness:
  • Singapore (life satisfaction)
  • Cartago, Costa Rica (most positive affect per GDP dollar)
  • Aarhus, Denmark (regional happiness beating even top-ranked Finland)

Determinants of Happiness: ([20:57])

• Trust (neighbors, institutions)
• Safety “Safety is more important than freedom.” (Dan, [22:30])
• Equality and universal healthcare
• Walkable cities, access to green spaces, and clean air

Moving for Health and Happiness

• Relocation Evidence:
  • Immigrants’ happiness levels rise to match their new happy home—regardless of their background ([24:29]).
  • Americans move on average 10 times in their lives, providing environmental opportunities for happiness.

Blue Zones City Model

Urban Interventions:

• Collaborated in cities like Fort Worth, TX, to make them more walkable, regulate food access, remove junk food from schools, and redesign convenience stores ([28:03]).
• Data shows city-wide drops in BMI, increased life expectancy, lower healthcare costs, and improved overall happiness as a result.

Cookbook Philosophy: One Pot Meals

• Addressing Barriers:
  • Home-cooked meals are crucial for health—restaurant meals add on average 300 extra unhealthy calories ([33:02]).
  • Healthy longevity foods are “peasant foods”—beans, whole grains, root veggies are low-cost and filling.
  • "Taste" is the most important ingredient: “If it does taste good, you don't much care what it is. If it's good for you or bad for it, you're going to eat it for the long run.” (Dan, [34:48])
• Recipe Development:
  • Collaborated with Stanford AI lab and NYT recipe developers to create 100 one-pot, longevity-supporting, “maniacally delicious” recipes ([35:53]).
  • Dishes cost under $3 per serving and can be prepared in less than 20 minutes.

Addressing the “Time Famine”

• 15-minute prep with appliances like instant pots makes healthy eating accessible, even for the time-strapped ([36:31]).
• “If you’re eating the standard American diet … you’re losing about 10 years of life expectancy. … If you take those … six years … and average them back … it’s an extra two hours a day [gained]. You can’t afford to not eat healthy.” (Dan, [36:31])

Community Cooking and Results

• Organized cooking sessions for inner-city moms: social support, tools, and skills transformed eating habits; all participants saw health improvements over 10 weeks ([37:49]).

Power of Shared Meals and Ritual

• Eating together as a family provides social, digestive, and emotional benefits ([39:32]).
• Rituals like grace or “hara hachi bu” in Okinawa help punctuate mealtime and encourage mindful, slower eating.

Actionable Advice for Living to 100

• Curate your social circle: “Who are my three best friends? … If your three best friends are obese or unhealthy, there’s about 150% better chance you’ll be overweight.” (Dan, [41:34])
• Consider where you live: choose environments that nudge you towards health, not stress.
• Clarify values, passions, and strengths; find ways to align and express them, whether at work, home, or through volunteering.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the anti-aging industry:

  • “I always defy anybody to show me one behavioral modification intervention, say a diet or an exercise program or supplement regimen that works for more than single digit percentage of people over two years. You can't find it.” (Dan, [10:50])

• On creating lasting change:

  • “It’s not hounding people to change their diet or go run a marathon … simply setting up their environment so their unconscious decisions are slightly better every day for months, years, and at least one case now, decades.” (Dan, [27:55])

• On the cookbook:

  • “The cookbook is called the Blue Zones Kitchen One Pot. … What people in Blue zones teach us is how to take those very simple ingredients and make them taste delicious.” (Dan, [33:02])
  • “Taste, right? Because if it doesn't taste good, I'm not going to eat it.” (Lori, [34:45])

• On health time trade-off:

  • "By spending this, you know, 20 minutes, half hour to cook the healthy meal, I'm actually getting two hours a day over my whole lifetime." (Lori, [37:27])

• On living with purpose:

  • “People who can articulate why they wake up in the morning live about seven to eight years longer than people who are rudderless in life.” (Dan, [12:28])

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Important Timestamps

• The Standard American Diet & Blue Zones Introduction: [00:03]–[01:54]
• Dan’s Early Journey & Blue Zones Origin: [02:39]–[04:22]
• Defining Blue Zones and Their Traits: [04:22]–[08:43]
• Healthspan, Not Lifespan: [05:34]
• Lessons from Centenarians: [09:00]
• Myths of the Anti-Aging Industry: [10:50]
• Four Habits of Longevity in Blue Zones: [12:28]
• Happiness Systems in Practice (Singapore, Costa Rica, Denmark): [18:12]–[22:30]
• Moving for Health & Policy Interventions: [24:29]
• Case Study: Fort Worth, TX: [28:03]
• Cookbook Philosophy & Taste as an Ingredient: [33:02]–[35:53]
• Making Healthy Eating Accessible/Time Famine: [36:31]
• Community Cooking Impact: [37:49]
• Advice for Aspiring Centenarians: [41:34]

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Conclusion

The episode encapsulates the intersections between food, environment, social networks, and happiness. Dan Buettner and Dr. Laurie Santos offer practical, evidence-based strategies from the world’s Blue Zones, showing that the secrets to a longer, happier life are less about products and willpower, and more about designing daily life and surroundings for effortless healthy choices.

