How readily should we swallow the idea of diets that delay ageing?

The promise of a new diet that can add as much as a decade to your life is certainly tempting – and might well be proven to work – but for now should be swallowed with a pinch of salt

Growing old is usually seen as one of life’s inevitabilities, but that hasn’t stopped the anti-ageing industry from flourishing, based on hopes and claims of delaying our expiry date.

But what if, rather than potions and elixirs, the ticket to a longer life was staring back at you from your dinner plate? This is the assertion being made by several groups of researchers who believe that our diet has the power to add years to human lifespan, as we report in our cover story.

That may sound obvious – we are all too aware of how a bad diet …