Secrets from the island where people forget to die

Does the Greek island of Ikaria hold the secret to a long and healthy life?

This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org.

On the Greek island of Ikaria, people forget to die.

For the most part, they also forget to get sick — the island’s many nonagenarians experience relatively little cancer, cardiovascular disease or dementia.

This small island in the north Aegean Sea has been the subject of much study by researchers across the world. Every outsider wonders: What is the secret to a long and healthy life?

In her new cookbook “Ikaria: Lessons on Food, Life, and Longevity from the Greek Island Where People Forget to Die,” ancestral Ikarian and part-time resident of the island, Diane Kochilas, offers an insider’s perspective on why this far-flung Greek community lives so long and so well.

An award-winning author of more than 18 books on Greek cuisine, Kochilas offered Next Avenue her six top longevity secrets from this remote corner of the world, as well as a recipe from her book — Spicy Black-Eyed Peas and Greens with Smoked Herring — that is unique to the island.

From her home in Greece, Kochilas sent us these six secrets to a long life:

1. Eat locally, seasonally and sparingly. The octogenarians, nonagenarians and centenarians I spoke with on Ikaria all described the eating habits of their early years: years of dire poverty, dearth and isolation: not so much in terms of what they ate but of how little they ate, because there simply wasn’t that much food.

Meat was rare, for some as rare as two to three times a year, on the big holidays. For others who may have had animals (mainly chickens), they could afford to slaughter a few times a month. Fish was accessible if one fished; gardens were carved into terraces along Ikaria’s steep slopes and watered sparingly.

The 100-year-olds ate what they found in nature, from snails to mushrooms to wild greens, as well as what their gardens provided. There was and is still virtually no processed food on the island, except in some restaurants.

2. Live deliberately and don’t rush. The pace with which people move on Ikaria (including my own family!) never ceases to amaze me: slow, deliberate, unhurried, but with enough time to observe and live in every moment.

It’s the pace that means when you go to buy a jar of honey from our friend and beekeeper, Yiorgos, for example, you sit down across from his desk first, gab a bit, joke a bit, flirt a bit, then about 20 minutes into the exchange he gets up and lumbers over to his honey cans. He’s 84. And when he says there is no need to rush, you listen.