Dan’s final word:
“I'm coming to you from the populations who are manifestly living the longest healthiest lives. … I'm just a medium here.” ([43:42])

For more practical inspiration, listeners are encouraged to explore Dan’s new cookbook and ongoing podcast series.

Transcript

[Lori Santos]

Lemonade. The standard American diet is killing us. That's a stark line from the book I want to tell you about in this episode, which is a bit different from the other works I'll be sharing in this season on my favorite books of 2025. My other choices are mostly sciency type books related to the study of happiness, but but today's pick is a bit different. It's a cookbook entitled One Pot 100 Recipes to Live Till 100. And the author of One Pot Meals is someone you may remember if you're a fan of the Happiness Lab.

[Dan Buettner]

My name is Dan Buettner. I am a New York Times bestselling writer, a National Geographic explorer, and most significantly, I'm a guest of Lori Santos, which is my proudest accolade.

[Lori Santos]

He's most well known for his work on what are called Blue Zones, the places around the world where people live the longest and happiest lives. Dan's research has shown that there are lots of cultural factors that promote health and happiness. But he's also found that food seems to be an important factor too, hence a cookbook. The premise behind One Pot Meals is that America is definitely not a blue zone when it comes to what we eat. As Dan explains in his book, Americans are suffering from chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease at higher rates than ever. He also shared the scary statistic that Americans are dying on average about 12 years earlier than we should be. Yikes. But in One Pot Meals, Dan shares a whole host of tasty recipes that use the kinds of ingredients that people eat in blue zones across the globe. The dishes that result are low in sugar, salt and other processed stuff and high in whole grains and plants. Plus, they're really cheap. I really love Dan's Blue Zone work. So I was excited to get my hands on One Pot Meals, but there was another reason I was excited to talk to Dan. You see, I recently celebrated one of those big birthdays with a zero. I just turned 50.

[Dan Buettner]

Join the half a century club.

[Lori Santos]

It is a time when you start thinking about longevity in a really different way. 40 was like, oh yeah, I'm getting old. But 50 is like, hey, you know, this, this matters.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, I just saw a study from the World bank that showed that 54 year olds in 2000 have the same cognitive level as a 71 year old today. So in this world, bad news, 71 is the new 54, you know, so turning 50, you're probably about 38.

[Lori Santos]

I'll take it. I'll take whatever I can get.

Even if 50 is the new 38. Dan still thinks I could benefit from trying to emulate what people do differently in blue zones. So I asked Dan to start at the beginning. What sparked his Blue zone research in the first place?

[Dan Buettner]

Graduating from university at a time when most people are launching into careers of productive and useful things, I went and rode my bike. I biked from Alaska to Argentina, top to bottom of Africa and around the world. That took eight years, Set three world records. But it sure did help me understand the world in a way. You know, somebody taking a Delta one flight doesn't absorb. And then I've been wanting to work for National Geographic for a long time. And I had a very clever editor there who, who said, you know, my expeditions were interesting. But the expeditions they're looking for at the National Geographic Society are ones that add to the body of knowledge. You know, we've been to the top of Everest 4,000 times, and those are sort of, sort of stunts these days. So it got me thinking. Could I devise a strategy for exploration that actually added to the body of knowledge? And I came up with these quests that led an online audience direct a team of experts to solve mystery, Thereby harnessing the wisdom of the crowd and letting the the audience actually vote to decide where our expedition team went to gather clues. And we did five expeditions to help solve why the Maya civilization collapsed. We did an expedition to illuminate human origins, the origins of Western civilization. Many people think that's Greece, but actually it's probably more Turkey. And got very good at networking with top scientists and reading academic papers. As you well know. Reading academic papers is like learning a second language. But once you get good at it, it opens up this whole world of insights you don't have when you're reading secondhand interpretations of those papers. And then that led me eventually to blue zones.

[Lori Santos]

You just use that term, blue zone. So what is a blue zone? What does that mean?

[Dan Buettner]

A blue zone is a demographically confirmed, geographically confined area where people live the longest. But now it's grown into a movement. It's sort of a way of life that focuses on setting up your surroundings so you're more likely to live longer and a happier life.

[Lori Santos]

And so what was the mystery you were trying to solve with the blue zone work? What's the big puzzle?

[Dan Buettner]

So it's quite literally reverse engineering longevity. And there's a few generally accepted assumptions that we work on. Number one, the Danish twin study established that only about 20% of how long we live is dictated by our genes. The other 80% is something else. And that's not an individual. That's for a population. You understand that? And then the second thing is a small team of demographers were just figured out how to authenticate ages, identify spots where people are living verifiably the longest. So I reason if we could find the longest of hotspots around the world and then look for their common denominators, that those common denominators would explain 80% of longevity. And that's the foundation of blue Zones.

