Sally Beare

Sally Beare was born in London in 1967 and educated at St Paul's Girls' School and Durham University. In her twenties she worked variously for Friends of the Earth, for the architect Ron Arad, and as a teacher in a boys' secondary school. She then became a researcher and associate producer for television documentaries, and worked for the Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald as well as on the BAFTA-winning docudrama Warriors, directed by Peter Kosminsky.

Whilst working on a series about ageing for the National Geographic Channel, Beare came across places she subsequently named the Longevity Hot Spots, where local populations have exceptionally long life spans and extremely low rates of chronic disease. At the same time, Beare was experiencing a dramatic improvement in her own health as a result of changing her diet. She set out to discover the diet and lifestyle habits of the Longevity Hot Spots and describes those in her books, the Live-Longer Diet and 50 Secrets of the World's Longest-Living People. Whilst writing the books, Beare also trained as a nutritional therapist at the UK College of Nutrition and Health, where she gained a Distinction and went on to lecture in the subject of anti-ageing.

Today, Beare lives in Bristol where she sees clients at the Natural Health Clinic, conducts healthy-eating workshops in schools, and coaches people through her ten-week healthy-eating plan, the Stacking Plan.