Two eggs a day is key to a long life, says the world's oldest person

Emma Morano from Lake Maggiore in Northern Italy was born in 1899

The world oldest person, aged 116, claims the secret to a long life is eating two eggs a day.

Emma Morano, from Lake Maggiore in Northern Italy, was born in 1899 and has been officially declared the oldest person in the world by the Guinness World Records.

Ms Morano said: "I eat two eggs a day, and that's it. And cookies. But I do not eat much because I have no teeth."

She started the habit aged 20 in 1919 when she was diagnosed with anaemia and was told by her doctor to eat two raw eggs and one cooked each day.

Her current doctor Carlo Bava says she no longer eats meat because she was once told it causes cancer.

Dr Bava told AFP: "Emma has always eaten very few vegetables, very little fruit.

"When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner.

"[She] does not want to eat meat because she doesn't like it anymore and someone told her it causes cancer."

On her 117th birthday on November 27, Ms Moreno is not even planning to eat a slice of her birthday cake saying: "The last time I ate a little, but then I did not feel good."

Dr Bava added: "She is a very determined person. She has never wanted to go to hospital, she's never received any particular (health) care.

"She's suffered from a bit of bronchitis, had a (blood) transfusion, and some stitches, but always at home."

Another former world's longest person, Susannah Mushatt Jones from Alabama, gave her own tips for long life - don't drink or smoke and eat bacon every day.

Ms Morano is still a few years away from beating the current record-holder France's Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 aged of 122.

Ms Calment was particularly famed for having met Vincent Van Gogh while a teenager in Arles.