[Lori Santos]

I mean, this, the Blue zone work started now a while ago, honestly, but you're hitting on something that folks are talking about a lot these days, this idea of what's called health span. So lifespan is kind of how long we live, but health span is this notion of how long do you live a kind of healthy life life. The blue zones really focus on that. Why is healthspan so important?

[Dan Buettner]

Well, okay, I actually, after three more years, I. I'm just finishing a book on healthspan, and just to give you a little bit of background on that. So the official term is health adjusted Life Expectancy, which goes under the acronym hail, and that didn't exist when I was first doing my, my original blue zone work. But now there's an enormous body of scientists called the Global Burden of Disease Project, scientists who are trying to figure out this big problem we have on Earth, which is life expectancies going up, but us having more old people who are sicker for longer. So it's not getting us what we really want, which is more years of good life. So health adjusted life expectancy measures life expectancy minus years lost due to chronic disease like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, minus years of full health lost to disability. So it's a big cluster of things. And for this project, I found the four areas where people live the longest healthy lives. And look for their common denominators. In the United States, an average person can only expect to live to age 64 before a major disability or disease comes on board. Only 64 good years. In the United States, I found places where people are enjoying 77 years of full life. So I'm really interested in the cluster of characteristics. Characteristics, the policies and the individual interventions and really the designs that are producing genetically average people who are living an extra 12 years more than Americans do.

[Lori Santos]

And so where were some of the places where you found that? Because that was what you first identified in the original blue Zone book. Were these like, literal locations, cities where people are living longer, more healthfully?

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, the original blue zones the longest lived men were in Sardinia, Italy, just one area called the Noro Province. Longest lived women, Okinawa, Japan. The Nicoya Peninsula is the area with the lowest rate of middle age mortality, which means people your age, Lori, have the best chance of reaching a healthy age. 95. 95 is kind of the ceiling for the average human being. People say, promising you to live to 100, they probably have their hand in your pocket. But we're all kind of designed to make it to our mid-90s. Women like you maybe a little bit more, men like me a little bit less. But in Nicoya, they enjoy the best chance of reaching that age. 95. Icaria, Greece. Virtually without dementia, living eight years longer than Americans. And then among the Seventh Day Adventist in Lomalina, California, we have a population who live about eight years longer than their California counterparts. So that's interesting because it's right here in the US and so one of.

[Lori Santos]

The things I've heard you say in other interviews is that you learn so much from travel because I think you're meeting people and stuff. I'm just, I mean, you were always a healthy guy. But I'm curious when you first started going through the blue zones and meeting people. Like, any experiences that struck you of like, oh my gosh, this is so different than like my life in the.

[Dan Buettner]

U.S. so I, I've had the privilege of interviewing almost 500100 year olds, 500 centenarians, and I didn't much care for old people and I, I feared getting older before I started and I really fell in love with these people. People are making it to 100, I've noticed, tend to be interested and interesting. The grump seemed to be selected out of the gene pool or out of the pool anyway. And it has done for me. It's given me this appreciation for older people, but also an appreciation for getting older. This Becca Levy from Yale has found that people with a poor attitude towards aging actually live shorter lives. And, and this work has given me the gift of appreciating older people and even old age, you know, you actually get happier as you get older. And I realized that spending time with family, really curating my immediate social network and living in a walkable community are the biggest things I can do for not only quantity, but quality of life. And I've really been conscious about setting up my life like that.

[Lori Santos]

And so when a lot of people these days talk about kind of longevity and health span or what is it, Health Adjusted Years. I already forgot the acronym. It's a Health Adjusted Life Expectancy health adjusted life expectancies. So when folks are talking about that, sometimes they kind of have their hand in your pocket as you said. Right. Like if you talk to a lot of influencers and you talk about increasing your lifespan, you'll hear lots of things about supplements and individuals fixes and workout plans and things like that. And one of the reasons I love your work so much is that you've kind of pushed back against this. You've argued that these kind of quick fixes don't work as well as we assume. What do you mean there?

[Dan Buettner]

Well, there's an $84 billion anti aging industry out there that has failed to produce even one pill or supplement or hormone or stem cell that is shown to reverse, stop or even slow aging in humans. You know, there's some theoretical base but, but when you take these things, you're usually being that can't deliver and you're performing an experiment on your own body. You know, I like to point out stem cells, there's no regulation of where they come from. The medium they're delivered in there could be a medium that delivers infection as well as stem cells. I have a neighbor in Miami who went down to Central America for stem cell treatment and he never came back. He embolized and died. So I'm not a big fan of those. You know, I always defy anybody to show me one behavioral modification intervention, say a diet or an exercise program or supplement regimen that works for more than single digit percentage of people over two years you can't find it. So you know, it's a great business plan because every year or two, you know, we promise better health or less weight or you know, more muscle. And it doesn't deliver. But people still want it and they'll try the new thing. And that's not the way populations who are enjoying an extra 12 good years, that's not the way they do it. So I try, I'm trying to illuminate the real characteristics or secrets of longevity.

