Following a Mediterranean diet might be a recipe for a long life because it appears to keep people genetically younger, say US researchers.
Its mix of vegetables, olive oil, fresh fish and fruits may stop our DNA code from scrambling as we age, according to a study in the British Medical Journal.
Nurses who adhered to the diet had fewer signs of ageing in their cells.
The researchers from Boston followed the health of nearly 5,000 nurses over more than a decade.
The Mediterranean diet has been repeatedly linked to health gains, such as cutting the risk of heart disease.
These results reinforce our advice that eating a balanced and healthy diet can reduce your risk of developing heart disease
Dr Mike Knapton of the British Heart Foundation
Although it’s not clear exactly what makes it so good, its key components – an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables as well as poultry and fish, rather than lots of red meat, butter and animal fats – all have well documented beneficial effects on the body.
Foods rich in vitamins appear to provide a buffer against stress […]
The Mediterranean diet is a misnomer. Which one? Greece? Italy? Crete? Turkey? . . . In olden days, people could get away with eating fatty fish and many T of olive oil. They moved their bodies; meaning, they did manual work, walked, hiked etc and were not sitters and couch spuds. This is not the situation today. There is a lot of new science about that tells us that this so-called healthy diet is a facade.