Booktalk: Dan Buettner’s “The Blue Zones Kitchen, 100 Recipes to Live To 100”

My Minnesota-based guest, Dan Buettner, is the author of “The Blue Zones Kitchen, 100 Recipes to Live To 100,” as well as several other books about these unusual places.

The Blue Zones are five small areas in the world where people outlive the American and western European average life span by around a decade. The 100 plant-based recipes in this cookbook are equally divided among these five blue zones—Japan’s Okinawa, Italy’s Sardinia, Costa Rica’s Nicoya, Icaria in Greece, and the Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, California.

This well-photographed cookbook also describes why each recipe is important, such as Sicily’s Minestrone Soup, Okinawa’s Tofu, and a favorite Costa Rican comfort food, Fried Green Plantains.

Follow Buettner on twitter: @BlueZones

Top authors are interviewed on this 10-minute program that captures their words about their books and ideas and often the story behind the story. The show, hosted by Diana Korte and engineered by Gene Korte, has been in production for over 20 years.