Albert Lea takes its health makeover to the next level: Participation

In Albert Lea, they've launched a program to triple the number of kids who walk to school, signed up restaurants to offer more healthful food, broken ground for a community garden and started adding bike lanes to city streets.

Tonight, the Albert Lea Blue Zones City Health Makeover Project starts its next phase: Getting 5,000 people this month to adopt more healthful lifestyles. The project's ultimate goal is to add 10,000 years of life to the southern Minnesota city by increasing each participant's longevity by an average of two years.

"People are getting excited. This is getting real," said City Manager Victoria Simonsen.

The project is a $750,000 experiment by AARP, United Health Foundation and Minnesota author-researcher Dan Buettner to see whether an average American city can adopt healthful practices from places where people commonly live into their 100s.

Buettner's National Geographic article and 2008 book, "The Blue Zones," describe four places in the world -- Sardinia, Okinawa, Japan, a peninsula in Costa Rica and Loma Linda, Calif. -- where people live longer, more healthful lives.

The trick, Buettner's research team found, is a lifestyle that includes a healthful diet, physical activity, a sense of purpose and strong social connections with family, friends and community.

In January, Buettner and others began working with civic and business leaders in Albert Lea to figure out how to make it easier and more fun for people to live more healthful lives in the city of about 17,500.

One need is for more sidewalks so people can walk to school, the senior center and businesses. On Monday the City Council approved $250,000 for three years of sidewalk building; the city will seek trained volunteers to stretch that money through donating some of the needed labor.

But key to the project -- and whether it can be replicated in other cities -- is whether local folks take up the challenge to change how they live.

About 1,000 people are expected to show up for a community meeting to encourage them to take the pledge. About 400 already have signed up online at www.aarp.org/bluezonesproject

Some aspects of the program began Wednesday.

Escorted by parents and retirees, several groups of elementary school children walked to school and back home again -- taking what organizers call the "walking school bus." They hope to raise the share of children walking to school from 9 percent to 30 percent, or 520 students.

The farmers market also opened for the season with healthful eating and cooking demonstrations by "Mindless Eating" author Brian Wansink and University of Minnesota health and obesity expert Leslie Lytle. She and Buettner are co-directors of the Albert Lea project.

"Individuals and employers are taking the pledge to make lives, homes and workplaces healthier," Simonsen said. "This city is changing, and it's good."

Warren Wolfe • 612-673-7253