Latest news with #IgNobelPrize
The Star
14-05-2025
- Science
- The Star
How to cook the perfect cacio e pepe pasta (according to scientists)
Pasta has long been a subject of scientific interest. — Pexels From adding salt to egg whites to help them rise, or ice water to fix the green colour of spinach, time-old tricks are legion in the kitchen. And, much to the dismay of Italians, pasta preparation is also the subject of many such beliefs, starting with that famous drizzle of olive oil that some say should be added to the pot of boiling water, supposedly to ensure that spaghetti doesn't stick. This advice has been the subject of much comment in the scientific community, including by chemist Raphael Haumont, famous associate of top chef Thierry Marx, who constantly points out that olive oil simply rises to the surface and doesn't mix with water at all. In short, it's a waste! All is not lost, however, as the perfect pasta is a very serious subject, and researchers from several universities have joined forces to conduct experiments to find the ultimate ingredient that will guarantee the perfect creamy texture of cacio e pepe, the famous pasta dish made with pecorino romano cheese and black pepper. Anyone who has ever tried to make this dish at home may have encountered problems, despite the simplicity of the ingredients. It's hard to achieve the creaminess normally produced by the pecorino without getting clumps of cheese or a sticky mess. It's true that Italians generally recommend adding a ladle of pasta cooking water to finish a pasta-in-sauce dish like cacio e pepe. And that water contains starch. But for researchers, you need to add starch rather than rely on the unknown quantity in the cooking water. Yes, there's starch in spaghetti – but not enough. For the sauce to be as creamy as it should be, the ratio of starch to cheese needs to be around 2-3%. And this works just as well with corn or potato starch, according to study results published in the journal Physics Of Fluids. In practice, you need 4g of starch for 240g of pasta and 160g of grated pecorino. Scientists from the University of Barcelona (Spain), the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (Germany), the University of Padova (Italy) and the Institute of Science and Technology, Austria also add that it's important to ensure the correct temperature of the dish when assembling the pasta with the sauce. It's important not to overheat the dish, as this could result in the cheese forming clumps. While the purpose of this study may raise a smile because of its light-hearted nature, the authors remind us that pasta – both its composition and the way it is cooked – has long been a subject of scientific interest. 'On several occasions, pasta has been a source of inspiration for physicists. The observation that spaghetti always break up into three or more fragments, but never in two halves, puzzled even Richard Feynman himself, and the explanation of this intriguing phenomenon earned Audoly and Neukirch the Ig Nobel Prize,' the researchers write. – AFP Relaxnews
Boston Globe
13-05-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Planning for summer guests when prices are rising
J.B. / Millis There isn't a delicate way, so be upfront about the matter. Acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation and let people know that you can't afford to provide food this year. Figure out in advance what's easiest: Do you want people to contribute a flat rate? Split the bills 50/50 (or proportionally, if there's more or fewer of them than there are of you)? Do their own shopping? But don't just ask for 'help' with the food bills in some vague way, leaving your well-intentioned friends guessing about what they ought to do; good hosts and hostesses always let their guests know exactly what is expected of them. Depending on your friends' knowledge of one another, general level of formality, et cetera, decide if it's best to do a mass e-mail (which shows fairness and gets all the information out to everyone at the same time) or individual phone calls (more personal). We're all going to hell in the same expensive grocery basket this summer, so your friends should be sympathetic and willing to chip in. If some of them aren't, consider the possibility that they are not really friends after all. Advertisement Twice now, friends have announced their impending parenthood with mass e-mails with the ultrasound images attached. In my opinion, these ultrasound images are private and something that I would only want to share with my spouse and our closest friends and family. However, since sending these images out to a large group seems to be more commonplace, I'm wondering if I am being too sensitive. Advertisement L.M. / Boston Ugh, sounds dreadful to me. I don't even think ultrasounds ought to be shared with 'closest friends and family' unless they ask to see them, as otherwise they leave people wondering what to say: 'My, he certainly has your bumpy occipital bone, doesn't he?' But you don't have to look, of course, nor even make reference to the ultrasounds in your return 'congrats' e-mail, so it's hardly something to get worked up about. Would that all indiscretions were so easily ignored. You and I may be behind the curve, however. Doctors and psychologists and ordinary people are simply mad for imaging these days, whether ultrasound or magnetic resonance or what have you. I wonder how far this mania will go? Perhaps college students will start sending along fMRI brain scans to accompany their graduation announcements. 'Look how my neocortex lights up when I'm thinking about Kant!' It's possible to take MRI scans of a couple in the act of intercourse—a team of Dutch researchers won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for doing so, and Mary Roach and her husband repeated the experiment for her 2008 book, Bonk . Let's hope it doesn't become a trend to send these pictures along with wedding invitations. Advertisement Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a writer with a PhD in psychology.
