This is Why People in Costa Rica Live Longer than Anywhere Else in the World 

I'm Costarican myself 🇨🇷! You got it right it's the diet.. caveat it's the "ultra-processed" vs "home-made" that makes the big difference.. I can tell at a family reunion which cousins are from the urban and rural areas based solely on their body-fat composition ;).. at rural areas such as "Nicoya" ALL the food is prepared at home and fresh daily including the poultry and fresh eggs, most houses would have free range chickens roaming the property NOT factory farmed chicken. Nicoyans are notoriously known to be early risers too so circadian rhythms must play a part in the longevity equation. Water "softening" is an unknown concept in most costarican households all faucet water is potable and mostly spring-water, farming and mineral rich top soils are mostly volcanic in origin it's the the soil ph-acidity that boosts the coffee beans taste. Costaricans are generally ease-minded: don't take ourselves too seriously and make friends easily, social events and weekend getaways ARE A THING in the entire country : going to the mountains, rivers, beaches it's all in a few hours drive, we are generally peace loving without armed forces since 1948 just a curious factoid ... Thomas I've followed your content for several years !! Thank you for the great info!

Almost everyone in my family lived into their 90s. My father, still going strong at 93. Eastern Canada, lots of fish, wild fowl and game, root veg and physical work.

Thank you for your videos Thomas. I am from Costa Rica. 🇨🇷 I moved to Arizona 23 years ago. I’m 46 years old now, I continue with my lifestyle like the Ticos live there. I still eating an my diet black bean, bananas, mangoes, eggs, fish, chicken, and meat, sweet potatoes plantain and more. My meals for breakfast and lunch are bigger than my dinner, and I continue to drink a lot of spring water, exercising, and following the philosophy as we do. The water in Costa Rica tastes different than here; in Costa Rica, the water tastes little sweet compared than here, the water there comes from springs water. There are times I have a little trouble making many friends here in the USA compared to in Costa Rica. There, we all have many friends that we have known since kindergarten. Also we like to hangout in groups of couples and groups of friends specially on a vacation or to the beach. People ( social life) is very important to Costa Rica.

Ive lived in Costa Rica for 24 years, in Northern Guanacaste along the coast. Reasons for long life is plenty of vitamin D from the sun,good food,and eating habits,since most people don't have cars,they walk,or ride bikes. Healthy loving relationships w/sex. Im 67 and strong as an ox,horney as a horse,lots of exercise, plus i surf 4-5 days a week. 😎

As someone whos been to Nicoya its not the city thats so healthy, its the people outside the city in the hills. Its because of both diet but literally zero stress. They dont know what stress is.

went to Tamarindo, Costa Rica, for ten days in Feb. Loved the friendly people and the food. Best tuna ever.

Great stuff....My mother is 92 and she has been Beans and Greens all her years. Turnips, collards, mustard greens, big white lima beans and pintos.

Living by the ocean makes a difference.

I've been all around the Costa Rican countryside and besides the low stress family life...the farms are small and the food is fresh and local. I'm guessing the soil is (like ours used to be),generally healthy. Pura Vida!

I've been listening to Thomas for YEARS and he definitely gets extra points because he's highlighting my country! Pura Vida Mae!! 🇨🇷 Tica Soy! 😊

I love Costa Rica 🇨🇷 Beautiful country

Living in very low pollution area like Nicoya, which has a steady flow of sweet fresh air right from the ocean, is also a contributing factor on top of their nutritious food, low stress and a day of physical movement instead of sitting. I've been to Costa Rica, I loved walking through the jungles, with the incredible variety of birds, reptiles and monkeys.

@Thomas - your videos, your good-heartedness, and your quest to better humanity in this lifetime will be the keys to the heavens in the afterlife for you and your family. May God continue to bless you and protect you and your family. Amen!

Perhaps, the REALLY important factors are: whole foods, much lower chronic stress and the meaning of life.

Good points! We are mineral critters. Stands to reason that we need them. And stay in contact with the ground and spend time outside.

