People living to 100 all eat same superfood – and it makes up 67% of their diet - Surrey Live

Nov 03, 2024

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A small island off the coast of Japan has seen a huge amount of its residents reach 100, and one food may hold the key to their long lives.

For decades now longevity researcher Dan Buettner has been travelling across the globe as he tries to discover how people in certain locations manage to live so much longer compared to the rest of the world.

One of his visits took him to the island of Okinawa, Japan where there is a huge amount of locals living past 100, and he discovered a clues as to why this might be the case.

While Okinawans tend to have quite a mixed, healthy diet, there is one food that they eat more than any other, Beni Imo, or as it's known in English, purple sweet potato.

In fact, the vegetable makes up a whopping 67% of their diet, compared to those living in the rest of Japan where the vegetable only makes up just three per cent of their caloric intake.

Explaining why the superfood is so beneficial to their diet, speaking on his Netflix series, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, Dan said: "These sweet potatoes are full of complex carbohydrates and fibre, and they even have 150% more of the active anti-oxidants than blueberries do."

Trying to understand why people on Okinawa are so hooked on the vegetable he landed on one particularly plausible theory: "Perhaps the main reasons Okinawans ate so much Beni Imo is because sweet potatoes are typhoon proof, the Beni Imo was safe underground."

Meanwhile, Yukie Miyaguni, a diet expert from the island even went as far as saying that the superfood 'saved' those living on the island: "Well, Okinawa had a period of food shortage, and we were saved by these potatoes."

And, the expert also emphasised the importance of other foods in the Okiniwan diet, saying that Mulberry leaves are used to heal sore throats while squid ink soup is used as a detox.