(Though for the "blue zones", I've read some suspicions that the true secret of them is plain old corruption - with some of the "supercentenarians" having died long ago and only living on in the records, so family, friends or complicit buerocrats can collect their pensions. Not sure if this is widespread enough to explain the entire effect though)
But… there is one thing that seems to hold up. One of Buettner claims is that as western ultra processed diets came to these enclaves and displaced traditional diets, incidence rates of obesity and metabolic disease has spiked. That’s real.
I bet we could measure a parallel effect on social media displacing real social activity wherever it goes.
Yeah, no disagreement here. It would be a miracle if a food that is designed and produced with the only intention to have people eat as much of it as possible had no bad consequences. That's before all the biological evidence we have.
The processed food/obesity debate seems similar to me to the climate debate. The evidence is well-researched and mostly very clear and most of the "debate" around the topic is with people who want to muddy the waters because they have personal stakes in it in some way - be it financial, political or psychological.