We eat to live. We need food for the basics of everyday life. But we can also eat to live well and to live longer. What makes some people live longer than others? Studies suggest that diet is one of the important contributors to longevity and a healthy life.
The world’s oldest person has revealed the lifestyle secrets behind her longevity and they have nothing to do with exercise.
Misao Okawa, a Japanese woman born in 1898, who turns 116 years on March 5 of this year, says a diet of sushi and oily fish such as mackerel has helped her live a life spanning three centuries. The Japanese great-grandmother eats three meals a day and sleeps eight hours a night.
Sushi is a Japanese food consisting of cooked vinegared rice combined with other ingredients, seafood, vegetables and sometimes tropical fruits.
Her favourite meal is mackerel on vinegar-steamed rice, which she eats least once every month. Mrs Okawa became the world’s oldest person following the death of another Japanese person, Jiroemon Kimura, who died last year at the age of 116.