[Lori Santos]

So I'm curious what's going on in these different zones. I know you've identified four different things that they might be doing that's helping them live longer. What are those things?

[Dan Buettner]

Number one, if you want to know what a centenarian or a hundred year old ate, to live to be a hundred, you have to know what she ate. And as a little girl and middle age and lately. And you can't just ask them, you know, what are you eating? Because most people can't remember what they had two weeks ago Tuesday for lunch so how are they going to remember what they ate as a little kid? So to get at that, we found about 155 dietary surveys done in all five blue zones over the past 80 years. Harvard's Walter Wellen, who used to run the School of Public Health there, he helped me do something called a meta analysis to see what people ate over time and sort of average it out. And you see they're eating mostly a whole food diet. And about 90% of what they eat 90 to 95, is plants. It's mostly whole grains, greens, tubers, like sweet potatoes, nuts. And the cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans. People don't realize if you eat a cup of beans a day, it predicts about four extra years of life expectancy. So number one, whole plant based diet. Number two, they don't exercise. But they live in places where every time they go to work or a friend's house or out to eat, at occasions, a walk. Their houses aren't full of mechanical conveniences to do kitchen work and housework and yard work. They do it by hand. They have gardens out back. So their unconscious decisions when it comes to movement nudges them into activity all day long every day. The equivalent, we figured, of about 9 to 11,000 steps a day. Without thinking about it, average American gets about 4,000 steps a day. And then there's vocabulary for purpose in all these blue zones. And when I first wrote the book in the mid-2000, 2005, people looked at me and said, purpose. It was woo woo, airy fairy. But we now know from studies done by the National Institutes on Aging that people who can articulate why they wake up in the morning live about seven to eight years longer than people who are rudderless in life. Maybe it's existential stress, or maybe it's you're less likely to take your pills or get exercise. And then the last one is socializing. These people live in environments where they're bumping into friends all day long, tend to live in extended families. So this loneliness, an epidemic here in the United States, is not a problem in blue zones. They're just born into a society where they're richly socially connected from birth on.

[Lori Santos]

It's time for a quick break, but I'll be back in just a moment to ask Dan how we can bring the blue zone lifestyle into our homes wherever we happen to live. The Happiness Lab will be right back.

[Dan Buettner]

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. Not for the food, though. I'll never pass up those sweet potatoes. But for what it represents Gratitude. In the Blue Zones I've seen that gratitude isn't just a once a year thing. It's a daily practice time with family. Good food, laughter and belonging. These are the ingredients that keep people happiest and healthiest well into their later years. Which is why every November, I head to my lake home up in Wisconsin. My family gathers around the table, we cook together, play cards and tell stories. At some point, someone always raises the glass and says what they're thankful for. In fact, I make them do that. It's simple, but it's the kind of moment that literally adds years to your life. I love that my space can offer these moments of gratitude to other families whenever I'm not using it. While I'm off traveling or filming, I host my home on Airbnb. I actually love knowing that other families can experience the same warmth, the same gratitude, and do it all under the same roof. Hosting fits naturally into my life. It keeps my home alive, and it helps spread a little of the good energy forward. Have you ever considered doing the same? You know your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host you know I've spent my life exploring the world. Not chasing adrenaline, but meaning. From the blue zones of Costa Rica to the highlands of Sardinia, I've learned that adventure isn't about going further, it's about going deeper. That's why the Defender caught my attention. It's not just built for the toughest roads. It's designed for people with a purpose, a vehicle capable of great things like the people who drive it. When I'm planning a new expedition or just heading up to my lake place, I want something that feels as durable and capable as the journeys themselves. The defender, whether the 2 door 90, the 110 or the 8 seat 130, gives you the confidence to explore wherever your path leads. Because adventure isn't just about conquering the landscape, it's about connecting with it. Explore the defender@land roverusa.com.

[Lori Santos]

Explorer, researcher, podcaster, and now cookbook author Dan Buettner has spent years trying to unlock the secrets of Blue Zones, those places around the world where locals live longer and happier lives. One of the striking things Dan has learned about Blue Zones is that the inhabitants there, who live well into their 90s, don't seem to be making a conscious effort to prolong their lives.

