Rhiannon Lambert

And the study found that those who consume these polyphenols and antioxidant-rich compounds regularly

which you find in the olive oil, of course, you find in the berries, you find in coffee, you find in the cocoa bean from chocolate, you know, all the delicious foods that we love to eat that come in the whole food format.

If you have essentially, I'm going to call it a Mediterranean diet, Ella, with maybe a bit more coffee, experience fewer age-related changes to their DNA over time.

But it was quite a stark percentage of those that consume the highest amounts of these polyphenols.

Also, you can refer to these as antioxidants, essentially.

It's just all the wonderful components that you find in a whole food diet.

They had a 52% lower, so over half risk of accelerated telomere shortening, so of that fraying of that shoelace, compared with those that consumed the least.

And the effect appeared strongest in adults that were under the age of 64.

That doesn't mean at any age you can't start consuming a healthy diet because we know from previous research and studies that all has an impact.

But fruit, I want to emphasize this because there's so much demonization of fruit.

Now, fruit seemed particularly important.

And the participants that ate the most fruit had a 30% lower risk of having shorter telomeres, which is still... We're talking significant differences here.

Like in science, these percentages... It's almost a third.

I mean, it's massive.

They're high.

Yeah.

They're really high.

And I think drinking coffee, it was slightly lower, but still a quarter was associated with a 26% lower risk of shortening telomeres.

So essentially, I think what we have to remember is these foods aren't consumed in isolation.

They were all consumed as part of that healthy med diet, which I don't think was made that clear in this particular article.