On April 8, 2020, Adventist Health announced that it had acquired “Blue Zones®, an organization that is a pioneer in taking a systemic and environmental approach to improving the health of entire cities and communities,” according to Adventist Health.
Many people with an Adventist background will immediately recognize “Blue Zones” as the name assigned to five geographic regions considered “longevity hotspots”. Dan Buettner, a National Geographic researcher and fellow, made “Blue Zones” a household word among Adventists when he included Loma Linda, California, in his featured five cities where people lived significantly longer than the national United States life expectancy of about 78 years.
Interestingly, Loma Linda was the only Adventist blue zone included in Buettner’s original article. The other four were the cities of Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan, and Nicoya, Costa Rica.
According to the information at bluezones.com, the five original blue zones have different cultural and diet practices as outlined below.
Ikarians “enjoy strong red wine, late-night domino games and a relaxed pace of life that ignores clocks.” They eat a Mediterranean diet that includes fish and meat.
In Sardinia the people hunt, fish, and harvest their food, laughing and drinking wine with their family and friends. They eat a “lean, plant-based diet accented with meat” which includes a significant proportion of sheep and goat’s milk and cheese. They walk and drink moderate amounts of red wine daily.
Okinawans eat a largely plant-based diet with high amounts of tofu and small amounts of meat including pork. They maintain “a powerful social network called a ‘moai’” and have “a driving force that the Japanese call ‘ikigai’.”
The Nicoyans of Costa Rica have a positive outlook which comes from their strong reason to live as well as their focus on family. They also drink hard, calcium-rich water, and eat light dinners. Their diet is “mesoamerican” of which half is composed of whole grains and dairy with a healthy percentage of vegetables, especially squash, corn, and beans.
Loma Linda residents claim their weekly Sabbath, their emphasis on exercise and healthy body mass index, their religion and community service along with their diet to contribute to their longevity. They emphasize vegetarianism, and in general the Loma Linda centenarians’ diets were composed roughly of 33% vegetables, 27% fruits, 12% legumes, 10% dairy, and the rest consisted primarily of whole grains, seeds, nuts, and small amounts of meat, fish, and eggs.
Significantly, however, while Buettner’s research did take into consideration the fact that his Loma Linda sampling was united by being Seventh-day Adventist, it did not appear to take into consideration the fact that Loma Linda, unlike his four other blue zones, is a retirement community to which elderly Adventists move in their later years. In other words, the elderly population of Loma Linda does not live out their whole lives in this city. Thus, comparing Loma Linda to ancient cities in Greece, Italy, Japan, and Costa Rica is not comparing groups with a similar profile.
Loma Lind attracts elderly, educated Adventist retirees who are both financially and physically able to move in their later years as well as a percentage of elderly who have lived their adult lives—but not necessarily their early years—in Loma Linda as medical professionals. Buettner’s research emphasized that Loma Linda represents a group united by a religion and a lifestyle, but he did not point out that Loma Linda does not represent an indigenous population. Rather, Loma Linda Adventists are largely a non-indigenous group of people from widely disparate locations who have congregated around Loma Linda University and Medical Center, unlike the people from the other four locations who were more likely to have lived out their lives in their cities of origin. While Adventism is a factor in their lifestyle, Adventists in other geographic locations do not necessarily share the same longevity advantages as do those who have moved to Loma Linda to retire.
The blue zone life
After introducing what he called the blue zone cities in his initial article in the November, 2005 issue of the National Geographic magazine, Buettner went on to establish the Blue Zones organization. Blue Zones offers personal, business, and community programs to create environments conducive to healthy lifestyles including easy access to exercise, healthful food, community, and stress relief. People and businesses may apply to receive help transforming their environments, and cities can apply for blue zone status.
The Blue Zones project offers a “life challenge” that “gives you actionable and clear rules so that you know you are taking your new life into your own hands…Here is how to be a rule-follower in order to be a ‘conventional life’ rule-breaker,” the Blue Zones website states. Blue Zones rules include avoiding processed foods, eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts, walking, writing a purpose statement, and tracking one’s progress in applying the Blue Zones rules. It also encourages finding friends who will cooperate in these “healthy habits”.
In short, the Blue Zones Project sounds much like the Adventist health message! It’s not surprising, therefore, that Adventist Health has acquired Blue Zones. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, this acquisition is remarkably timed.
In an article describing this partnering, Adventist Health says this:
This revolutionary move by Adventist Health comes at a time when public attention is especially focused on the interconnectedness of our health to that of our friends and neighbors in the face of the Coronavirus crisis. Post-pandemic, a focus on improving and strengthening community and public health will be more critical than ever as communities across the nation and globe navigate recovery.
Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner is pleased with this alignment as well. The same article says this:
“Blue Zones is proud to pioneer the advancement of the health of entire cities by systematically improving living environments, so the healthy choice is the easy choice,” said Dan Buettner, Blue Zones Founder and National Geographic Fellow and Explorer. “Adventist Health shares our values and its vision for community wellbeing aligns perfectly with our work. We believe that Blue Zones can have an even bigger impact as part of a strong and proven health organization.”
Adventist Health is one of several Seventh-day Adventist health systems in the United States. It is based in Roseville, California, and is “founded on Seventh-day Adventist heritage and values.” It owns “hospitals, clinics, home care agencies, hospice agencies and joint-venture retirement centers in both rural and urban communities” in California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii.
The Adventist Health staff, according to the Adventist Health website, pursues one mission: “living God’s love by inspiriting health, wholeness and hope. Together, we are transforming the American healthcare experience with an innovative, yet timeless, whole-person focus on physical, mental, spiritual and social healing.”
Conclusion
Adventism has proudly used Dan Buettner’s designation of Loma Linda, California, as a blue zone to promote the Adventist health message. Now, one Adventist health system acquired the Blue Zones brand and program with the intention of using it to promote the Adventist health message into the communities where Adventist Health has a presence.
Ellen White, Adventism’s prophet, called the “health message” the “right arm of the gospel”—meaning the Adventist “gospel”, of course—and Adventists have become expert at using free health clinics and cooking classes to promote their religion and to attract new members. Now, with the power of Blue Zones at their disposal, Adventist Health will have even greater ability to move its mixture of religion and prophet-given lifestyle rules into local towns and, ultimately, the world.
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Good summary. Thanks. Again with their obsession with living longer. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live a healthier life but for a group who claim to want to go to heaven, why are they so focused on living longer here?