This has nothing to do with Highlander. Let's get that clear from the off.

I saw this on the BBC News site earlier.

Seven-a-day fruit and veg 'saves lives'

Looking at this graphic made me wonder...

Eating 7+ a day reduces the risk of me dying by 42%

Therefore eating 17, (I'm rounding up) portions of fruit or veg a day means that I should never die...!

Mathematically speaking, at least. OK, so I'm being ridiculous here, but does seeing stories like this actually make any difference to the amount of F&V that we, both individually and as a nation, eat?

Discuss!

*turns around and leaves*

Mark

I wonder how much is based on just surveys. I know that we used to advocate exercise three times a week. This soon changed to 5x a week. If you told people to do something 3x/wk they'd do it once or twice a week. 5x a week meant more people would hit at least 3x/wk.

There can be only one! And that's a potato

There's an interesting little TED talk by a chap called Aubrey de Grey on the subject, and he postulates that some children that are currently of infant age may well have the potential to live vastly extended lives due to the rate at which we are starting to develop the skills required to reduce ageing. A lot of it stems from the idea that the first step might only extend their life by say 40 years, but that then gives them access to another 40 years of anti-ageing research etc. It's certainly an interesting hypothesis, although somehow I doubt any of us will be alive to check on it!

I've always considered the point is not to extend life per se but to extend health. I don't see any point in living an extra 40 years if I'm going to end up spending the last 30 of it unable to do the things I want to do. I'd be much happier still only living to say 85 (which I think is the current average UK lifespan) If I had the whole of it to live to the full.

So the anti-aging thing appeals to me much more than the idea of extending the average age of death of itself.

It might of course be the case that the two will go hand in hand, with all the pros and cons that would bring. We're very close to full-on leaps in genetics and associated fields... Currently I'm more worried about what particular set of d1ckheads will be in charge when it comes to making the tough choices. I mean the ''triple parent' embryos' issue seemed to come out of nowhere for instance (though my gut instinct is to support it), meaning public perception can be swayed one way or another by self-interested scrotes. It all needs to be handled extremely carefully.

I tend to forgo the healthy stuff and concentrate more on the preservatives such as nicotine and alcohol.