Okinawa as a Blue Zone

 Okinawa is rapidly losing its status as one of the world’s 7 greatest Blue Zones. The number of centenarians is declining for a couple of reasons. They are walking less and driving cars more. The younger generations are eating more western foods that cause obesity and diabetes among other diseases. 

Cheryl, Jill and I ate at a Chinese, Okinawan, Italian ? restaurant the other night where we ate deep fried Goya, an antioxidant green vegetable that is shaped like a cucumber with bumpy skin. It has a bitter taste and requires getting used to eating it, but that is part of the centenarian diet. Pork dumplings were very good with endame. To finish it off, we shared a snake sake. It sounds horrible, but actually tasted like cinnamon cough syrup. The snake is actually a venomous one. The sake dilutes the venom. Quite the culinary experience.