Campaign ME
29-04-2025
- Health
- Campaign ME
Enterogermina Anti-Murphy's Law Toast mockumentary tests ‘the 5-second rule'
Enterogermina – a client of McCann Health UAE and a non-prescriptive probiotic brand that helps to restore and reinstate gut health – has launched The Anti-Murphy's Law Toast campaign in the form of a mockumentary that challenges the '5-second rule' through 'specially engineered toast'. Through the campaign, which is being rolled out on digital and social channels in the UAE, the brand challenges Murphy's Law which states that 'anything that can go wrong, will go wrong' and invites people to question the myth: is it acceptable to eat something that has fallen on the ground, even if it's for less than five seconds? The campaign was brought to life for Opella Enterogermina by MRM Spain, digital agency Cappuccino, production company Cariño Contents, with the 360° media strategy led by WMcCANN, including a documentary premiere on Discovery Channel. Initially launched in Brazil, more than 40 key opinion leaders (KOLs) attended an exclusive screening of the documentary at Sao Paolo's famous Le Pain Quotidien bakery. The campaign also featured influencer amplification in partnership with Spark and a digital strategy led by Monks, focusing on social media engagement. Rollout of The Anti-Murphy's Law Toast campaign Created by MRM Spain, the campaign saw Enterogermina collaborate with physicist Robert Matthews, who was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in 1996 for his study proving Murphy's Law applied to toast. A short documentary was created as part of the campaign, showing Matthews working with a team of scientists and bakers to design a specially engineered toast, in an attempt to defy this theory. The short film dives into the scientific research behind the concept, the creation of the first prototypes in the kitchen of 12 Michelin-starred chef Nuño García, and features insights from microbiology researcher Simon Baines. Ségolène de Marsac, Global Brand GM at Enterogermina, said, 'This innovative activation embodies our commitment to turning conventional wisdom on its head. Just as we are challenging the laws of gravity, we are also challenging common misconceptions about gut health through this unexpected mockumentary.' The prototype was a success, landing butter-side up about 75 per cent of the time, as opposed to only 37 per cent of the time when using conventional toast. 'By questioning a widely held belief like the 5-second rule or the odds of toast landing butter-side up, we aim to spark curiosity and discussions about gut health in a light-hearted way,' says Eduardo Magalhães, CMO of Opella Brasil. Félix del Valle, MRM Spain CCO, concluded, 'Thanks to the entire team at Opella and Enterogermina for supporting such a bold and brave project. This initiative takes a truly different approach to start a conversation about gut health. The result is a unique content that grabs your attention from the very first second, combining pure entertainment with education.' CREDITS: Client: Opella-Enterogermina Alberto Hernandez, Valerie Brass, Julie Regis, Segolene De-Marsac, Michele Gatti, Eugenie Cornuet, Rafael Masunari, Jaqueline Gimenes, Nadia Borges Depieri, Veronika Rodrigues, Débora Bassanezi, Eduardo Magalhães, Paolla Minotelli, Agnes Motta, Carolina Frateschi, Marcelo Tuma, Giovanna Araujo, Jéssica Canette, Thamiris Tavares, Diego Coelho e Juliana Mineoka. EVP Global Business Lead: Nicolas Guzman Global Business Director: Álvaro Cuneo Agency: MRM Spain MRM Global CCO: Ronald Ng MRM Global Opella CCO & MRM Spain CCO: Félix del Valle Executive Creative Director: Guillermo Santaisabel Creative Director: Gui Moreira Associate Creative Directors: Fernando Morate, Sergio García Copywriter: Carmen Bello Art Director: Javier García 3D Artist/Art Director: Daniel Oteiza Design Director: Pablo Camarero Visual Designers: Celia López, Paula Batista Digital Project Manager: Miguel Simón Website developer: Jaime García Gobal Opella CSO: Clément Fiorda, Strategic planner: Julieta Pesci Global Business Leader & Head of Growth: Stefano Piccini Business Leader: Patricia Burelli Account Director: Lucía Pereira Account Supervisor: María Nuñez Business Affairs: Coral Sellares, América Almodóvar PR Agency: Weber Shandwick Brazil Associate: Rhaisa Trombini Account Manager: Aline Corrêa Account Director: Bruna Rassi Consumer & Healthcare Practices Vice President: Laura Chiavenato Digital Agency: Cappuccino CCO: Vitor Elman Creative Director: Diego Torres VP Operations: Lara Magalhães CBO: Rodrigo Martinez Local Agency: WMcCann / Brasil Head of Content: Karoline Canin Contenido: Caroline Sacute Business Director: Thiago Xavier Account: Carolina Rissotti Media: Luccas Athayde, Rogerio Jorge, Victor Takekawa e Luciana Miranda Head de Producción: Daniela Toda Integrated Production: Fernanda Pinheiro Production: Nereu Marinho PR: Kerena Neves e Giulia Camargo
