What is the 30-day sardine challenge? Simple: eat a tin of sardines every day for 30 days. Sardines are healthy for a host of reasons and as far as snacks go, nutritionally speaking, they crush a bag of potato chips or crackers or cookies.
So, yes, eating a tin every day is a healthy habit to try and maintain. And this is my take on it:
For starters, screw the slimy little fish darts.
To hell with their goopy guts and stringy spines and silvery, slippery skin.
I don’t care how many Omega-3 fatty acids they have or about their healthy calcium content or even that they’re loaded with protein.
Doesn’t matter to me that they’re good for your skin and your hair or that Tim Ferriss is a huge advocate. I love his work but on this, I’m hopping off the baleen-whale diet bus. It’s not worth it.
Sardines are freaking disgusting. Eating them for 30-days straight is dietary Chinese water torture, ruining my taste buds one malodorous, oily drip at a time.
If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I like to try things to be more efficient, to be healthier and to generally optimize and improve my life.
Do swimming workouts with 200 meter butterfly sets like Michael Phelps? No problem. It’s awesome. I love it.
Drink green tea every day? Done.
Create a newsletter called Books & Biceps read by thousands of dudes every week? Easy.
Take cold showers every day. Sucked for a few days but now it’s cake. But now I stopped because I like hot showers…
But I am drawing the line at eating one more tin of smelly little marine missiles.
I hate them. They’re like slithery little dead stomach snakes. I can literally feel them slide down my throat and work their way through my digestive tract.
I know they’re super good for you. I know it. I’ve read all the research. But I don’t care.
I’ve always believed that I could try anything for 30 days because somewhere in the middle anything that isn’t pleasant about the experience becomes routine and then it’s not a big deal.
Not with eating sardines.
I’d rather eat the monkey brains from Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom.
For the past two weeks, I have dreaded every single time I’ve peeled back the tin to reveal the viscous, nauseating wannabe bait fish.
After 14 days I’m done. Not one day was better than the next. In fact, it got worse. Before I even opened the tin my stomach would rumble with revolt, yelling at me to give the dead marine life a rightful watery death down the toilet. And so, alas, I admit defeat – felled by a three inch spear of preserved, briny, bile-tasting sardine pilchardus.
If you hate sardines too, you’ll probably love my newsletter.