Have a wonderful Easter. Thank you for this informative content.

I've watched/listened to hundreds of your videos. Thank you so much for posting this one because eating earlier rather than later resonated with me. I'm going to move my eating window towards the beginning of the day. I eat healthy and try to do everything I can to age well. Thank you for helping me work towards that goal.

Thanks for sharing, nice prononciation y saludos desde Mexico.

One of my favorite breakfast is a 1/2-2/3c of winter squash beaten with a couple of eggs. Toss some sautéed onions and mushrooms on top with feta (or other cheese). Start with a hot buttered cast iron pan then top the ingredients and into a toaster oven. Side with any meat or fish. Great with shrimp in it. Run all day on that.

Excellent Report. Watching from South Africa. Thank you Thomas 🙏

One of my favorite coffee's is Sprouts, Costa Rican - so it must really be good ☕😍

Nailing information and nuance. Top notch.

Pretty much what I experience when I'm in the Philippines. People in their 80s living independently, walking through the neighborhoods, riding bikes, and ... drinking coffee. Freshly ground beans from a local coffee plantation.

Eating more in the morning and barely at night makes total sense. I have been always puzzled when I hear many "fasters experts" skipping breakfast and eating a huge dinner.

Tropical fruits are generally higher in potassium. Lectins are blood type specific, according to the studies, some folks would not likely do well on certain foods. Costa Rica puts their money into health, education and environment. I have friends who live there and they love it. Good video Thomas. Thanks. 🙏

im glad you included that last bit! thanks for the inspiring content! that is your purpose to me :)

Love this video, and the vo2 max one. More longevity content! Thanks Thomas!

Awesome video! Very educational. Will apply all nuggets. 😊

So interesting thanks for sharing. 👍🏻

Love your content more and more. Thank you 😊

Great information. TY

Lol… I live in Costa Rica, and I don’t know where he got all this info 🤷🏻‍♀️, but boy, everything is so wrong or out-of-date. Obesity is skyrocketing, junk food is everywhere, long queues in chain fast food venues (McDonalds, KFC, American pizzas, etc), juices and sodas galore. Grocery store shelves stacked with ultra processed packaged foods, full of low quality carbs and saturated fats. Other than pretty basic and limited variety of vegetables, organic and nutrient dense ones are hard to find/expensive. Main source of animal protein is indeed chicken and eggs, except no, chicken is NOT part of breakfast. Typical breakfast is rice and beans, and perhaps either eggs, cheese, tortilla or bread and sour cream, coffee and that’s it. Sausages and processed meat are another popular go-to food. Also people eat lots of bread, pastries and bakery stuff. Basically bad food in general, which is reflected in the growing incidence of metabolic diseases and many types of cancer too. Btw, hasn’t all those blue zone reports already been debunked as very inaccurate depictions of the reality? Even locals are unaware of the rural Nicoya blue zone study, meaning that if they knew, most will laugh at the “creativity”.

Costa Rican here. This is not entirely true, as there is actually a high rate of stomach cancer in an area of Costa Rica around Cartago. This is a big problem for the country, while rural regions like Nocoya are very healthy some other areas are not. Likely due to the type of plantations and pesticides in the area, anyone saying pesticides are ilegal here doesn't know ehat they are talking about.

Great vid. Thanks!

I am costarrican, the proportion of Rice to beans is 2:1. So we eat more rice than beans, but not many countries that I know eat the quantity of beans that we eat. Also, I am not sure about the purpose thing,however people in the Coast/Nicoya have slower life styles and less stress or pressure to “archive things“ . Unfortunately these have changed for the new generations, we are more stressed!

Excellent video. One of my new favorites!

Two words, Pura Vida!

Thomas I'm glad you mentioned if you're drinking bottled water to get the "Spring Water" and not the "Filtered Water". Very valid points. I'll also add "Natural Water" will be the same as spring water. Side note: Spring/natural water will have a good pH. The filtered water process will make it acidic, unless they are adding something to raise the pH back up in filtered water. Same as home reverse osmosis drinking water systems will make the water acidic. I always enjoy your videos, thanks!