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Internet Can Tell You What We Know. But There's Also a Website That Collects What We Don't Know.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. What is the etymology of curmudgeon? What caused Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's death at age 35? Why do many fungi species generate electrical activity? The website Wikenigma, an 'encyclopedia of unknowns,' won't provide answers to these conundrums, and that's the whole point. In an age of unprecedented access to information, Wikenigma relishes in highlighting the unexplainable across the sciences, history, language, philosophy, and psychology. The site was created in 2016 by Martin Gardiner, a British art and science investigator and former contributor to the publication Improbable Research, which is behind the Ig Nobel Prize. (The satirical award has honored scientists like those who tried to figure out whether beards really did evolve among humans to protect us from being punched—this won in the Peace category.) In researching the unusual and seemingly inconsequential in science, Gardiner noticed a lack of resources dedicated to what is not known. So he decided to create his own, working with a small handful of contributors to grow slowly: They reached 500 articles in 2020 and now boast more than 1,100. Gardiner explained to me over email that as a curator, he tries to avoid ' 'unfalsifiable' floaty concepts like the famous 'Does God Have a Beard?' question.' Instead, he thinks, the best entries are 'the ones which most people would (quite reasonably) assume are not unknown. For example, I don't think many people would guess that no one knows exactly how any of the currently used general anaesthetics work. Or why humans yawn, or why we tend to like flowers or music.' Although it might seem trivial to group such a wide range of topics—from a crucial medical practice to the lighter fancies of the human mind—into a whole, they encapsulate the complex nature of the human experience. The exact causes of earworms (otherwise known as involuntary musical imagery) are still mysteries, and so are the reasons people suffer from panic disorder or pica. This extends to all areas covered on Wikenigma: The origins of golf (which may have been first played during Roman times, in China, or in the Netherlands) are as disputed as the much more consequential invention of the wheel. Gardiner explained that with the Ig Nobels, 'the 'hook' phrase they use is 'things that make people laugh and then think.' ' Although with Wikenigma, there's less humor and Gardiner restrains himself from inserting double entendres and other wordplay, 'I did learn from my stint with the Igs that it's often very very hard to decide whether or not something is 'trivial'—sometimes the most oddball-sounding things can, in hindsight, turn out to be super important.' For example, Sir Andre Geim was awarded an Ig Nobel in 2000 for levitating a frog via magnetism. In 2010 the University of Manchester physicist was awarded a Nobel Prize for studying graphene's electromagnetic properties. And like the Igs, Wikenigma makes scientific research accessible to a broader audience. As you surf around the site, the influence of fellow knowledge source Wikipedia is clear: Wikenigma is open-access and organized clearly by research category. Short articles provide background on the topic, linking to relevant academic work and other entries. Also, like Wikipedia, it enables interaction by allowing for edits and encouraging rabbit holes with hashtags and a feature leading to random articles. (As with Wikipedia, donations to cover server costs are welcomed.) As Gardiner wrote in his curator rationale, 'The idea is to act as a catalyst for curiosity in a general sense—as well as trying to identify possible starting points for (re)cultivating interest in scientific, academic and of course, armchair-based research.' And there's much to be discovered about these enigmas: Only three items appear in the 'Resolved' category. The most recent is the beeswax wreck, a long-unidentified shipwreck off the Oregon coast that resulted in the local Clatsop tribe having copious amounts of beeswax, which they traded with explorers in the early 19th