The Blue Zones—places where people supposedly live past 100 at extraordinary rates—aren't real. 

The Blue Zones started as a 2004 paper then got popular after a National Geographic cover story. 

They became big business: books, resorts, tours, frozen meals, towns paying huge sums to get certified, and even a Netflix documentary.

The idea is that if we copy the habits of people in the Blue Zones, we’ll also reach 100+. The problem: the age records are a mess, and pension fraud is rife. 

In the U.S., the single best predictor of being a supercentenarian is not having a birth certificate.

82% of American supercentenarian records predate statewide birth certification.

When a state hit full coverage, its supercentenarian count dropped about 80% per year.

In Japan, the government went looking for its oldest citizen. He’d been dead for 30 years. 

His family was still cashing his pension checks. 

Japan then did an audit and located 92% of the country's centenarians. 82% of those were dead. 230,000 people dead in reality and alive on paper.

Greece had 9,000+ centenarians on the books.

Then the financial crisis hit and Germany demanded a pension audit before giving  bailout money.

At least 72% were collecting pensions from the graveyard.

Loma Linda, CA became a Blue Zone after a National Geographic editor asked for there to be an American Blue Zone.

CDC Data shows people in Loma Linda are rather average for lifespan. Other parts of the U.S. live longer.

The reason this matters:

Extreme old-age data is used to model how long you'll live. That feeds pension rates, life insurance pricing, and healthcare planning.

If the models assume you'll live longer than you will, you pay more.

Not to mention, many communities paid millions to become Blue Zones certified.

Most Blue Zone advice isn’t bad (well, some is, like drinking daily).

But it’s all common sense stuff public health officials have told us for free for years.

On the Two Percent podcast, I spoke to the researcher who uncovered all the problems with the Blue Zones, Saul Justin Newman.

The story is wild, and Saul is hilarious.

Read my writeup and listen to the episode here: