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A few weeks ago a French woman called Jeanne Calmet celebrated her 120th birthday.

She is so old that she can remember watching the Eiffel Tower being built and she saw the first film [1] made . Journalists asked her for her secret to long life , but she didn´t really have an answer . She just laughed and said that she had stopped smoking three years ago , and maybe that helped!

There are several reasons why some people live to the [2] age of 100 , 110 or even 120 years . One of them is family background . If your grandparents or great-grandparents are [3] old , there is a good chance that you will live a long life too . Another important cause of long life is climate: people who live in cool , high , dry places often live longer than people in other climates .

There is little you can do about the family you were born into or the climate of your country , but there are some things you can do to improve your chances of a long life . For [4] , you can make sure you have an active life . People who work hard and get lots of [5] usually live longer . Many of the world´s oldest people do a little work every day and they continue to enjoy sports . Another important thing you can do is to watch what you eat . But the big question is: [6] which foods help you to live longer? Doctors [7] about this . Some think you should avoid meat and butter and eat more fruits and vegetables . Others think eating fish is [8] . And others think it doesn´t matter what you eat as long as you stay calm and avoid stress . A recent study offers a new answer to this old question: The secret to long life may be olive oil! The study found that the main cause of [9] in older people is heart disease . It also found that the problem of heart disease is small in countries like France , Italy and Spain where people use a lot of olive oil in their cooking . On the other hand , in the United States , Britain , Finland , and other countries where olive oil is not so popular , heart disease is a great problem .

So perhaps this [10] why Jeanne Calmet lived to be 120 . She´s French and the French love olive oil!

---based on BBC Radio´s ´Letter from America´ by Alistair Cook , February 1995

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