century. With the material regularly turning up on beaches, the odd occurrence garnered national attention—a piece of the wax was examined at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. But no sign of a boat was found until fisherman Craig Andes (who's also a bit of a treasure and history enthusiast) began discovering timber in sea caves in the 2010s; historians and researchers studied beams of wood that they now believe most likely came from the Spanish trade ship Santo Cristo de Burgos, which disappeared, laden with beeswax and other trade goods, in the 1690s. Gardiner explained that this update came from a reader; these exchanges are becoming more frequent as the site continues to grow in popularity: In February of this year, around 100,000 visitors resulted in a total of over 600,000 page views. (It was also shouted out by Annie Rauwerda, who runs the popular social media account @depthsofwikipedia.) Gardiner, who reviews all the content, is the first to admit to the limits of his own knowledge. Specialists often reach out to sharpen the site's accuracy, he said: 'A mycologist pointed out that 'fungi' needed their own index section (I had mistakenly put them in the 'botany' section). A researcher who's studying whether or not chewing gum helps concentration alerted me to some updates on the subject—but still no one is quite sure.' Contributors also provide insight about their specific areas of interest, such as Marco Di Biasi, a 22-year-old Italian computer science student who researched the traveling salesman problem. The enigma involves a list of cities and the distance between each pair; the 'salesman' must find the shortest possible route to visit each one just once and return to the original city. As Di Biasi wrote in the Wikenigma entry, 'The problem has been examined since the 1930s. but a formal mathematical 'proof'—which could enable a quick and exact computation, has not yet been found.' He explained to me that solving such an enigma 'may sound obvious, but in computer science, it's not, because there are infinite possibilities and we have to choose the best one.' He became interested in these sorts of optimization problems after learning about them in school, particularly when the choices made by a computer differ from those of humans: 'Even if computer science is a science made by humans, it's also fascinating how we don't know everything about it.' Gardiner hopes for more contributors to join because, 'as several agnoiologists [those who study ignorance] have helpfully pointed out, the site will never be finished. And new discoveries and explanations tend to throw up even more new questions.' Especially in a time of unprecedented levels of online misinformation and attacks on the truth, Wikenigma's role as a powerful counter seems to be more and more crucial. It's grounded not only in fact-based information, highlighting the scientific method and researchers dedicated to decoding some of the trickiest areas of study, but also in the humility to admit what can't be unequivocally understood. Inevitably in this era, such studiously neutral resources are under attack. Conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, intends to 'identify and target' anonymous Wikipedia editors it accuses of antisemitism over coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. And right after Donald Trump took power in January, Elon Musk called for a boycott of the site over its description of his infamous inauguration arm gesture. This contested relationship between Musk and the website dates back to at least 2019, when it seemed Musk began to take an interest in his page's content. Although he bought Twitter perhaps to have total authority over that platform, he can't control another of the most widely browsed sources of information about him. In a spat on X over the billionaire's entry, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales responded to Musk's call to 'defund' the site: 'I think Elon is unhappy that Wikipedia is not for sale.' Wikenigma, like its more mainstream namesake, has made its position on the current internet landscape clear. Gardiner explained that he deleted the site's X account 'when I realized that Wikenigma was, in effect, providing free content for whom Yanis Varoufakis [Greece's former finance minister] now calls a 'TechnoBaron.' That's quite a polite word for it.' Gardiner has also taken a firm stance against artificial intelligence scraping, disallowing it in the site's CC license. Still, 'the number of bots which ignore the instructions is growing every day,' he said. Unsurprisingly, the question of whether A.I. will reach or surpass human intelligence levels (known as artificial general intelligence) is the subject of a Wikenigma article. As the article explains, 'Note that AGI's definition is greatly complicated by the lack of agreement about what biological Intelligence itself actually is, and how to define it. Some proponents of AGI suggest the possibility that systems could one day become 'conscious' (by some unknown means) though again, there is currently no agreement about what Consciousness itself actually is.' It's enigmas all the way down.