The best $2 you can spend in the grocery store

The Mediterranean diet that fits in a backpack

The supplement industry has built a billion dollar business around nutrients you can get from a $3 tin on almost any shelf, in any grocery store, in any country on the planet.

Most protein shakes have 10 ingredients. Fish oil is $40 a bottle. B12 is $30. A tin of sardines costs less than $2.

This is no wellness fad. It’s a grotesquely lopsided math equation even a baboon wouldn’t ignore.

Meanwhile the entire world is panicking about wages not rising with inflation, gas hitting $5 a gallon, and groceries costing an arm and a leg. Fear not. There’s an eject button.

Ahem. Tinned sardines. Sent to its room and forgotten about because it comes in a can.

Here’s why you should be eating these little fish instead of your $12 breakfast sandwich.

The can itself

On the surface, the can seems like the compromise. It’s always been where I assume food goes to die. All nutrition stripped away, preservatives added, scientifically engineered into something borderline inedible. Hell, even the smell would lead you to believe you’re eating roadkill.

Vegetables are one thing, but meat? Protein? No way I’m eating dead fish out of a can. I always thought that any food whose main vehicle was a metal chube couldn’t possibly be healthy.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, at least for the sardine. The can is deceiving you. The can, quite possibly, is as important for the fish as the fish is for the can.

They’re stuffed in there like sardines (get it?) with no preservatives and without oxygen, making the inside of the tin a perfectly sterile environment.

“No oxygen, no flame.” - Sky High

The little buggers were caught and sealed within hours, so the nutrients remain abundant. The EPA and DHA (what you take your fish oil for) are just as intact as the day they were plucked from the ocean. Frozen in time like Han Solo. W.

And because no fridge is needed and the shelf life is long, it keeps for years which means it’s one of the rare foods you’re actually likely to eat instead of forgetting about and tossing later. Low waste, low spoilage, good for the wallet.

Stuffing these little fish bones and all into a can with oil or water turns the tin into a little sardine bath where they fall asleep in the tub and wake up pruned. Months marinating in there soften the icky parts that turn you off. Ya know, the bones, the eyeballs, etc. Those soft bones are an S tier calcium supplement.

Finally an alternative to spamming cheese!

Most importantly, the can turns the fish into the same protein bar you’d take on any airplane. Something you can throw in your backpack and have on tap for when you get hungry. It makes it a convenient, portable, and healthy snack or borderline meal you can have within 30 seconds of desiring to do so.

Buy the damn tin.

What’s actually inside

Sardines are absolutely packed with nutrients. Let’s speed run this.

Omega-3s. Way more than the average daily intake, about 1.5 grams in a single tin. Vitamin B12. Iodine (you even know what that is? Me neither). CoQ10 (the $25/month pill in the supplement aisle is already in here).

Complete protein. 20-25 grams per serving. Vitamin D. Selenium (no need to take Brazil nuts anymore). Calcium and phosphorus (BONES!), iron.

And it’s low on mercury (more on this later).

This is not just nutrition that looks nice on a spreadsheet. Omega-3s are the go to for inflammation and heart health. Same with the brain. They pull triglycerides down.

Vitamin D and calcium are tremeeeendous for your bones.

The protein bar could never.

Buy the damn tin.

Math is indeed, mathing

I’m not a math guy, but if you zoom out and look at sardines against say, chicken breast, gram for gram I think sardines are more expensive. Indeed, I will concede. However, this is not a clean comparison. Apples to oranges.

With sardines you are not just buying protein. Chicken breast is literally just a slab of meat. Limited nutritional value aside from being a wonderful low calorie protein delivery mechanism. A tin of sardines is a nutritional powerhouse. The protein is just a bonus.

Take all the nutrients from above, stuff them into a little care package, give it 20g of protein, and call it a day. All for a buck fifty.

Buying each of these items individually costs more than the tin that already contains them. The supplement aisle is the same shit, sold separately. Run the napkin math on fish oil, vitamin D, B12, CoQ10, and calcium and you’re past fifty bucks a month, easy. Every month. For what’s already in the tin.

So when you actually stack it up, the tin isn’t expensive. It’s a multivitamin you can eat. Call it a supplement if you so choose.

Buy the damn tin.

Mercury and metal

Even little babies know that eating fish is a good idea for one’s health. The Mediterranean diet has been touted as the healthiest diet on the planet, which, to be honest, for most people it probably is. Safe bet.

But as one makes their way down the self improvement rabbit hole, fish and seafood in general aren’t as perfect as they initially seem. Like with most things, more is not always better. There’s a little canary in the coal mine:

Heavy metals and mercury.

The truth is that our oceans are pretty disgusting. Waste and plastics and oil accumulating en masse. It’s very sad that somehow, we land dwellers, taking up 2% of all space on earth, have somehow shit the bed on the other 98%.

Most fish contains some level of mercury and heavy metals. Up and down the food chain, these contaminants accumulate in all sea creatures but big fish, big predators, carry the most. Tuna, swordfish, shark (I’ve never had shark). They’re big. They eat other big seafood. They live a long time. More time for toxins to build. These are not healthy options to be spamming if you like seafood.

Sardines, on the other hand, being on the smaller end, are short lived plankton eaters. They don’t live long enough or eat enough to accumulate mercury the way a great white shark would.

To get sciencey for half a second, sardines clock in at roughly 0.013 ppm of mercury (parts per million). Swordfish sits at 0.995 ppm. I don’t know exactly what this means but I know that’s roughly 75 times less.

Good enough for me.

Okay, that handles the fish. Now onto the can.

