Egg-eating Italian, Emma Morano, is the oldest person in the world and the only person left born in the 1800s.
The death of 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones in New York City on Thursday leaves Morano the only person to have lived in three centuries.
Morano, whose birth date is November 29, 1899, lives in her own one-bedroom home in northern Italy.
Upon hearing of her new title, she said: “My word, I’m as old as the hills,” a caregiver, Rosi Santoni, told the Telegraph.
As a teenager, a doctor told her to eat raw eggs for her anaemia, and so she has every day since, according to a New York Times profile in 2015. She also eats minced meat and pasta daily.
Leaving an unhappy marriage also helped her live so long, she told the Times. She separated from her husband in 1938 and never remarried.
“I didn’t want to be dominated by anyone,” she said, though she did have many “suitors.”
Morano was the first of eight children, all of whom have since died. One sister lived to be 102. In 1926, she married and in 1937 her only child was born, but died at a few months old. In 1938, she separated from her husband, Giovanni Martinuzzi, but never divorced. Until 1954, she was a worker at a jute factory in her town before working in the kitchen of a boarding school. She retired at 75.
She mostly cites her eating habits for helped her live so long. “For breakfast I eat biscuits with milk or water,” she said. “Then during the day I eat two eggs — one raw and one cooked — just like the doctor recommended when I was 20 years old. For lunch I’ll eat pasta and minced meat then for dinner, I’ll have just a glass of milk.”
Sleep is another important factor in her longevity.
Morano goes to bed before 7 every night and wakes up before 6 am.