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Blue Zones are meant to help you live longer – but are they real?
If you've come to be buried in Quirimán, chances are you've had a pretty good life. Of the 50 or so graves in this hillside village on the Nicoya peninsula, eastern Costa Rica, a significant number of residents surpass the 80 and 90 mark – proof, perhaps, that the area is part of a much-vaunted 'Blue Zone'. The designation was given almost 20 years ago to a handful of places around the world where people live the longest, healthiest lives, making this, and parts of Italy, Greece, Japan and the US, globally famous. The idea – that people in these hubs are 10 times more likely to live to 100 than the average American – has spawned eight books, a Netflix series and, across Costa Rica, everything from tasting menus to yoga retreats, tours, breweries and branded souvenir shops. Fifteen kilometres away in the centre of Nicoya, however, the longevity-boosting lifestyle being touted has shrunk from view. Here, waking with the sun, tending to the land all day and eating only what you grow – hailed as the secrets to Nicoyans' long lives – are nowhere to be seen. The town's main intersection houses a McDonald's on one side, a KFC and Burger King on another. On a sunny Tuesday lunchtime they are packed, dozens of families in each outpost jostling over their Happy Meals and buckets of 'mega alitas' (chicken wings). In less than half a generation, the creep of fast food, cars and touch-of-a-button digital dominance seems to have killed this longevity hotspot off stone dead. Although, according to Blue Zones' principal detractor, they never existed to begin with. Saul Newman, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London, has spent the past five years as the chief thorn in Blue Zone architect Dan Buettner's side. In September, he won the Ig Nobel Prize (awarded to those who have made unusual contributions to science, the arts or humanities) for rubbishing the concept. The theory was originally born out of a 2004 paper on 'extreme longevity' in Sardinia and followed by a National Geographic article hailing the Italian island, Japan's Okinawa and Loma Linda in California as turning out the world's longest-living people (Nicoya was added in 2007, along with Ikaria, Greece, in 2009). But, according to Newman, it was built on 'junk data' – never more than a business idea crafted to shift magazine copies. In a January 2025 essay for The New York Times, he wrote that Blue Zones becoming a global phenomenon over the past two decades has not led to mass take-up of these healthier, life-extending lifestyles, but rather made the science of extreme longevity 'an immense joke'. Newman was no less strident when we spoke recently. 'None of it makes sense; absolutely none of it,' he told me of how the research was first carried out. 'And what's shocking to me is that it's been so obvious for so long.' According to the Global Wellness Institute, the wellness tourism industry was set to more than double in value from $651 billion in 2022 to $1.3 trillion this year, helped along by openings hitching their wagon to the Blue Zones name. Last year saw the world's first-ever 'Blue Zone retreat' at a five-star hotel in Papagayo, a ritzy enclave two hours north of Nicoya, where prices began at $4,000 for the six-day stay; a further two took place in February, while Thailand will host its first in May. In Newman's view, the Blue Zones theory has two key problems: fallible record-keeping – and Buettner. Buettner, 64, a three-time Guinness World Record-setting cyclist, first began developing the idea in 2000, going on to use a grant from National Geographic and the US National Institute of Aging to study census data from countries around the world. Through that, he identified where people were living longest, and visited (along with demographers and record-checkers) to interview residents about their lives. What united these super-agers – natural movement, purpose, low