[Dan Buettner]

Remember, none of these places, these Blue zones, are people trying to live a long time. In America, we tend to think the road to health and longevity is Achieved by finding a program, mustering the resources to buy it, finding the discipline and the presence of mind to keep at it. But that doesn't work in blue zones. They're not pursuing health and longevity. It ensues. They live in environments where they're nudged to move more, eat better, socialize more without really thinking about it. So I got to thinking, well, if the longest of people in the world are doing so because of their environment, how about the happiest people? So I worked with the World Value Survey and the World poll by Gallup and I looked at worldwide data, covers about 95% of the human population and convinced them to first tell me where in the world people are enjoying the most life satisfaction, the most positive affect, which is moment to moment happiness and the most purpose. And they sent me in Asia anyway, highest life satisfaction was in Singapore, not Bhutan, as many people mistakenly believe in the Americas, it turns out the area with the most positive affect. In other words, they enjoy life most from day to day. In fact, the place that produces more happiness per GDP dollar than any place else in the world is a place called Cartago, Costa Rica. And then back to Scandinavia, a place called Ohus, Denmark. We found that was the happiest region in the area. I know lately Finland is sort of outperforming by a tiny margin Denmark. But this region within Denmar, Denmark is happier than the country of Finland. So I actually went there to try to find the common denominators and look for why people are happier. And in no case, I hate to tell you, Lori, are they doing positive psychology exercises?

[Lori Santos]

It's not just because they're listening to this podcast? Is that what you're telling me, Dan?

[Dan Buettner]

Well, you know, I love positive psychology, but nobody in mass is writing journalism or they're practicing gratitude or savoring or, you know, these things that are good ideas and I know they've been shown with small sample sizes to work in the short run, but as a long term, you know, we want to be happy for a long time, not just for as long as we think about it. So, you know, I tend to pay attention to the systems, the elements of their surroundings that are coinciding or I would argue producing happiness.

[Lori Santos]

And so what did you find? What are these systems doing differently when it comes to producing happiness?

[Dan Buettner]

Well, we'll start with policies. So the World Happiness Report, when they suck in all of this worldwide data, they tell you the biggest driver of happiness. On a national level, GDP is important. We need enough money for food, shelter, health care, some mobility. We Also need to be able to treat ourselves once in a while when it comes to happiness. But after too much money, then money doesn't really bring much happiness. But equality very highly associated with happiness. Trust. Can I trust my neighbor? Can I trust the police? Can I trust politicians? It turns out that healthy life expectancy is a big predictor of happiness. So you look at places like Denmark where there's not necessarily really high highs or, you know, ecstasy or something that. But people don't have to worry about what happens if I get sick. Their healthcare system takes care of them from cradle to grave. They don't have to worry about do I have enough money to send my kids to school or to college. Everybody's covered. They don't have to worry about what happens when I get old and retire. So a lot of the things that Americans worry about, at least, you know, the lower 25% income people, are completely absent in that culture.

[Lori Santos]

It also seems like those cultures have a lot of ways to get in. Social connection. Naturally, that social connection kind of ensues, like less hours at work in the Scandinavian countries, more public spaces for people to kind of go out and connect. Do we know how much that is affecting people's happiness in different places?

[Dan Buettner]

Well, it's possible to sort of slice it out somewhat, but in rank order, I would say in Singapore and Denmark, I would say it's trust as number one. Number two, it's safety. Safety is more important than freedom. I know we're a country obsessed with freedom, but actually when it comes to happiness, it's more important that our kids can go out and play and we can feel like we can walk on the street. We're not nervous that our house is going to get broken into. And both of those places, they're very safe. Universal health care reduces a lot of the worry about what happens if I'm going to get sick. But to your point. So in 1975, Denmark, or Copenhagen, was a traffic clogged city. High stress, more dangerous to make your way through bad air. By the way, the quality of air is associated with happiness too. So bad air, less happiness. So in Copenhagen, a guy named Jan Gel, a designer, an environment designer, did the first walkable, bikeable city. And now about 55% of all trips taken across Copenhagen are done on foot or done by bicycle. So gone is the danger, gone is the stress, gone is the long commute. We know from Daniel Kahneman, the least happy thing we do on a day to day basis is our commute. And what you get out of the deal is people are getting the equivalent of about 9,000 steps a day without thinking about it because it's just easier to walk to work or it's easier to bike to the grocery store. So it's this environment where people are mindlessly doing the things that yield happiness.

[Lori Santos]

So it seems like one way that you can get these benefits is to move to these places. Right. You know, if I move to Scandinavia, I'm going to get access to all these walkable cities. Right. If I move to Singapore, maybe I'll kind of have my life satisfaction sort of ensue. It's much easier if your whole culture is doing it. But we're not totally screwed if you're unable to move to a new city.

[Dan Buettner]

