Live long and prosper. Eat like you live in a Blue Zone.

A Blue Zone is a place where more people live past the age of 100 than anywhere else on Earth.  The Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica is one of the Blue Zones.  That's where Shih Fu Eileen holds the annual Body Balanace retreat. At Blue Spirit Retreat Center in Guiones, Costa Rica.

Playa Rosada at Blue Spirit, Nosara, Costa Rica

Recently, the Blue Zones were in the news from NPR.  

"Want to live to be 100? It's tempting to think that with enough omega-3s, kale and blueberries, you could eat your way there.

But one of the key takeaways from a new book on how to eat and live like "the world's healthiest people" is that longevity is not just about food.

The people who live in the Blue Zones — five regions in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. researchers have identified as having the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world — move their bodies a lot. They have social circles that reinforce healthy behaviors. They take time to de-stress. They're part of communities, often religious ones. And they're committed to their families.

But what they put in their mouths, how much and when is worth a close look, too. And that's why Dan Buettner, a National Geographic explorer and author who struck out on a quest in 2000 to find the lifestyle secrets to longevity, has written a follow up to his original book on the subject. The new book, called The Blue Zones Solution, is aimed at Americans, and is mostly about eating.

Why should we pay attention to what the people in the relatively isolated Blue Zone communities eat? Because, as Buettner writes, their more traditional diets harken back to an era before we Americans were inundated with greasy fast food and sugar. And to qualify as a Blue Zone, these communities also have to be largely free of afflictions like heart disease, obesity, cancer and diabetes. So clearly they're doing something right."

Playa Rosada near Blue Spirit, in Nosara, Costa Rica

"Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica
We'd love to be invited for dinner by a centenarian here, where they #putaneggonit all the time. One delicious-sounding meal Buettner was served by a 99-year-old woman (who's now 107) consisted of rice and beans, garnished with cheese and cilantro, on corn tortillas, with an egg on top.

As Buettner writes, "The big secret of the Nicoyan diet was the 'three sisters' of Meso-American agriculture: beans, corn and squash." Those three staples, plus papayas, yams, bananas and peach palms (a small Central American oval fruit high in vitamins A and C), are what fuel the region's elders over the century."

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