University debate: "The Blue Zones prove a plant-based diet is the key to longevity."
Vegan: "Five places on earth where people routinely reach 100. Okinawa, Sardinia, Ikaria, Nicoya, Loma Linda. The common thread is beans, greens, wholegrains and barely any meat. It's the strongest longevity evidence we have."
Anthropologist: "What else do the five have in common?"
Vegan: "Community. Purpose. Walking."
Anthropologist: "Terrible paperwork. Four of the five are remote islands or hill districts with poor birth records, and the fifth is a church. When a researcher went through the data, the places with the most centenarians were the places with the worst record-keeping and the most pension fraud."
Vegan: "That's a slur on old people."
Anthropologist: "In 2010 Japan went looking for its registered centenarians and couldn't find 230,000 of them. Some had been dead for decades with the family collecting the pension. Greece found about 9,000 pensioners over 100 who turned out to be in the cemetery. Okinawa's records were destroyed in the war and rewritten from memory."
Vegan: "Even so, the diet in those places..."
Anthropologist: "Say what it was."
Vegan: "Sweet potato, in Okinawa."
Anthropologist: "And pork. Every part of the pig, cooked in lard, the highest pork intake in Japan. The Okinawan word for a feast means 'pig'. Sardinia?"
Vegan: "Beans and bread."
Anthropologist: "Sheep. The Sardinian shepherds you're quoting live on pecorino, lamb and a glass of red. Ikaria is goat and goat's milk. Nicoya eats more eggs and pork than the rest of Costa Rica. Loma Linda is the one true vegetarian zone, and they also don't smoke, drink or divorce. Take the meat out of the other four and the sum doesn't move."
Vegan: "The man who wrote the book spent years there."
Anthropologist: "He sells the book. The researcher who checked the records got an Ig Nobel prize for it, which is what science gives you for pointing out the emperor's birth certificate is missing."
Vegan: "So you're saying nobody there is old."
Anthropologist: "I'm saying the oldest-looking data on earth tends to be in the places where nobody can check it, and when you do check, the diet turns out to be pig."
Vegan: "Then what's the real Blue Zone?"
Anthropologist: "Hong Kong. Longest life expectancy on the planet, immaculate records, and the highest meat consumption in Asia. It's not in the book because you can't sell beans with it."
Moderator: "Time."
Vegan: "I've been to Okinawa."
Anthropologist: "What did they serve you?"
Vegan: "..."
Anthropologist: "It's all right. Everyone says pork eventually."