The Blue Zones are places where people live 90 to 100 years, and are free of disease.
So the recipes from there are valuable. They give us an insight into what people eat there. What they eat is only part of the story. Their way of life is a big key, too.
Living a long, healthy life sounded good to me. So, for a full year I cooked a Blue Zone recipe each week.
I found which ones were tasty and easy to make. And found others that just didn’t work out (cornmeal pancakes 😕) or were not enjoyable.
After all that research I want to share my favorite Blue Zones recipes so you don’t have to go through the same disappointments I did. The recipes I choose are easy to prepare, plant-based and delicious.
These recipes are adaptations from the bluezones.com website or Blue Zones Cookbook.
See my version of the recipes by clicking on the links below. Enjoy!
1. Five-Ingredient Okinawan Bowl
This recipe is made with buckwheat soba noodles. I hadn’t really worked with soba noodles before, but they are amazing. They are whole grain and just take 4 minutes to cook. There’s only a handful of ingredients in this recipe. So, it instantly became a favorite weeknight meal for me.
2. Better than Takeout Lo Mein
Lo mein is another noodle I’ve never cooked before trying this recipe. But, knowing I can make this, I don’t order Chinese food anymore! This is a healthy stir fry with a ton of vegetables and a flavourful sauce. You can feel better eating this version and not the greasy who-knows-whats-in-it take out version.
3. Vegan Gumbo
This recipe takes a few more ingredients and time to prepare but it lasts for days. It makes a ton so it’s a great meal to share, or take to a pot luck. I love that it’s full of veggies. In just one bowl I can get my 5 to 9 veggies for the day! I love eating it with the vegan cornbread recipe from Loma Linda. Recipe here=> Vegan Cornbread
4. 20-Minute Pumpkin Marinara Pasta
Did you know you could add pumpkin purée to pasta sauce? The result is a creamy sauce without any dairy. The pumpkin naturally sweetens acidic tomatoes, too. I love the balance. Pumpkin adds all kinds of healthy vitamins, and increases the fiber in this pasta dish too. It’s hard for me to NOT like a pasta dish, so this healthy version was a quick favorite for me.
5. Pantry-Style Street Noodles
These noodles are an adaption of street noodles you’d find in Indonesia. I love how it’s packed with flavor, but it’s still healthy. It’s definitely one of those addicting kind of noodle bowls because of the spicy-sweet combo of flavors.
I’m a personal chef. And this is one of my clients’ meal prep favorites. I love making this on a Sunday or in the beginning of the week for myself so I can enjoy it in the days to come. It holds up well and one bowl is all I need to get full.
7. Sardinian Walnut Pesto
Did you know tomatoes don’t come from Italy? The first sauces were pestos made from pine nuts or walnuts like this recipe. Grinding up walnuts and sautéing them in olive oil oddly gives them a meaty, filling mouth feel. In other words, you don’t miss meat. This recipe was a surprise because it’s so minimal, but tasty. The only thing is it doesn’t keep well and should be eaten once it’s made.
8. Greek Island Lentil Salad
I love lentils because they only take about 25 minutes to cook from dried, as opposed to hours for beans. Once you have your cooked lentils, it simply goes on top of your greens. I love making this recipe in the warmer months and keeping it in the fridge when I need a quick lunch or a healthy snack. I like to eat it with sourdough bread or crackers. It always fills me up in a healthy way.
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I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I did. I hope they inspire you to eat more vegetables. And it saves you the time from experimenting and failing (like I did) with some Blue Zones recipes that need more refining.
People in the blue zones eat an impressive variety of garden vegetables when they are in season, and then they pickle or dry the surplus to enjoy during the off-season. The best-of-the-best longevity foods are leafy greens such as spinach, kale, beet and turnip tops, chard, and collards.
Eggs are consumed in all five Blue Zones diets, where people eat them an average of two to four times per week. Cut down your consumption of cow's milk and dairy products such as cheese, cream, and butter. Try unsweetened soy, coconut, or almond milk as a dairy alternative.
Avoid dairy when possible. If cheese is a must, try ice-cube size portions of sheep (pecorino) or goat (feta) cheese to flavor foods. If you eat eggs, limit intake to three times a week.
Pasta: Pasta gets a bad rap, but centenarians from the blue zones, particularly in Ikaria and Sardinia, eat pasta frequently. Look for pasta made with just a few high-quality ingredients. Gluten-free varieties are available in many stores and are often made with quinoa and brown rice.
People in Blue Zones areas eat very little bread, but when they do, they predominantly eat sourdough. Unlike other breads made from white flour, sourdough bread doesn't cause spikes in blood sugar. Substitute sourdough or 100% whole-grain bread for white bread, and be mindful of your serving size.
Beans are the cornerstone of every Blue Zones diet in the world: black beans in Nicoya; lentils, garbanzo, and white beans in the Mediterranean; and soybeans in Okinawa. The long-lived populations in these blue zones eat at least four times as many beans as we do, on average.
In addition to a daily cup of coffee, blue zones centenarians drink water, tea and wine. While coffee is often a hotly-debated health topic, it's shown to carry many health benefits. Most centenarians in blue zones regions drink up to two or three cups of black coffee per day!
Centenarians from the blue zones typically eat a mainly plant-based diet. They favor beans, greens, yams and sweet potatoes, whole grains, fruits, nuts, and seeds.
Steel-cut oats are a good example of a whole food. Barley is another whole grain that people in Blue Zones like to eat. Studies have shown that barley can help lower cholesterol.
Foods that can be inflammatory: Highly processed foods, like corn chips, fried foods and too much red meat, sugar, wheat, rye and barley in people with gluten allergies of celiac disease.
Instead, they favor free-range chicken and family-farmed pork or lamb. Try to reduce portions of meat in each meal so they are more in line with those eaten in Blue Zones areas (the size of a deck of cards), or pick one day each week to go meatless and work on expanding from there.
People in Blue Zones areas eat very little bread, but when they do, they predominantly eat sourdough. Unlike other breads made from white flour, sourdough bread doesn't cause spikes in blood sugar. Substitute sourdough or 100% whole-grain bread for white bread, and be mindful of your serving size.
Introduction: My name is Fr. Dewey Fisher, I am a powerful, open, faithful, combative, spotless, faithful, fair person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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