stress, largely plant-based diets, moderate alcohol consumption, strong familial relationships – caught public attention in the way seemingly simple health promises tend to, making Buettner famous (and, presumably, fairly rich). The Netflix series – which Buettner co-produced – earned three Emmys. In 2020, he sold the trademarked Blue Zone brand, which offers 'long-term, evidence-backed policies and interventions that optimise environments' to the likes of supermarkets, restaurants and schools, to Adventist Health LLC, part of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which reported revenue of $910 million in 2023, and has a $100 million office and health facility in Miami Beach. What Newman sees as his smoking gun is that in 2008, according to an independent review of the Costa Rica census, almost half of over-99s 'were simply lying about their age. Error correction caused Costa Rica's old-age life expectancy to plummet from 'world leading', to 'near the bottom of the pack',' he says. He alleges that part of the problem is that elderly people are 'only alive on pension day' – ie their relatives turn up to collect their cheque, or they have somehow succeeded in falsifying official documents to cash in long before they're eligible. History is filled with evidence of erroneous age validation, he believes, pointing to famous cases of supercentenarians like Jeanne Calment, known as 'the world's oldest woman', who smoked for 100 of her alleged 122 years and burned many of her personal papers (which would have verified her age) before she died. And then, there is Buettner. Buettner requested Newman's help in searching for the sixth Blue Zone via a 'funny email that said he liked my statistical prowess and wanted to pay me some money to come along and get on board'. Was he tempted? 'I told him to bugger off. I mean, I can't be bought for a holiday… science doesn't come out of the end of the cheque-book.' Newman also alleges that other scientists were contacted by Buettner, requesting assistance 'to find a Blue Zone in regions with 'marketable' cuisines'. (Buettner tells me both allegations are 'false', though later retracts this in relation to the email he sent Newman, in which he praised his 'pluck', and promised, 'I have a decent budget so we could do a good job – we could actually travel there and do the age verification together,' and calls him a 'wacko' instead.) Newman's belief that this was only ever a for-profit enterprise was further strengthened last year. Loma Linda – where residents' long life expectancies were, according to the original work, the result of its high proportion of non-drinking Seventh-Day Adventists – was 'kind of an outlier', Buettner appeared to admit in a 2024 New York Times article, and that it was added to the list because his editor decreed that America must feature on the roster. (Buettner calls this too 'false', then sends me a pre-written mailout of rebuttals to what are clearly common criticisms, saying that 'we wanted to include an area where Americans live the longest'.) On Loma Linda, Newman says of the city 100km east of LA: 'There's nothing to write home about, it's a dusty suburb in California. There's nothing there; there's no special sauce.' It hasn't been delisted from any Blue Zones material, however. 'The problem is that all of the supposedly unfoolable people, all the scientists, went along with this for 20 years. So how do you then trust these people to spot problems when for 20 years they've been staring at something that was come up with because the editor told [Buettner] to? There's no careful scientific process at all,' adds Newman. As you might expect Buettner, who has a reputation, A-list lifestyle and business to protect, has not taken Newman's public baiting well. 'Saul Newman is a plant scientist who masquerades as a demographer,' he tells me (early in his career, Newman worked as such for the Australian government). Asking for his views on demography 'is like calling your refrigerator repairman to get a quote on brain surgery,' Buettner adds. 