The world's oldest person is living proof of the awesome power of bacon, having achieved supercentenarian status on a daily dose of sliced pork goodness.

Susannah Mushatt Jones, 116, reportedly tucks into a few breakfast rashers every day along with scrambled eggs and grits. Speaking at Jones's Brooklyn apartment, the Alabama native's niece, Lois Judge, insisted the old girl would "eat bacon all day long" given the chance.

According to USA Today, a sign in her kitchen reads: "Bacon makes everything better".

And indeed it does. Last year, we presented the audacious idea that, contrary to received scientific wisdom, alcohol and bacon might actually present a recipe for immortality. Jones has apparently never drunk, so she's only proof of part of the theory.

The old timer was born on 6 July 1899 in Lowndes County, Alabama, to sharecropper parents. She graduated high school but her ambitions to become a teacher were thwarted by her family's lack of cash for tuition fees.

Instead, she moved to New York and became a nanny. Briefly married, she never had children of her own, but boasts over 100 nieces and nephews. ®