A Healthy Swarm of Nudges and Defaults Can Help Improve Longevity and Happiness

Sunday 12 February 2017
Dan Buettner

Dubai – MENA Herald: “Only about 20 percent of how long the average person lives is dictated by genes, the other 80 percent is dictated by lifestyle and environment,” said Dan Buettner, citing the Danish Twin Study in his session ‘Discover the Happiness Zones Around the World’ on Day One of the World Government Summit.

Based on that assumption, working with National Geographic and the National Institute on Aging, Buettner set out to, as he put it, “reverse engineer longevity”. With a team of demographers, he identified the five places in the world – dubbed Blue Zones – where people live the longest, and are the healthiest.  He then travelled to each of those places to determine the characteristics of all these places that might explain this phenomenon.

The five Blue Zones he identified were Sardinia in Italy, Okinawa in Japan, Loma Linda in California, Nicoya in Costa Rica and Ikaria in Turkey. Compared to worldwide averages, these locations showed much higher lifespans, low levels of dementia, and low rates of middle age mortality. Some common lifestyle habits that he identified in these vastly diverse cultures included not smoking, being physically active, having a strong sense of community, and eating a largely plant-based diet.

He said: “The key insight - longevity happened to them! It is not something they pursued, but rather a result of their environment.”

Buettner works in partnership with municipal governments and organizations in the United States to implement his learnings in cities to enhance the quality and longevity of life. He has worked to establish Blue Zone policies in 31 American cities so far through projects with restaurants, schools, governments and more.

Buettner shared the lessons which governments need to follow to implement such policies to encourage longevity that include: start with ready cities, measure rigorously, offer certification with both process and outcome requirements, brand it something other than ‘healthy’, offer evidence based policy menus, and have a 3-to-5-year time horizon.

In conclusion, he added: “When it comes to longevity and, I would argue happiness, the secret is not trying to get an ocean of people to change individual behaviors. It will almost always fail in the short run. What I believe works is unleashing a healthy swarm of nudges and defaults that encourage people to make the right choice - in other words, the choice that delivers evidence based outcomes.”

The World Government Summit (WGS) 2017 has drawn the participation of more than 4,000 personalities from 139 countries around the world, reflecting the leading stature of the summit on regional and international levels and the high interest from governments, global organizations, private and public sector entities, decision makers, entrepreneurs, academics and university students as well as scientists and innovators. WGS 2017 features 150 speakers across 114 sessions that highlight the world’s most pressing challenges and showcase best practices and cutting-edge solutions to deal with them.

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