SECRET OF LONG LIFE

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 May 1936, Page 8

SECRET OF LONG LIFE

CENTENARIANS AND DIET. Balkan peasants, existing in primitive simplicity, seem to have discoved the secret of longevity. Nourishment of the ancient wandering nomads and sons of the desert, as described often in the Bible, is the food of these modern centenarians now living by the score in Southern Serbia and provincial Bulgaria. Official Yugoslavian population statistics recently revealed that in a population of nearly 15,000,000, 4,000 of these centenarians—sixty-two of them over 120 years old —are now going about their daily routine as they have always done. Two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-eight of these old people are women. All of them are peasants in Southern Serbia. Bulgarian population figures show that, out of 6,000,000 inhabitants, 162 of the peasants are over 100 years old. Centenarians in both the lands give I almost the same reason for their longevity—tribal nourishment, predominantly vegetarian in character, above all, sour milk. They all live an open-air life away from populated areas. Most of them have never seen a railway, motor car, or telephone. They work an average of 130 days out of 365. Their main foods are green paprika, onions, garlic, which contains iodine, raw tomatoes, and joghourt. Joghourt is a sour milk that is specially prepared by the peasants.