“I have done very well, I have wonderful friends,” Taylor adds.
She was married to a Jamaican man for 20 years, then divorced.
Her second marriage was to an American man — a union that lasted for 37 years until his death at age 80.
She cooks her own meals
One of the TikTok videos features Taylor in her kitchen frying a golden-brown caramelized plantain.
She believes home cooking is important for good health and likes to cook her own meals.
“My family, they always have a stomach problem, and I think it’s what they eat,” she says, pointing to the typical American diet.
“Beef and chicken. They have pork because they like ribs. I do, too — once in a while.”
Taylor eats a lot of fish, but little red meat. She loves vegetables and salads. Occasional indulgences have place in her diet, too: She likes ice cream, sweet wine and chips.
Longevity runs in her family
One of her four sisters lived to be 104, another reached 100 and another passed away at 93.
The only sister who didn’t make it to old age had diabetes and passed away in her 60s.
She credits a special green juice for her good health
Taylor once had an acquaintance who owned a health food store and “taught me a lot of stuff,” she recalls.
“She didn’t have a pot in her house — everything was raw. I tried, but I couldn’t do it,” she says.
But one recipe stuck. Every other day, Taylor drinks a glass of green juice that contains:
- fresh aloe vera chopped into cubes
- kale
- parsley
- ginger
- celery
- 1 teaspoon of powdered greens she gets at a health food store
- water
- sweetener to make it taste better — Taylor uses Splenda
“My digestion is really great. And I’ve been doing it for about 30 years,” she says. Taylor also credits her healthy skin to her diet.
She eats papaya every morning
More people need to learn about papaya, Taylor says. Her family grew the fruit when she was a child in Jamaica, so she loves to eat it every morning. But she finds many Americans don’t know about it.
Read the full article here
