May 15, 2016
Emma Morano is the world's oldest woman. She is the world’s last living link to the 19th century. And the secret to her longevity? Three eggs a day, two of them raw, and a little raw minced meat.
May 15, 2016
Emma Morano is the world's oldest woman. She is the world’s last living link to the 19th century. And the secret to her longevity? Three eggs a day, two of them raw, and a little raw minced meat.
Emma Morano, who was born in northern Italy on November 29, 1899, is now the world’s oldest person at 116, after the previous holder of the title, Susannah Mushatt Jones, died in New York on Thursday.
Born in Alabama in 1899, Mrs. Jones was the last living American whose life began in the 1800s .
Susannah Mushatt Jones pictured with her niece Lois Jones. – AP
The only person in the world who now has a living connection to a century marked by the Crimean War, the unification of Italy and the invention of the internal combustion engine is Mrs. Morano.
She lives in a small flat in the town of Verbania, on the shores of Lake Maggiore, close to the Swiss border.
Her life has spanned such tumultuous events as the Boer War, two World Wars, the advent of the nuclear age and the invention of email and the Internet.
She watched Italy embrace and then reject Fascism, enter the Second World War and dispense with its monarchy in favour of becoming a republic.
She was happy to hear that the title of the world’s oldest living human had passed to her, one of her carers told The Telegraph on Friday.
“She was told this morning and she said ‘My word, I’m as old as the hills,’ but she was very pleased,” said Rosi Santoni, a sprightly 72-year-old relative who helps care for the old lady. Mrs Morano was not able to come to the phone – she is almost entirely deaf and these days barely watches television. She wakes at 8am and has a little milk and some biscuits for breakfast.
When The Telegraph called she was eating an early lunch of semolina with a boiled egg. She also eats two raw eggs a day, ever since a doctor advised her that it would be good for her health when she was diagnosed with anemia at the age of 20. She has maintained the regime ever since.
Another secret to her longevity, she says, is regularly eating small quantities of minced meat, and having only milk for supper. “Considering her age she is in pretty good health,” said Mrs Santoni. “She does find walking very tiring, though, and she has a nap during the day.”
Her social life is a bit limited these days – not just because her sight and hearing are failing, but because all her contemporaries are dead. “Her friends are all in the cemetery, sadly,” said Mrs Santoni.
Emma Morano during her 116th birthday celebrations.
Mrs Morano was born in the village of Civiasco in the Piedmont region of northern Italy on November 29 1899. She was one of eight children – five sisters and three brothers. It was the year in Guglielmo Marconi first transmitted a radio signal across the English Channel.
She worked in a factory making jute sacks and then as a cook. When she turned 116 last November she offered to sing for well-wishers, telling them she still had “a beautiful voice”.
On her birthday she received a congratulatory telegram from Sergio Mattarella, the president of Italy, and a signed parchment of blessing from Pope Francis, which is now framed and hangs on the wall of her flat. The Pope wished her “good health and serenity of spirit”.
Aside from raw eggs and meat, she credits her longevity with having left a violent husband in 1938, shortly after the death of her only child at the age of seven months. She remained single for the rest of her life.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