I was there several months. Dont recall the differences in meal sizes. If anything dinner was a very social event. But I also saw few if any overweight/obese people despite lots of beans rice and plantains. Everything was fresh and I never felt heavy or over full.

I would throw in the highly NATURAL environment and lifestyle. We can all get closer than you might expect with a little more conscious living, and a little less consumption

Black beans’s main benefit isn’t so much the micronutrients. It’s the starches they have that feed keystone species in the microbiome like bifidobacteria and akkermansia.

Chickpeas have a similar nutrition profile as black beans. Hummus is a great alternative.

It's not just what's eaten, it's also about what's not being eaten

My grandmother lived that way and lived to 99. Never exercised in a traditional way just house chores etcetera.

Pesticides are illegal in Costa Rica.

Another gem of a video!

Just came back from a trip to costa rica. Most of the food restaurants offer is real food. They eat rice, beans, eggs, beef, pork, plantains, and fruit. Not a whole lot of processed stuff offered at restaurants. They do drink sugary beverages though.

Great video Thomas, thank you.

Costa Rica also has fairly consistent sunshine all year round.

*Thomas may have this complely wrong.* Nicoyan diet is not a high protein diet, about 1.2 grams to KG. *They do not eat much animal protein. Nicoyans only eat about 3 ounces of chicken, meat or fish per day.. They eat tons of added sugar!* They eat high dairy. black beans, rice, corn tortilla. According to the Buettner, in addition to corn tortillas, rice and beans, about 4 ounces of low-glycemic vegetables like tomato, peppers, cabbage, carrot and onion. They eat about 2 ounces a day of fried or boiled plantain, sweet potato or a local variety of winter squash, both rich in beta carotene. They eat about 4 ounces of local fruit, including papaya, lime, orange and banana. They eat a very small amount of cashews that grow regionally. But according to the book, they consume 11% by weight of added sugar. That is 33 teaspoons or about 2/3 cup every day. They start their day with very strong, very sweet coffee. See Mona Ottum, Nicoya, Costa Rica: A Puzzling Blue Zone Diet Light on Vegetables and High in Carbohydrate and Sugar

Very,very interesting!

Over Medication, and the false platitudes of "Better Living Through Chemistry" skews the Western life expectancy higher than it actually is. Years of Quality of Life is the only true metric. Always informative Thomas!!!

"A good majority of their carbohydrates come from black beans... not a lot of rice." LOL, I guess you've never been to Costa Rica, for they eat a lot of white rice. They do eat a lot of chicken, which is usually organic and free range (that they grow themselves). They do eat a lot of protein, but you don't paint the whole picture, for they eat a ton of pork, which I am not a huge fan of (nothing to do with religion). Pork is a huge part of their culture. How do I know? I lived there for a decade. Plan de Vida? No, it's Pura Vida (you're close). Everything else in the video is pretty spot on. I'm with you, in that I'm not a big fan of black beans, but they do eat a ton of them. FYI: Their squash is called Chayote. Thanks for the video.

12:00 This is why - sufficient minerals in the water and the soil used by the plants that animals detox before people eat.

I eat black beans regularly, squash , all fruits and vegetables have their purpose ! Fiber and whole food carbs are not bad ! I discovered that after regrettably doing keto and carnivore !!!!! Never again will I do that !

You are brilliant. Thank you. X

Love Costa Rica! Pura Vida!

Your map in the beginning shows "Managua" (Nicaragua) where San Jose should be.

They have lots of markets fresh vegetables and fruit with no round up on it

I can attest to my health improving everytime I go on a surfing holiday.

Sweet potatoes!!! In okinawa they said in a documentary the 60-70 percent of the diet were these purple sweet potatoes where people lived the longest during a time when people struggled. Then when the area was doing better, the diet vhanged and life expectency went down. He was convinced it was sweet potatoes. Here in Connecticut we eat orange sweet potatoes. The purple ones are also in brazil where my wife is from and they are so healthy as well.

