Meet some of the elderly residents of Bolotana, in line to be the world’s sixth ‘blue zone’ for its high number of female centenarians

When Giovanna Marras opens the door to her home in Bolotana, a mountain village in central Sardinia, her eyes are bright with curiosity as she sizes up her visitors. Her sister, Mariangela, peeks out too, soon ushering her guests inside and handing out dishes of ice-cream. The sisters are full of life, talking animatedly. Giovanna is 101 and Mariangela is 99.

Sitting in their living room, Giovanna swiftly recaps her life story: she excelled at school before moving to Cagliari, the capital of the Italian island, at 18 to train as a seamstress. The sisters went on to run a successful tailoring business in Bolotana before travelling the world after retirement. Neither married.

Among the hardships of the second world war, a restricted diet with little sugar did little harm, write Roger Wilkinson and Helen Keats; plus a letter from Jane Robbins

An interesting juxtaposition: (While British children go hungry, we waste 1.1bn meals a year. Bring on the redistribution revolution, 6 October); and (The generation raised on sugar rations – and what their health reveals 70 years later, 7 October). Shocking that the average family throws away 156 meals a year, but this knowledge allows us war babies, who still scrape our bowls clean and only throw away items where the mould is too developed to scrape off, to be very smug. And next we’re told that we will probably live longer as a result of our parsimonious cheeseparing. My cup of smugness overflows.
Roger Wilkinson (born 1944)
Leasgill, Cumbria

• My 98-year-old aunt, who along with my mother and family lived in Rotterdam during the German occupation and “hunger winter”, is remarkably healthy. She lives independently, does her own shopping and cooking, and cycled to the local care home to “help out” until she was 80.

Society tells us there is one way to live a life, and joy is a byproduct on the path there. But you don’t need a reason to enjoy the act of being alive

I have been dwelling on what it means to live well. Not because I have mastered it, but because I have become very comically bad at it. I have spent years rushing through my life, panicked and convinced I was running out of time. I worried constantly about work – getting it, keeping it, doing it, caring about it too much, hating it and losing it. I obsessed over being more productive. I fretted about money, mostly about not having any left after travelling too much. I poured so much energy into dating that it’s kind of impressive I haven’t had a relationship for the last six years.

But most of all I became fixated on my fertility and how it dwindled in my early 30s, leaving me to make choices most women don’t have to until later. I tried to save my eggs and couldn’t. My lack of a partner in a conservative Catholic Lebanese family became a cudgel.

In Bolotana, 70 miles from island’s original blue zone, 13% of women who reach 70 will live on to a century

The secret to longevity is being a woman – specifically, a woman in one part of Sardinia. At least, that is the conclusion of a study on centenarians in a tiny mountain village on the Italian island.

Sardinia became known as a haven for longevity, especially for long-lived men, in 1999 when a cluster of remote villages nestled in the slopes of its central and eastern provinces were classified among the world’s five “blue zones” – geographic areas with high concentrations of centenarians.

DNA analysis of oldest living land animal reveal patterns on genes that appear to protect functioning of mitochondria

The ancient quest to extend human lifespan has received a boost after scientists analysed the genetic code of the world’s oldest living land animal, a giant tortoise called Jonathan.

The tortoise, which lives in the grounds of Plantation House, the official residence of the governor of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, is believed to be 194 years old, making him a contemporary of Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin.

From blood pressure to ageing, research suggests the first 1,000 days of sugar exposure could leave a decades-long mark on health

They were born into a Britain still recovering from the hardships of war. Though the air-raid sirens had fallen silent, many everyday foods remained rationed, including sugar. Adults were restricted to about 3 tablespoons (40g) a day to stretch between cups of tea, baking and desserts; children were limited to less than a tablespoon. Babies and very young children were expected to have little or no added sugar.

Then, in 1953, the brakes came off. Separate restrictions on sweets and chocolate were lifted in February, followed by sugar in September. By the second half of 1954, average sugar consumption had almost doubled.