Step away from the hummus, ditch the olive oil and for goodness' sake, put the sashimi back on the conveyor belt. It turns out that the key to living a super long life may not be healthy eating after all, but pension fraud
Dr Saul Justin Newman of University College London has won the (satirical but real) Ig Nobel award. His discovery? Well, you may have read about 'Blue Zones' – that is, parts of the world such as Sardinia in Italy, Ikaria in Greece and Okinawa in Japan, where people supposedly live much longer than others. This is frequently attributed to diet, strong social connections and genetics. But Dr Newman suggests that this may have rather more to do with poor record-keeping.
Incredibly, he found that the highest rates of achieving extreme old age are predicted by poverty, a lack of birth certificates and fewer 90-year-olds. Which is, erm, not what one would rationally expect. Indeed, Dr Newman points out that Sardina, Ikaria and Okinawa have lower incomes, higher crime rates and shorter life expectancy than their respective national averages.
Closer to home, Dr Newman told The Conservation:
"The best place to reach 105 in England is Tower Hamlets. It has more 105-year-olds than all of the rich places in England put together. It’s closely followed by downtown Manchester, Liverpool and Hull. Yet these places have the lowest frequency of 90-year-olds and are rated by the UK as the worst places to be an old person."
This is not necessarily an invitation to throw out your vegetables and live only on pumpkin spice lattes and takeaways. Still, this matters a great deal. In narrow terms, the idea of so-called 'blue zones' where residents reach their tenth decades at high rates has become accepted fact. This geographically concentrated longevity understandably attracted scientific work, as well as television shows and cookbooks marketing the Mediterranean lifestyle. But... it appears not to be true.
But more broadly, this serves as a helpful reminder that conclusions are only ever as good as the data on which they are drawn. And that corruption remains undefeated as the most under-reported story of our times.
