Image copyright TEK IMAGE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY 
 
 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 and damage of tissues and cells. And it appears from this latest study that a Mediterranean diet helps protect our DNA. 
 
 Telomeres 
 
 The researchers looked at tiny structures called telomeres that safeguard the ends of our chromosomes, which store our DNA code. 
 
 These protective caps prevent the loss of genetic information during cell division. 
 
 Image copyright SPL Image caption Telomeres cap the end of our chromosomes 
 
 As we age and our cells divide, our telomeres get shorter - their structural integrity weakens, which can tell cells to stop dividing and die. 
 
 Experts believe telomere length offers a window on cellular ageing. 
 
 Shorter telomeres have been linked with a broad range of age-related diseases, including heart disease, and a variety of cancers. 
 
 In the study, nurses who largely stuck to eating a Mediterranean diet had longer, healthier telomeres. 
 
 No individual dietary component shone out as best, which the researchers say highlights the importance of having a well-rounded diet. 
 
 Independent experts said the findings were interesting but by no means conclusive. 
 
 Dr David Llewellyn, senior research fellow in clinical epidemiology at the University of Exeter, said: "All observational studies have the potential to produce misleading estimates, and we should not assume that the association with telomere length is necessarily causal. 
 
 "That said, this large well-conducted study is consistent with the hypothesis that dietary interventions may lead to substantial improvements in health." 
 
 The British Heart Foundation said: "These results reinforce our advice that eating a balanced and healthy diet can reduce your risk of developing heart disease." ||||| Photo 
 
 The Mediterranean diet — higher in vegetables, fruits, whole grains and olive oil, and lower in dairy products and meat — has long been cited for its health-promoting benefits. Researchers have new clues as to why. 
 
 They found that the diet was associated with longer telomeres, the protective structures at the end of chromosomes. Shorter telomeres are associated with age-related chronic diseases and reduced life expectancy. 
 
 Researchers used data on 4,676 healthy women, part of a larger health study, whose diets were ranked on a scale of one to nine for similarity to the ideal Mediterranean diet. Researchers measured their telomere lengths with blood tests and followed them for more than 20 years with periodic examinations. 
 
 The study, published in the journal BMJ, controlled for body mass index, smoking, physical activity, reproductive history and other factors, and found that the higher the score for adherence to the diet, the longer the telomeres. The difference in telomere length for each point on the adherence scale, the researchers estimate, was equivalent to an average one and a half years of life. 
 
 “Based on our data,” said the lead author, Marta Crous-Bou, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, “a three-point change in the adherence score is equivalent to 4.5 years of aging, a difference comparable to that between smokers and nonsmokers.” ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Maggie Fox 
 
 A Mediterranean diet that’s loaded with fresh vegetables, fruit and the occasional drink could help preserve your brain into old age, researchers reported Wednesday. 
 
 It’s the latest in a series of studies showing that a healthy diet can preserve health, including brain health. 
 
 This one’s a little different because it doesn’t seem to show that adding fish to the diet makes any difference. It’s not clear why, but it adds another piece of evidence in favor of dumping junk food and turning instead to fresh salads dressed with olive oil, plenty of fresh fruit, hummus, beans and pasta. 
 
 Everyone’s brain shrinks as they get older. This study, published in the journal Neurology, found that people in their mid-70s who ate a Mediterranean-style diet lost less brain mass than people who ate a diet more typical of their native Scotland. 
 
 “A bigger brain is in general better for you because at least in late life, it makes a person more resistant to the effects of brain diseases." 
 
 “We found that lower adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with greater three-year reduction in total brain volume,” Michelle Luciano of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and colleagues wrote. 
 
 Related: Vegan diet may save your life and the planet, too 
 
 The team used a group of Edinburgh residents who were born in 1936 and have been followed ever since. For this round, the volunteers filled out a food diary and then many of them agreed to have a series of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of their brains. 
 
