Blue Zones/Buettner [was: Benefits of cohousing for Diane Margolis | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Fred H Olson (fholsoncohousing.org) | |
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 20:40:04 -0700 (PDT) |
The end of March as part of the discussion on Benefits of cohousing Dan (not "Mark") Buettner and his ideas about "Blue Zones" where people live very long healthy lives came up. http://lists.cohousing.org/pipermail/cohousing-l/msg38524.html Dan had also been mentioned in Nov 2012 on the list with more related links. Subject: Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die http://lists.cohousing.org/pipermail/cohousing-l/msg35109.html A month ago I mentioned that Dan would be speaking in Minneapolis and was encouraged to ask him if he was familiar with cohousing. He did speak to a packed auditorium (300-500 people?) tonight and I did get a chance to ask about cohousing during the question period. Basically 'was he familiar with or had he studied cohousing?' and for the benefit of the audience and him a briefer description of cohousing than I would have liked to give (due to time pressure). He did not seem very familiar with cohousing but based on what he knew and what I said he expressed considerable interest. Afterwards I was able to speak to him even more briefly and give him a card with cohousing.org and my name and contact info which he took and tucked away. Much of his presentation was about healthy diet in the 5 natural Blue Zones that he studied. But he pointed out that Diet Programs (Atkins etc etc) are almost always ineffective in the long run. Instead a change in the food environment, the food practices around us may be more effective in improving our diet. They have organized in cities and towns that would like to become Blue Zones and established policies like limiting signage for fast food, getting fruit in more prominent places and salty and high sugar foods and drinks less accessible. Note that their organizing did not try to ban any foods just to make it less accessible and healthy alternatives more accessible. He studied the diet in the natural Blue Zones which I would summarize by citing Michael Pollan's "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." (Curiously he did not mention Pollan.) He pointed out that one of the natural Blue Zones is losing that distinction due to the invasion of American style fast food etc. So the question that comes to my mind about cohousing is, how much have cohousing communities done to promote this sort of healthy diet? Fred -- Fred H. Olson Minneapolis,MN 55411 USA (near north Mpls) Email: fholson at cohousing.org 612-588-9532 My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org My org: Communications for Justice -- Free, superior listserv's w/o ads
- (no other messages in thread)
Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.