Most cans are made of steel. The metal in the fish comes from the ocean, not the tin. But it is good to be mindful of BPAs. The container itself is usually fine, but the lining can be a different story. Simple rule when shopping is to look for BPA-free, which most good brands already are.

Sardines are one of the safest aquatic animals to eat, consistently.

Buy the damn tin.

Seed oils

I actually cringe when I hear the words “seed oils.” Something about how the lingo has spread to the boomers makes me feel like it’s a muggle saying Voldemort.

But they’re still a worthwhile concern, and worth avoiding where you can, even if your mom and your mom’s mom are finally getting the message.

Anyway. While the panic has gone overboard, the underlying issue hasn’t. Plenty of supposedly healthy foods get sneakily packaged in nasty oils that turn them from something delicious and nutritious into something unhealthy. Sardines are no exception. You need to be mindful of what the fish is packaged in. So what do you do?

Read the can! Your options are simple. Buy fish packed in olive oil or water. Make sure there’s no soybean oil or UVO (Unidentified Vegetable Oil, coined).

To be honest, this is my biggest gripe with tinned fish. You don’t get much visibility into where the olive oil is coming from. As a snob, this makes me sad. I usually opt for water and then add some of my favorite EVOO.

But I’m an optimistic guy. Eating a can of sardines really does make my body happy. I feel good when I eat them.

Anything that makes me feel that way has to be a green light. So for me, buying sardines packed in EVOO is just bonus nutrition. One of the best fat stacks you can get into your body in two minutes flat without having to think too hard.

Oh, and one more thing on the label while we’re looking, make sure the fish are wild caught. Most already are because they’re too small and cheap to farm (another reason they stay clean).

Remember, BPA free tin, wild caught, packed in EVOO or water.

Buy the damn tin.

Why the world is negligent toward these beautiful creatures

Sardines are flying under most people’s radar. Why?

First and foremost, they’re ugly. They’re tiny fish. They have tiny heads. You can see their eyes. There are bones.

I promise, when my sisters ask me what my diet looks like I can literally feel them recoil when I mention eating tinned fish. I get it. ThEyRe FiShY - yes they are. You know what Omega 3s are baby sis?

The mind and the nose play a big role in taste, and what doesn’t look or smell appetizing is hard to vouch for. Luckily for people like me, my first priority with nutrition is not taste. Nor should yours. Anyway, what’s good for you usually tastes pretty great. (Sardines are genuinely very tasty, just take a little getting used to, I promise).

Problem two is that they come in a tin that looks like wartime rations. No one wants to be eating them when they can have the latest TikTok Famous Acai Bowl.

Everything we’ve ever eaten out of a can has been a cheap alternative to the real thing or a poverty heartbeat sensor. Spam, canned vegetables, Chef Boyardee raviolis. We fear the tin because of what it often means.

Historically, the people eating sardines weren’t the well off caviar crowd. Sardines were what you ate when you didn’t have a lot. I can just imagine little Johnny going over to his friend’s house and the entire place smells like a boat in the Mediterranean. It was basically a poor virtue signal, which understandably, people probably wanted to escape from at all costs.

Jokes on little Johnny, his buddy spamming tins of sardines probably had elite cardiovascular health. I digress.

What’s most interesting is that this very negligence (to some extent) is what’s made sardines what they are today. This aversion has let them sit on a shelf untouched for an entire generation. They’re caught, cleaned, packed in oil. No science optimization, no lab testing, no private equity. A prized possession.

Meanwhile, everything else on the shelf has been corrupted by big wigs sitting in big chairs in big suits. Everything else has been string cheese-ified. But not the sardine.

So instead, they sit on the shelf in Costco for $11 for six tins for 120 g of protein.

Buy the damn tin.

How to actually eat them

Sardines might be one of the lowest effort to nutrient ratio foods on the planet (does this make sense? I made it up.)

You really don’t have to do anything to get in a healthy, tasty, affordable meal very quickly.

For starters you can just pop the tin like a bottle of water and suck em down. Fork optional. My girlfriend often finds me hunched over the sink like Smeagol absolutely destroying a tin of fish.

“Dante this is disgusting.” If my sisters can do it, so can you, I promise.

Or if you’re feeling fancy, you can dress em up and plate them. Sourdough. Herbs. Citrus. A glug of olive oil. Flaky salt. Delish!

Most importantly, the tin of sardines is an elite travel companion. Can go anywhere you want it to.

When you find yourself in a protein/meal pinch, you can whip them out like that chocolate kid from Kicking and Screaming.

Mash em into your avocado toast in the hotel room. Stir them into pasta with garlic and chili flakes. Drop them into a random salad like tuna, but better. (Tuna has more metal.)

Simple, efficacious, low effort, tasty.

And for you, special one, here are a few brands I like. No ranking, just my favorites.

Wild Planet is numero uno and the brand I trust the most. I like King Oscar and Season. Fishwife wins on packaging, makes the fish feel upscale. Natural Catch and Bela are both good. Even Patagonia’s in the game.

I promise, once you start treating these things like eggs or protein bars, you’ll never go back.

They last forever, fit in a glove compartment, and are wildly nutritious.

And, once you get over yourself, they’re absolutely delicious.

Buy the damn tin

I know, I know, a can of sardines is nowhere near as flashy as a grass fed and finished ribeye. It doesn’t have the same primal draw. It looks like something your grandma would eat with her ancient cup of joe, social media influencers aren’t yapping about them (until now), and they make your entire house smell like a fishing boat.

Nonetheless, we need to get over ourselves. Prime rib can’t be stuffed in a backpack.

If you’re not eating sardines a few times a week, you should be. If not for your health, then for your wallet.

I promise, once you see, you can’t unsee.

Buy the damn tin.

Godspeed,

— Dante