Just my opinion: I’d like to see in detail how these Blue Zone studies are conducted and the veracity of the data. I’m Costa Rican and have family members from Nicoya. We eat a ton of carbs here and not that much protein. We put very little black beans in our food. It’s mostly Rice and hardly that many beans. The typical Costa Rican diet (and I dare say Nicoyan as well) is not well balanced. Whatever is contributing to people living so long here may be others factors: low stress, minerals in the water, etc.

One thing you didn't add up is what they feed their chickens and the fact that the chickens are usually running around on their own free. And the spring water is big for me . I get mine out of the mountain near my home in western NC.

For starters, their produce ripens in the ground, not on a table, making it nutrient dense..

Life and longevity is so much more than food.

¡Pura vida!

They also take antioxidants from pujagua corn, purple sweet potato and others. Costa Rican traditional food is full of varied vegetables

awesome ty

Very interesting video. Seems to mirror what Weston Price found studying various indigenous peoples. They all had good health even though they didn't eat the same foods because they lived close to nature and ate whole natural foods.

Fasting 12 to 16 hours a day is incredibly important. Either skip dinner or skip breakfast. Have to increase fat intake and reduce sugar to near zero to skip a meal without being hungry. I’ve skipped breakfast my whole life, stayed up till 2am then couldn’t get up in time to make breakfast. I was 150 lbs and 5’8” to age 40 until I started drinking coffee in the morning with lots of sugar. After 15 years weight went up to 180. now on Carnivore for 4 months I’m back down to 160. Trying to get over my sugar addiction. Getting there.

"The data on frequency of food consumption in CRELES showed some significant but small differences in the diet of elderly Nicoyans compared to other Costa Ricans. Nicoya diets include significantly more plain, quotidian foods like rice, beans, beef, fish, chicken, light cheese and sodas; and significantly less of ‘fancy’ foods like aged cheese, olive oil or mayonnaise, less salad ingredients (lettuce, avocado, carrot, tomato) and less processed and fast foods such as white bread, cookies and hamburgers. They also drink significantly less milk (an average 0.5 glass per day compared to 0.7 glass by other Costa Ricans). There are no differences in consumption of fresh fruits, eggs, sugar, pastries and potato chips." Source: NIH. "The longevity advantage of Nicoya is disappearing in a trend driven mostly by cohort effects. While Nicoyan males born in 1905 had 33% lower adult mortality rates than other Costa Ricans, those born in 1945 had 10% higher rates. The original geographic hotspot of low elderly mortality, coined the Nicoya blue zone, has decreased to a small area south of the peninsula around the corridor from Hojancha inland to the beach town of Sámara. However, Nicoyans born before 1930 who are still alive continue to show exceptionally high longevity." Source: Demographic Research.

my sister with diabetes was there she was amazed at how much food she could eat without effecting her blood sugar compared to here

pura vida!

No roll of the eyes! Definitely true on purpose.😊 💯

Climate matters too, better weather equals more activity , better mood, sunshine and sleep benefits. East coaster here, rain, cold and wind here last few months, inside more and less enjoyment. April fingers crossed .

Big news, eh? The whole Latin America use beans as staple. I wouldn’t mind living in third world countries if I wouldn’t see abandoned Animals on the streets. That situation destroys my soul…

I am from Guanacaste and can tell you that your points are pretty accurate but the actual diet includes a lot of corn, black beans, rice, cooked and raw vegetables as well as several sources of animal protein, being chicken about 50%, dairy 20%, beef 20% and fish 10%. The water is very hard and we do not soften it. Rice, beans and tortillas take half of the plate, another quarter will be the animal protein and the vegetables take the rest.

Chicken shish kabobs are good way to get yellow squash, chicken, tomatoes, zucchini, onions and mushrooms in one easy to make meals!

It is the morning light, if they are basking in early sunlight they are getting maximum red light and minimum bad UV light.

