“I haven’t aged in 18 years since I started drinking”

A dad says he looks half his age and puts his youthful looks down to drinking water from his vegetable steamer. Julius Abraham is 54 years old, but says he is often mistaken for 20 years old.

The father-of-three claims he hasn’t aged since he started drinking vegetable steamer water around 18 years ago after watching a YouTube video. Wash a bag of carrots, a whole broccoli, half a bag of cabbage, half a cauliflower and a zucchini in boiling water every day.

He then removes any skins from the vegetables, chops them up and loads them all into his steamer. When cooked, let them cool well overnight so that all the steam condenses back into the pan below the vegetables. Then drink the water and eat the vegetables.

Julius says people always think he’s younger than his age, and about once every two weeks someone mistakes him for being in his 20s. Julius, a comedian, quiz host and car auction facilitator, from Bristol, said: “People always think I’m younger than I am – I love it!

“It’s great to keep your youth. My girlfriend is 27, but people don’t realize we have an age gap.

“People don’t want aches and pains, they want the fountain of youth. I think I’ve always been a bit young – and my mum – but I haven’t aged since I started doing this in my 30s.

“I do this every day without fail. I get purified water with all the nutrients that come from the vegetables and I get the vegetables too, so it’s a double win.

“I used to add a bit of lemon but now I’m used to the taste – it’s quite sweet. The lady I saw on YouTube ate all her vegetables raw or drank the vegetable water like me – she was in her 70s , but he looked around 30 years old.”

While shopping recently, Julius laughed when two members of staff complained about the loud music: they told him “that’s fine for you – you’re young”. They were shocked when he told them his age, he said.

“They couldn’t believe it,” he said. Julius claims that boiling the water gets rid of any pesticides on the vegetables. Drink bottled or filtered water too – refusing to touch tap water.

“Sometimes it hurts when people find out my real age and respond to me differently,” he said. “Age is just a number – it’s really sad when people see it as a barrier anyway.”