Researcher, Saul Justin Newman, was given an Ig Nobel Prize on Sept. 12 for his work on debunking “blue zones.” He found the phenomenon is actually based on fraudulent birth certificates, bad data and unscientific measurements.
The concept of blue zones had given people the idea that to live a healthier life, they must eat and exercise like the people in towns with unusual amounts of people who live to be 100.
Some of the blue zone towns include Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy and Ikara, Greece.
Dan Buettner, a National Geographic fellow collaborated with Nat Geo and the National Institute on Aging to identify those areas in 2004. He also did a documentary with Netflix called “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.”
Over the last decade, Newman tracked down 80% of the world’s supercentenarians, which are people aged 110 and older. He found that almost none have a birth certificate and some have multiple recorded birth dates.
Newman also discovered that pension fraud is extremely common in the blue zone areas. He cited that most of the supercentenarians who have turned out to be alive in government records are actually dead.
Newman realized through his research that most of the dietary and lifestyle claims behind the blue zone regions are not supported by independent data. For example, vegetables are promoted as a key component of blue zone diets in Okinawa, but according to the Japanese government, Okinawans eat the least vegetables and have the body mass index in Japan.
The Ig Nobel Prize Newman was given is a satirical award that honors unusual scientific research as is meant to make people laugh, then think.
“Improbable Research” magazine has been handing out the prize every year since 1991.