Your (plan de vida) sounds like it came from a long time Spanish speaker. Thomas is full of surprises.

GREAT VIDEO PURA VIDA A LEARNING VIDEO 100%+ TRUTHFUL👍, Hey brother, my wife is from C,R, her Mother past away at 100yrs old❤, we go to Costa Rica alot since 1993, something's a year, and six months a year, i know lots of Costaricans in Guanacaste, one i know a Juan he is 98,yrs old ride is bike and wdlks about 2, miles evry day, eats organic vegetables eggs coffee, bed at, 8pm up at 5am to work in his Garden till 10,am, and All this with Beautiful Wife at 96,yrs old❤, use to ride his horse but thier grandkids stop them , and he tells me that hard work keeps you YOUNGER IN LIFE❤🎉, married together for 65,yrs❤ , I always take advice form them ,❤ thank you for this PURA VIDA VIDEO❤

Some have noted that a common dietary factor to healthy, long-lived populations is use of lard for cooking. This has been part of the tradiitional diets for Okinawans, Ikarians, Sardinians, and Nicoyans. Weston A. Price earlier observed that dietary animal fats in general have been prized by the healthiest people, with butter and ghee often being prized. What he pinpointed was that it was primarily the fat-soluble vitamins (D3, K2, A as retinoids, and E complex).

Mostly is the clean ideal air they breath due to being located between a gulf and an ocean + huge veriaties of matured fruits minus processed foods.

I love Costa Rica. I love Nicaragua too! Managua is the capital of Nicaragua. I agree with the rest of your video tho. Love your content!

Nicoya was part of Nicaragua, FYI!

Thank you ! Very informative

Year round nice weather and sunlight?

I believe sunlight is the key!

Best beans are black eyed peas, highest minerals and lowest oxalic acid, recommended by Leila Denmark

Hey Thomas, Keep in mind that Managua is the capital of Nicaragua. I think you meant to highlight San Jose, Costa Rica in the opening graphic.

Love this video, language I can understand😊. More black beans and chicken 🍗. Let's live long and prosper

I thought the most important thing that I saw in Nicoya was that they cook almost everything in lard vs other places here

legumes in general are heavier to diggest. but from the other side, they are conditioning digestive system (don't overdo it, it could cause some distress, especially stomach neurosis). they are also digesting slowly and have less calories and have very good impact on blood glucose. they contain fiber and minerals, usually they are high in iron, copper, manganese etc. if you eat legumes with some carminative spices, garlic or so it will help you to release colon gas as to speak too 🙂 which is maybe funny but very important. especially for older people which have weaker digestion and less movement. excesive colon gas can make significant demage to your body. it messes up digestion, sleep, intestinal mucosa, gut bacteria etc. if you eat at least twice a week some legumes it could be very beneficial. best are homemade of course, properly soaked, cooked enough with vegetable (best is sea vegetable like kombu or so), preferably (especially beans) in pressure cooker and after some time, body and gut microbiome will adapt to it. there are plenty of legumes, you should find ones which fit best to you. lentils and chickpeas are usually best starters which are generally well tolerated...

Soluble fiber helps clean bile...therefore helps clear excess hormones (stress hormones included).

Everything you said is right add the factor the soil is very rich therefore the vitamins and minerals that is consumed help tremendously. I would encourage you to find a good recipe for black beans or small red beans. You’ll change your mind about it. I grew up eating both ways. I eat them often to add protein to my diet. I absolutely love it.

PURA VIDA ❤

ALL nutritional analysis fails to look at local waters 💦 and longevity. 😢

Aside from the polyphenols in the Tropical Fruit, those fruits all are protected from Pesticides: the rind is all removed before the fruit is consumed. With the blackberries, I bet the Costa Rican s do not spray them w/pesticide

Their food IS NOT TOXIC like ours here! Chickens are probably so clean there!

I think maybe the combination of beans and squash make up a complete protein as well. Japan has a similar soup they eat daily in there blue zone that contains squash, beans and other things.