I asked my grandmother, who will soon turn 100 years old, to tell me the secret to a long life. Her response? Drink lots of buttermilk and eat plenty of potatoes.

According to a new study, she may be onto something. Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, recently discovered that genes, not clean living, play a significant role in becoming a centenarian. They say this doesn’t mean drinking, smoking and poor eating won’t factor into living a long life, but people with certain longevity genes may have a stronger ability to protect themselves from meeting an early demise.

This study comes along at a time when I find myself thinking more about life and death. These past couple of years, I have watched as my children have grown from babies into little boys, my older brother has been diagnosed with brain cancer, and my parents gracefully approach their 70s while beginning to have more frequent health issues.

As someone in her mid-thirties, I try to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. A part of me is banking on having inherited the longevity gene that my grandmother seems blessed to have. After all, her mother lived to be 106.

Rather than worrying about how to reach the triple digit milestone, perhaps there is a deeper meaning to my grandmother’s “buttermilk and potatoes” quip. Could it be that what she really was saying had more to do with how one should live instead of forever seeking some kind of magic super food? Maybe, what she really meant was that one should try to enjoy life more and stop taking everything so seriously. In that case, I’ll stop berating myself for giving into the freshly baked Toffee Nut cookie I had with lunch and go ahead and indulge in another glass of wine with dinner.