Well, first, you know, just to drive home the point. There's been a few studies that have followed immigrants that move from unhappy places in Southeast Asia and Africa to Canada, which is a happy place, or moved from Soviet bloc countries to Denmark. Those people, they don't change sex, they don't change age very much, they don't change education level very much. They don't change religious or sexual orientation. But within one year, they are reporting the happiness level of their adoptive home, which often represents a doubling of their happiness. And I'm not aware of anything in the academic literature that can produce a doubling of happiness. And here all they're doing is moving environment. So you say to yourself, well, I, I can't move. And if you look at census data, it shows that the average American moves over 10 times in their life. And that gives us 10 opportunities to move to a place where happiness will ensue do. And there's something called the, the Gallup well being Index, which tells us where in America people are happier and the walk score, where people are walking to work more and where air quality is better. And even within cities. I'm right now coming to you from Minneapolis, and we have zip codes where the life expectancy is 13 years higher than in the worst neighborhood. You don't want to dismiss the idea of moving out of hand because it's so powerful. So my, my daytime job, since 2009, my company and I have worked with about 70 different cities to help them change their environment, to set people up for success or design for life. I like to think of. So we help these cities change their policies to favor healthy food over junk food and junk food marketing to favor the pedestrian and cyclist over the motorist and favor the non smoker over the smoker. By the way, non smokers are happier. And then we have A certification process or program for all the restaurants, grocery stores, workplaces, schools and churches so that they can optimize their designs and their policies in ways that we know are likely to produce higher happiness and better health. And then we have also a program for individuals which gives them checklists to go into their home and set up their homes to nudge them into better behaviors. We help them find like minded people who are healthy. We know that who you hang out with measurably influences how you're going to eat, how happy you feel, how lonely you feel, how much you smoke, how much you drink, et cetera. So we want to upgrade your social circle. And finally we give people a purpose workshop so they know what their, their values and that, what they like to do and what they can contribute. And then we make sure there's an outlet for that. We've shown that if we can do the policy people and then places the certification for five years that according to Gallup, this is a third party. Life expectancy goes up, obesity goes down, health care costs go down, happiness goes up and everybody's satisfied, so to speak. This actually works not by hounding people to change their diet or go run a marathon or run down to Central America and take stem cells, simply setting up their environment so their unconscious decisions are slightly better every day for months, years, and at least one case now, decades.

[Lori Santos]

And so give me an example of a city where you've done this and like some of the specific changes they've made, because I find the fact that you can make these changes so quickly quite fascinating.

[Dan Buettner]

Well, quick is, I mean relative. You know, everybody wants to see it in months. It takes five years. So our biggest city was Fort Worth, Texas. There's about a million people there. They became marginally more walkable and bikeable. They certified about 500 restaurants that. So we made sure there were places for people to go get whole plant based options and not just steak. About 2/3 of the schools became Blue Zone certified. We got the soda pops out of their vending machines and we changed the default so elementary school kids are not eating in hallways and classrooms in the inner city. We raised money to put coolers in these convenience stores and what was otherwise a food desert. Now all of a sudden there was a way for people to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. And it turns out that was a huge bonanza for both the convenience store owner and the local people. So we don't rely on. I could go on. There were about 40 different interventions. We made smoking harder. We got them to change the Default. So there was no smoking indoors or outdoors. So this all produced a 3% drop in BMI. And the city itself, working with Gallup, figured we saved them a quarter of a billion dollars in projected health care cost every year because of these little micro changes.

[Lori Santos]

I always love chatting with Dan, but we haven't yet gotten to the main reason I wanted to bring him on the show today, to explain how he's extended his Blue Zone thinking into his new cook cookbook. So we'll turn to that right after the break.

[Dan Buettner]

You know, the best trip I took in recent memory was a Divine trip. I gathered up 10 of my best friends and we took a trip to the Blue Zone with Duvine. They took of of everything. And as a cyclist who likes to have a bike that's working, who likes to eat good meals, and who likes to know what I'm seeing as I go, I could not have asked for a better experience than with Duvine. And not only that, it turns out that cycling is one of the best activities for longevity. It's one of the top three. Why? It's easy on the joints. You get regular, low intensity physical activity. It's not boring. It requires some balance, something you can do for the long run, you know, Divine believes cycling is for everyone. So they design trips for all levels of experience and they'll take you anywhere from from easygoing bike paths and how into epic climbs in France. Plus they offer E bikes to make the trip accessible to everybody. And they and the support van is always with you for not only emergency repairs or water or snacks or to carry your extra gear. So whether you're a seasoned cyclist or a total beginner, if you're ready to give it a try, our listeners get $150 off per person. When you book your first Divine tour. Head to divine.com livebetterlonger to book now.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

Well, hi everybody. It's Julia Louis Dreyfus from the Wiser Than Me podcast. And I'm not going to talk about food waste this time. I'm going to talk about food resources. All that uneaten food rotting in the landfill. It could be enriching our soil or feeding our chickens because it's still food. And the easiest and frankly, way coolest way to put all its nutrients to work is with the mill food recycler. It looks like an art house garbage can. You can just toss your scraps in it like a garbage can, but it is definitely not a garbage can. I mean, it's true. I'm pretty obsessed with this thing. I even invested in this thing. But I'm not alone. Any mill owner just might corner you at a party and rhapsodize about how it's completely odorless and it's fully automated and how you can keep filling it for weeks. But the clincher is that you can depend on it for years. Mill is a serious machine. Think about a dishwasher, not a toaster. It's built by hand in North America and it's engineered by the guy who did your iPhone. But you have to kind of live with mill to understand all the love. That's why they offer a risk free trial. Go to mill.com wiser for an exclusive offer.

