Chef Julia Dunaway takes a lot of pride in helping Fort Worth become a certified Blue Zones Community®. After all, she shares a long personal history living in the city.
“I was stationed at Carswell Air Force base in 1985 and later worked at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell for 21 years as the Federal Bureau of Prisons Chief Social Worker,” she said. “I graduated from the Culinary School of Fort Worth in 2009 with the idea of having a second career as a chef after my retirement.”
Dunaway was already interested in creating healthy dishes. And she became even more committed to the idea when she read Blue Zones Project founder Dan Buettner’s story from Okinawa, Japan, in his first book, “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest.”
“My mother is Japanese,” she said. “I lived in Japan for four years in the late 70s and experienced the lifestyle of my mother's family in Tokyo. I observed my mother eating small amounts of rice, fish, miso soup, and vegetables every day at home growing up.”
Her experience living in Japan and culinary expertise led to Dunaway becoming a Blue Zones Project chef and conducting cooking demonstrations for more than a year now.
Although she’s always included plant-based recipes, she changed her cooking classes to 100 percent plant-based this year.
Dunaway said the impact of Blue Zones Project for her has been the interaction she gets with the community during cooking demonstrations.
“I believe I have encouraged numerous people to adopt a plant-slant way of eating and showed them simple and manageable ways to cook Blue Zones inspired dishes at home,” she said. “I love doing the cooking demonstrations and sharing how wonderful it feels to be almost 64, at the lowest weight I've been in decades, with no health problems, and how much I enjoy my life as a retired military officer who is now a professional chef.”
She’s been eating a 95 percent plant-based diet for a year now because she was diagnosed with high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
“I was able to get off the cholesterol medication after a few weeks of my plant-based diet and decided to continue eating that way,” she said. “My blood pressure medication was reduced to the smallest dose possible, and my goal is to stop taking that as well.”
She plans to maintain the diet for the rest of her life. She moves naturally by gardening (in addition to going to Zumba and working with a personal trainer.) She has an herb garden, a garden tower filled with greens, and a vegetable garden.
Through this, Dunaway says she has discovered her purpose.
“My purpose every day is to share my passion for plant-based eating and cooking with others,” she said. “I post daily photos on Instagram to show how delicious and beautiful my food is and conduct classes in my in-home cooking school twice a month.”
Follow Chef Dunaway on Instagram here.