'I've worked with real scientists. And we have this one, the academic equivalent of Krusty the Clown, who captures all these headlines.' Buettner's dislike for his adversary (the feeling is clearly mutual) inevitably grows with every headline Newman accrues. On the day Newman's New York Times essay was published, I received multiple emails from Buettner – among many that had arrived following our prickly conversation – reeling off 'answers to my questions' that I had not, in fact, asked. It is tempting to dismiss Buettner's outbursts as the ripostes of the scorned, but the matter is more complex than warring headlines between the two have made plain. He notes, importantly, that Newman's papers are preprints that have never been peer-reviewed – strange, perhaps, given the airtime heaped upon them. (Eight of Buettner's papers on the topic have.) One independent scientist described Newman's methods as 'unusual'; his data points often hinge on information from whole countries or regions, rather than the small geographical areas highlighted in the original work. Newman 'conveniently omits those in his zeal to criticise us, but obviously, his true interest isn't the truth, but self-aggrandisement,' says Buettner. The accusations have cast a darkening cloud over Buettner, and the entire concept. On the Nicoya peninsula itself, though, the backlash has failed to filter through; being a Blue Zone remains a point of pride for some – and a serious draw for others. It was reading about the longer lives of its residents that convinced Javier Ramirez, 58, to build a home in Quirimán eight years ago. Reading about the lifestyle and rich soil on the peninsula pushed the engineer to leave New York behind. His day-to-day now couldn't be more different than that he left, he says; Quirimán is a sleepy place where inhabitants grow corn and cows roam free. One of his neighbours is 103, while 'there's a man who's 96 years old, and he's bent over with a machete and he cuts grass – I've seen him with my own eyes. His son is 74 years old,' and performing the same intense manual labour, says Ramirez. To him, junk data or not, what he sees in Costa Rica's famed longevity capital is unequivocal proof of the Blue Zones concept. For Luis Boltodano, a teacher from Santa Cruz, 25km north of central Nicoya, the boosted life expectancies along the peninsula come as no surprise. 'We Guanacastecos [from the Guanacaste region in the north of the Nicoya peninsula] have a saying that we are different people,' he explains. 'We are used to hanging out with family and friends, we are used to enjoying nature, we are used to enjoying life' – essential components of the Blue Zones theory. 'We don't kill ourselves thinking about what is going to happen.' A look around the 42-year-old's neighbourhood is evidence enough of that effect. His neighbours, in their early 80s, still tend their farm; the man living next door is somewhere between 92 and 95. He shares a recent photo of one resident, Erlyn, looking decades younger than her years while posing beneath a glittering gold banner reading '100'. Boltodano knows that his own generation, and that of his daughters, are unlikely to experience such fortune. The springing up of international fast food chains 'makes me sad', he says. 'In the last 10, 15 years, everything has changed in Nicoya,' with the lifestyle that made it famous 'fading away totally. Those elderly people, the ones that are living longer or are still alive, they didn't have what we have in this moment. They didn't know about fast food, they didn't know about technology, they didn't know what it was just to go to the supermarket and buy rice… they had to harvest everything, so they had to work, they had to be moving to eat.' Not even the healthiest of communities can remain immune from today's world, where 'we have everything just on the right side of our hand'. That Blue Zones' colour is fading does not disprove his theory, Buettner believes – nor does it come as a surprise. The area 'has changed a ton since I was there', he says of Nicoya, its cluster of fast food joints a visible death knell. 'For me, that heralds the absolute end of that Blue Zone' – and not just in Costa Rica. The problems have been creeping in for decades, he adds, since the 1940s. Gone are the days 'where the healthy choice is the easy choice and the most accessible; the cheapest foods were beans, corn tortillas and squash and whatever fruits that grew in their gardens'. The same is true in Okinawa, which has gone from the healthiest hub in Japan – per the theory, at least – to having one of its highest obesity rates; Buettner says it has been 'delisted', though the area still remains on the Blue Zones website. 'The corrosive effects of the standard American diet, automobiles as well as other mechanised conveniences as well as social media is destroying all Blue Zones. They're all succumbing to the disease of affluence – cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity.' Of the five zones that once were, only Sardinia and the Seventh-Day Adventists are 'still strong', he says. 