[Lori Santos]

Dan Buettner has written lots of books chronicling what people do better in Blue zones. Those special geographic locations where people statistically live longer, happier lives. But the book I picked up over the summer, One Pot Meals, didn't just list what folks in Okinawa or Sardinia were doing better. It explained how we can cook our own meals more like they do in Blue Zones. I asked Dan to explain this new direction.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes, it's a bit of a shift, you know, so I, I'm trying to articulate the Blue Zone diet to people in places like Fort Worth and Naples and, and Jacksonville, Florida, et cetera. So I started writing these cookbooks or working with others to write these cookbooks. First of all, you have to realize that every time you go out to eat, you consume about 300 extra calories mindlessly. Those calories tend to be laden with sodium, ultra processed foods and sugars. So the only real way you're going to eat healthy or eat for longevity is to cook at home. So when you tell people you got to cook at home right away, a lot of people, I don't have time, I don't know how, or it's too, I can't afford fresh fruits and vegetables. But wait. It turns out the, the healthiest longevity foods in the world are peasant foods. Beans. Last I checked, you can get a pound of beans for two bucks. Whole grains. There are bins of them. You can fill up bags of them. Root vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes. They're all dirt cheap. What people in Blue zones teach us is how to take those very simple ingredients and make them taste delicious. You know, I was a meat eater before I started on this and now I don't eat meat anymore. It's not worth it for me. Not health wise. And you know, there's other facets to that don't make sense to me. But for this new book, I wanted to Take another step. I've learned the most important and I'm going to actually quiz you on this. Lori, what do you think is the most important ingredient for longevity?

[Lori Santos]

The most important ingredient. Like a food ingredient?

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. Or a characteristic.

[Lori Santos]

I would say plant based social connection, time, having free time, those are all important.

[Dan Buettner]

But number one is taste.

[Lori Santos]

Taste, right. Because if it doesn't taste good, I'm not going to eat it.

[Dan Buettner]

That's right. And if it does taste good, you don't much care what it is. If it's good for you or bad for it, you're going to eat it for the long run. So to make sure that people like this one, this new book is called the blue zone kitchen one potential hot meals. So I worked with Stanford in AI lab and we scraped 650,000 recipes from the most popular sites on the Internet. We isolated all the recipes with a hundred or more five star reviews and then we analyzed them and we saw seven very clear flavor patterns. And then I gave the blue zones food guidelines, these seven patterns to the most gifted recipe developer guy from the New York Times. And he helped me create a hundred recipes to live to 100 that are maniacally delicious and formulated for longevity. And you can make them in one pot and they cost less than $3 a serving and you can make most of them less than 20 minutes. So overcame every single objection somebody might have and led with deliciousness.

[Lori Santos]

I love that you're doing this with an eye for saving people time because I think there's the, you know, there's the finance thing, there's people don't know how to do it thing. But I think the time thing, you know, is real. You know, I think one of the big hits on happiness that we see in the US right now is that people self report being really time famished. Right. They don't have time to cook a whole meal. And so I think kind of adding to that, adding to the time famine by having them cook, you know, a plant based meal. It's going to take hours and hours to make it delicious. Like, like that just doesn't really help. But all your meals, one of the reasons I'm so excited about this cookbook, it seems like all the meals are quick, like they're frugal, like monetarily, but they're also frugal for our time too.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, there's several in there where you can just take you 15 minutes to assemble in the morning. You put it in instant pot. I have no connection to instant pot, but it's Basically electric pressure cooker and you push a button, you come home from work, dinner for eight people's done. But I also want to make a very important point. So if you're eating the standard American diet, which means you're not paying a hell of a lot of attention to what you're eating, and you're 20 year old, you're losing about 10 years of life expectancy. For a male it's 12 years. And if you're, if you're 60, you're still losing six years. Overeating a whole food, largely plant based diet. So people say I don't have time to, to and make healthy food. But if you take those, let's just say those six years of extra life expectancy and average them back through your life, it's an extra two hours a day. You can't afford to not eat healthy.

[Lori Santos]

I do, I do love that, framing that like by eating, by spending this, you know, 20 minutes, half hour to cook the healthy meal, I'm actually getting two hours a day over my whole lifetime.

[Dan Buettner]

What do you call that? It's, it's a cognitive trap, right? To think, oh, I don't have time.

[Lori Santos]

Yeah, it's such a cognitive trap, right. Because we're not thinking over the long term. We're thinking this Thursday at 5:00', clock, like, what am I doing for my time time? We're not kind of thinking for the long term.