 Mediterranean Foods STUDIO BOX / Getty Images 
 
 The study took them from age 70 to around 76 and the MRIs allowed the researchers to see just when and how their brains changed as they moved from late middle age into early old age. About 400 of the volunteers made it through two MRIs over three years. 
 
 Those who ate more fruits, vegetables, olive oil and the like, and less fried food, red meat and cheese had less brain shrinkage, the team found. On average, their brains shrank at about half the rate that would normally be expected over three years for people this age, they said. 
 
 Related: Tasty Diet Cuts Heart Disease 
 
 “In our study, eating habits were measured before brain volume was, which suggests that the diet may be able to provide long-term protection to the brain,” Luciano said in a statement. “Still, larger studies are needed to confirm these results.” 
 
 People got points for light to moderate drinking-- in this case about a third of drink a day to no more than three drinks a day on average for men and two for women. 
 
 Dr. David Knopman, a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who was not involved in the study, said this could translate to real-life benefits. 
 
 “Loss of brain volume is an inevitable part of the aging process,” Knopman told NBC News. 
 
 Related: This Diet Helps You Live Longer 
 
 “A bigger brain is in general better for you because at least in late life, it makes a person more resistant to the effects of brain diseases,” he added. “People who have bigger brains in general can tolerate more brain pathology, more brain disease, than those who have smaller brains. So the reduced loss in the people who adhered to the Mediterranean diet in general would be expected to protect them from developing dementia.” 
 
 “We found that lower adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with greater three-year reduction in total brain volume." 
 
 Everyone who took part in the study was healthy and living independently, and the study was not designed to show whether healthier eating reduced the risk of dementia. But other studies have shown that good diets can prevent Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. 
 
 Related: Could a Mediterranean diet keep your brain from shrinking? 
 
 A 2015 study done at Columbia University also found that people who ate Mediterranean diets had bigger brains. But it also found this may have been caused in part because people who ate Mediterranean diets also are more fish and less of other types of meat. 
 
 The Edinburgh team didn’t find any effect from eating meat or fish, and they found education did not seem to matter, either. 
 
 Previous research has linked a Mediterranean diet to a reduced risk of heart disease and some cancers, as well as stroke and to a longer life in general. 
 
 “People who eat healthy are often healthier in many other respects,” Knopman pointed out. 
 
 “They're much less likely to be obese, they're much less likely to have diabetes, hypertension, much less likely to smoke, more likely to exercise. And they're probably more likely to adhere to good health behaviors in general.” 
 
 Related: Mediterranean Diet May Slow Brain Aging 
 
 But a series of studies done in Spain finds the effects are clear even when people are already starting out with healthier diets. The team in Barcelona adds extra olive oil and nuts to the standard diets of Spaniards and finds the benefits on heart health and brain health are clear. 
 
 The Edinburgh study only asked people once – when they were 70 – what they ate. So it’s not entirely clear if it takes a lifetime of eating better to help the brain.
– A new study finds that following the Mediterranean diet could add about 4.5 years to your life. Researchers found that the diet, which focuses on fruits, veggies, whole grains, and olive oil, is good for our DNA, the New York Times reports. Nearly 4,700 women were followed for more than 20 years, and those whose diets were more similar to the Mediterranean diet had longer telomeres—protective structures found on the ends of chromosomes that "are often compared to the plastic caps that prevent shoelaces from unravelling," as Larry Husten explains at Forbes. Shorter telomeres have been linked to shorter life expectancy and chronic diseases associated with aging. Chromosomes store our DNA code, and telomeres help to prevent the loss of genetic information—so the Mediterranean diet appears to "stop our DNA code from scrambling as we age," thus keeping us "genetically younger," writes Michelle Roberts at the BBC. But Husten cautions that, though the diet has been linked to other health benefits in the past, this study shouldn't be given too much weight. It appears to be "excellent" and "well-performed," he writes, but it was an observational study, and as such has limitations—for example, it's possible that there were already genetic differences between subjects who adhered to the diet and those who didn't.