Acciaroli, Italy (CNN)"Eat badly and work hard," 94-year-old Giuseppe told me when I asked him the secret to a long life.
Giuseppe was taking me to his garden, which he tends to every day, growing tomatoes, peppers, lemons, oranges and lotus fruit.
We had come to his hometown of Acciaroli, south of Naples, for a report on the amazing longevity of its inhabitants, one in ten of whom, according to Mayor Stefano Pisani, is classed as a centenarian.
The reasons put forth for their amazing longevity are many -- the so-called "Mediterranean diet," regular exercise, a mild climate ...
For his part Giuseppe laughs off all the talk about clean living, pointing out that until five years ago he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day.
His prescription is somewhat more adult-themed. His secret? "Donne," he says -- women.
He told me that after his wife died six years ago he became depressed. "But then," he recalls, "I thought it's not the end of the world. I should go on living. So I asked a donnina ('little woman') if she would go with me, and she said yes.
"I noticed that too is indispensable," he says. "It makes you happy, more cheerful."
"But does it still function?" I asked.
"Of course!" he replied. "Once it really worked."
A neighbor told us Giuseppe had already gone through several caregivers because he had made too many unwanted advances.
Among the things they plan to look into is whether the high concentrations of rosemary in the diet, and lots of walking through the mountains nearby have a positive impact on longevity.
Unlike Caterina, she is a passionate and emphatic advocate of that diet, and showed us how to prepare a healthy dish of pasta with chickpeas. In the restaurant's kitchen, she had laid out bowls of tomatoes, onions, bay leaves, olives, sardines, zucchini, carrots, rosemary, celery, basil.
"When I worked for Keys," she recalls, "we never bought meat. In this restaurant, meat doesn't exist. And no butter, either."
The national health system here is considered one of the best in Europe.
And perhaps most importantly, Italians don't believe in working themselves to the point of exhaustion to get ahead.
Love and affection -- plus all that other healthy stuff, perhaps -- are the real secret ingredients of their longevity.
No comments:
Post a Comment