[Dan Buettner]

The cookbook is called the Blue Zones Kitchen One Pot. And to test it out, you know, I live in Miami these days and I went to something called the Overtown Center. And this is a place where inner city moms who don't have a lot of money, you know, bring their kids. And I invited 20 moms to spend 10 weeks with me. And every week we got together and I put them in what we call moais, which are these sort of committed social circles. And we spend some time making sure they get to know each other. Then I brought my cookbook and I said, page through this and identify a recipe you'd like to cook with. You know, it's actually for next week. But then I hired a, a chef to help me and we brought cutting boards. I gave them all insta pots. And every Wednesday at from 11 to 1, we all cooked together. It was simple and it was fun. And it just chopped and we put it in the instant pot we put the lid on and then, and a lot of these ladies are eating, you know, Popeyes and frozen pizza and junk food from the convenience store. And once they realize That A, they could afford it, b they could make it and C, now they have an instapot, they have the hardware to cook it. And then the, the closer was they tasted it, oh my God, this is delicious. My job is done. I send them home and we captured their blood pressure and their weight and every one of them lost weight. Every one of them had a little to a lot drop in blood pressure in just 10 weeks. So, you know, I just think it's the killer app to get people cooking at home again. You don't have to buy my books, but the idea of eating whole plant based food is the biggest gift you can give to your family when it comes to longevity.

[Lori Santos]

I also love that you've mentioned this idea of like getting the moais together or that you're making dinner for eight. Because another thing that we know about the power of home cooked meals is that oftentimes our home cooked meals are eaten with a family together. And one of the most recent world happiness reports talked about the power of shared meals and eating together. Right. I think another thing we do when we're kind of getting our standard American diet fast food is that we run over to fast food. We eat in our car by ourselves. But the instant pot meal that we're making for multiple people, it means we can get the benefit of social connection while we're enjoying that meal as well.

[Dan Buettner]

There's two other things besides social connection. Number one, you know, if you're eating with one hand on the steering wheel or standing up, you tend to eat much faster. And it takes about 20 minutes for that full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain. And if you're, if you're eating on the run, you're much more likely to overeat than if you're sitting with your family or even with friends and punctuating the meal with a conversation. The other thing is if you eat when you're stressed, cortisol interrupts the digestion process, makes it less complete, makes it more like you're going to get indigestion, creates an inflammatory situation in your body so you really want to slow down. And it's other thing you see in blue zones, you know, in the Christian countries they're always saying grace before a meal. Or in Okinawa it's hara hachi bu a Confucian adage. It reminds them to stop eating when their stomach is 80% helpful. But they're putting some punctuation between their busy life and okay, now we're eating. Thank you higher power for this food. Honoring the Food so it's not just stuffing stuff in their mouth. And now this is a social activity. We're gonna eat with our family or friends. Makes a big difference over time.

[Lori Santos]

As I mentioned, I just, just turned 50 and so I feel like I'm looking forward to the next 50 years so I can become a, a centenarian as well. Any advice for me to live longer and better during my next 50 years?

[Dan Buettner]

Well, number one, think about who you're spending time with. I don't know your social. First of all, you look pretty happy and healthy to me, so maybe nothing. But if I'm an average person, I would say, who are my three best friends? Who are the people I spend the most time with? We know if your three best friends are obese or unhealthy, there's about 150% better chance you'll be overweight. So I wouldn't tell you to dump your, you know, your old, unhappy, unhealthy friends because they might need you. But I would say that adding happy and healthy friends, probably one of the most powerful things you can do to add yours because friends have a long term impact on your health behavior without you even thinking about it. I'd also think about where I'm living. You know, if you live in a place with, with too much stress or traffic or not access to good food, I would think about moving. And then the last thing, take it a few moments to write down what your values are. I care about women's issues. I'm a Christian, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat. Whatever it is, write them down. Then in a separate column, write down what you love to do. Oh, I love, I love writing or I love teaching or I love to, I love to fix things. I'm really good at resolving conflicts. Whatever. Boom, boom, boom. List them. And then third column, what am I good at? Well, I'm really good at taking care of people. I'm really good at inspiring the next generation. Whatever it is, get that out in front of you and then make sure you have an outlet for those things. You know, the main values, passions, and what you're good at. And if you're not getting it at work. And by the way, according to Gallup, about 70% of Americans don't get it at work. They don't have purpose at work. Work. Make sure you're deploying it at home or volunteering. Seems like such a cliche to volunteer, but it is so powerful for both longevity and happiness.

[Lori Santos]

I love it. This is my, this is my Dan Buettner approved recipe for living into 100 years private consultation and it's free.

[Dan Buettner]

Notice I can't sell you a supplement I'm not selling you I'm or a hormone or any of that other snake oil oil than on other influencers but this is these are I'm I'm coming to you from the the populations who are manifestly living the longest healthiest lives. It's just a distillation. I'm just a a medium here.

[Lori Santos]

If this discussion has whet your appetite, then you should check out Dan's cookbook One Pot Meals, which is out now. And for more tips on living happier and healthier, you should check out Dan's new podcast. It's called the Dan Buettner Podcast. In our next episode, I'll be leaving the cookbooks behind to explore a classic text on behavioral science with a brand new and improved edition for 2025. It's even written by a Nobel laureate.

You don't mic drop the like a Nobel laureate.

[Dan Buettner]

I don't. I'll let you mention that all that.

[Lori Santos]

Next time on the Happy to slab with me, Dr. Laurie Santa.