Adding 6 years to your life nothing to wine about

A DIET recommending you eat 100g of chocolate a day and drink red wine, which will add six years to your life - is this for real?

Scientists in Australia and The Netherlands have come up with a diet they claim will cut a person's risk of heart disease by 78 per cent.

And the good news is, you'll want to be on it.

The diet focuses on seven foods that have been proven to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure.

It involves daily consumption of 150ml of red wine, which has been found to cut heart disease risk by 32 per cent.

Chocaholics line up, because you have to consume 100g of dark chocolate per day, an amount the scientists calculate will reduce blood pressure.

ou have to eat four meals of fish each week (each 114g), which is said to reduce your heart disease risk by 14 per cent.

The diet also includes a daily total of 400g of fruit and vegetables, also proven to cut blood pressure, and 68g of almonds to cut cholesterol.

You also have to consume 2.7g of garlic per day to reduce your cholesterol levels.

In a paper published in the British Medical Journal, scientists claim that if all these foods are combined in a diet they will lower the risk of heart disease by 78 per cent.

The research shows men who stuck to this diet would gain an extra six years of life and have an extra nine years free from heart disease.

Women would gain an extra 4.8 years of life and have an extra eight years without heart disease.

The proponents, including Anna Peeters from Monash University, claim the only adverse effects from the diet would be body odour from the garlic and raised mercury levels if more than the recommended amount of fish was eaten each week.

But they don't calculate whether it will help you lose weight.

And they warn that extra alcohol above that prescribed by the diet could reduce the effectiveness of the diet.

They say you can add extra ingredients to the diet to boost its effectiveness, including olive oil, soy beans, tomatoes, oat bran, cereals, nuts, tea and chickpeas.