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| Celebrating at the Nassif YMCA, March 2016 |
(3/02/2026) When Cedar Rapids was named a Blue Zones community ten years ago, it was only the 15th town to be so certified. Less than two years later, however, the city's contract with the Blue Zones Project ended, and we switched to being a Healthy Hometown Powered by Wellmark. Today, the Healthy Hometown program no longer seems to exist: the link on the city webpage is dead, but there remains a list of healthy policy initiatives. A Wellbeing Advisory Committee formed in 2016 was disbanded in April 2025; its principles are now "engrained" in the city, they say.
Blue Zones still exists, just not in Cedar Rapids. It is a nonprofit organization that grew out of research by Dan Buettner, who wrote an article for National Geographic in 2000 about long lives of good health enjoyed by the residents of Okinawa. That led him to research other areas with unusually good health outcomes, and in 2009 he published a book. The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest (National Geographic). That same year, the first of many Blue Zones projects was launched in Albert Lea, Minnesota. The first project in Iowa was at Spencer, which achieved measurable improvements in health, diet, and insurance claims.
Blue Zones recommendations that relate to eating well, exercising, and remaining socially engaged are inherently appealing, even I'd guess for people who aren't about to change their habits in real life. They certainly seem intuitively correct. But, lo and behold, in 2024 Freakonomics highlighted research by Oxford University research fellow Saul Newman, using birth records to argue that the claims for long lives in the Blue Zones were based on fraud, poor record-keeping, and maybe confirmation bias. Those superhealthy Okinawans, for example, eat lots of Spam (TM), are disproportionately obese, and have high rates of suicide. Very, very few if any of them have lived past age 110 (Dubner 2024).
This skepticism has not slowed Blue Zones down, however. Their website provides multiple pages of advice, programs, and success stories. Their media coverage continues positive: This month's issue of Prevention includes recipes for "Blue Zones style eating," including creamy white bean and tomato soup ("prioritize protein from plants"), guacamole and bean tacos ("load up on legumes"), and spanakopita pasta ("make goat and sheep milk go-tos"). The recipes come from the "places around the globe where people live the longest" ("The Blues Bites" 2026).
Longevity is becoming big business. Last month Byteseu reported from the Global Wellness Summit in Dubai, India, where there were a weird variety of gadgets and subscriptions available to the superaged-wannabe. The sponsor organization estimated the size of the worldwide wellness industry at $6.8 trillion annually (Sharma 2026). All Blue Zones wants you to do is walk instead of taking a car, eat more local unprocessed food, and play cards with your friends. That seems relatively harmless, even quite helpful, however exaggerated the original data might have been.
When Cedar Rapids disbanded its Wellness Advisory Committee last spring, it declared the battle won. That's wishful thinking: the battle for public health is ongoing, and needs to be put at the forefront of all policy making. (What does pinning our economic hopes on data centers and a casino say about Cedar Rapids' commitment to wellness?) Byteseu writer Sanjukta Sharma cites Mumbai professor De. Srinivas Goli who says for most people the goal is not buying the secret to partying past 110, but "managing the triple burden of earning money, battling a disease through robust accessible public health systems, and basic elderly care." As Iowa tries to protect Monsanto from liability for the effects of its pesticides, who in government is working to reduce the effects of externalities on our health?
ORIGINAL POST: "Cedar Rapids Named Blue Zones Community," 9 March 2016
PRINT SOURCE: "The Blues Bites," Prevention (March 2026): 82-89
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