'But, I suspect within a generation or so, they'll all be gone.' Buettner says these major health changes happened after his research was carried out, therefore his theory still stands. But Newman takes a less forgiving view: 'The Okinawan, Sardinian and Costa Rican Blue Zones simply shifted or disappeared when the data and criticism arrived.' Either way, the Blue Zones juggernaut refuses to stop rolling. Whether the data ever stacked up or not, the idea remains so alluring that businesses across the Nicoya peninsula continue to do a roaring trade, drawing in tourists who seemingly believe that a couple of weeks in which the words Blue Zones are tangentially attached can replicate the lifelong habits of native super-agers. The Blue Zone tasting menu at a high-end restaurant in the tourist surfing haven of Nosara runs to a couple of hundred dollars per head; nearby is a brewery also using the concept's name, a helpful boost for dishing out craft pours. There is a branded store – or more accurately, four of them – selling products from hot sauce to hoodies; there are travel agencies and day-tours, yoga retreats, and cooking classes, none of which show signs of slowing. Why are these businesses – which Buettner describes as 'horrible… It's all bunk; it's all taking advantage of something I have nothing to do with and something that I wouldn't get involved with' – booming? 'It's Shangri-La all over again,' Newman says. 'Of course it's compelling: no one wants to die. No one wants to go jogging. So when someone turns up and says, 'There's an exotic place far away where living for ever is very easy and you just need to do what they do,' it's extremely marketable.' To him, all the Blue Zones were and are is 'the fetishising of peasants', making megabucks out of the idea that a simple life is enough to transform anyone's health. Worse to Newman is that it is not just companies profiting off the idea, but that it may actually be having a deleterious effect on public health in some of the world's poorest places. 'It's clearly making it worse because they've been recommending people drink every day [the Blue Zones website hails Sardinians' one or two glasses of red wine each day as central to their longer life expectancies]. I mean, if you were a doctor and you recommended this to your patients, you would just immediately be disbarred; there's no question. And for 20 years, that's been the advice from someone with no medical qualifications whatsoever.' 'More insidious' still is that acquiring cash for Blue Zone certification, which can run into the millions (or tens of millions), may be obscuring funding needs for older, ailing residents. 'All of that just completely gets ignored because of this; it's an excuse to leave these regions behind,' says Newman. 'Okinawa has twice the poverty rate of anywhere else in Japan. Twice. And the government now has an excuse to say, no, sorry, they're Blue Zones – we don't need to worry about everyone's health.' That the Blue Zone badges are so costly does little to quieten Newman's cynicism. 'It's so expensive that the entire state of Iowa [which joined the Blue Zones project and then parted ways with it] could not afford it and opted out after three years, and all of that money would have gone to public health… We need to have a serious look at what is happening here, because it looks like a private company is capturing one of the few domains left in the public sphere, which is public health. And they're making billions.' For Newman, the only way to stop the crusade is to introduce age-validation methods free of proven flawed record-keeping. He sees methylation – checking the ageing process of DNA genomes in the blood – as a superior means of ascertaining how old a person is, and one that couldn't fall victim to the same errors, or mistruths, its predecessor has. Ditching paperwork completely 'is the only way out of the quagmire'; the only means of halting erroneous health claims, and the businesses that capitalise off the back of them, for good, he believes. 'Otherwise, yeah, it's all junk.' Back at McDonald's Nicoya, it is clear that junk of another kind has already won; the smell of grease and stale air conditioning mingling over punters who, even a couple of decades ago, would have spent their afternoons labouring on their land, rather than over a Big Mac. Reverting to that lifestyle would be simple here, in a sense. But for as long as straightforward health advice has existed, so too has the failure to implement it – and Nicoyans, along with the rest of the world, are paying the price. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
