If I was stuck on a desert island and could only bring 10 foods with me to be able to live as long as I possibly could, with a possible acknowledgement of maybe keeping good body composition while I'm there, this is what I'd bring. Now, full disclaimer, I have a magical refrigerator that magically powers itself off of solar energy and keeps the food cold, right? Because I do like my perishables.
Anyway, let's just jump right into the first one. Number one would be eggs. If I had to pick probably one food to eat just for the rest of my life, if I was stuck on a desert island and I wanted to have the best chances of survival, personally I would choose eggs. I get the wide abundance of amino acids that I need. I get a wide profile of fats that I need.
I get monounsaturated fats that are cardioprotective. I get some saturated fat, but not a ridiculous amount. I get choline, which is tremendous for the brain.
I get lutein, which is one of the most powerful carotenoid antioxidants that you could consume. It just makes sense that eggs would be my number one. And if I had to, I would probably eat five, six, ten a day to survive.
Maybe 20, whatever. Number two would be ground beef. Of course, I would need my refrigerator for this, but the thing with ground beef, that's a multivitamin in and of itself.
I'm getting a wide variety of B vitamins. I'm getting a wide variety of minerals. I'm getting my iron, I'm getting so much that I would need to sustain life. If I wanted to take it one step up, I'd probably say beef liver, but I don't really like the taste of beef liver.
So I'm trying to factor that in. If I was really stuck on an island and I'm like, this is what I want to consume, I would love consuming eggs and I would love consuming ground beef. And the thing with ground beef, I'm also getting my collagen.
There's some evidence to support that if you don't actually consume collagen, you know, you're only eating choice cuts, you're only drinking protein shakes. eventually you're going to run into an issue where your collagen protein synthesis is going to go down, and you might end up with weak connective tissue. And what if I see a boat way out there, and I need to start swimming aggressively fast?
I don't want to pull a ligament and stretch it out and mess myself up, right? The next thing I'd choose is a tough one, because I'm like, I need some calories, right? I need to keep the weight on me.
If I really wanted to just survive as long as possible on a desert island, by the way, I'd probably just consume ridiculous amounts of coconuts and coconut fat and just... put as much body fat on as possible in a healthy way, but I'm also trying to keep my body composition too. So if I want to like survive as long as I can and feel good, I probably choose heavy cream. Reason is, is I get a lot of caloric density with that heavy cream, but I also am getting myristic acid, good quality fats. I'm getting conjugated linoleic acid, which has a lot of benefits.
And now there's all this evidence coming out on C15 on like a shorter chain or medium chain kind of fat. Kind of medium chain to long chain actually. C15, there's 22 chains maximum in a saturated fat carbon chain. But 15 is like the number that they're finding is where humans are really deficient.
There's been some newer literature with that, but also just heavy cream in general. It's just, it is a really darn tasty food and I would have raw cream. But it would be very hard to keep it fresh for a long period of time. So if I couldn't do that, I'd probably at least go with like a fermented dairy of some. Number four is going to be one of my only carb sources, and that would be honey.
Why am I not bringing a lot of carbs? Well, it's not because I'm an anti-carbohydrate guy. I'm not. But if I'm not there and I'm not crazy active, I don't see the need in having a lot of carbohydrates.
And I think that if I'm going to be relatively inactive, maybe I had to do some hunting or some foraging. I just don't see the point in having a copious amount of carbohydrates. But... I do know that honey has some metabolic benefits.
The trehalose in honey can actually stabilize blood glucose if other carbohydrates are in the equation. There's benefits from an antimicrobial aspect. So if I ever got sick, I could scoop full of honey.
There's a lot of evidence from the hydrogen peroxide aspect, or if I got a wound, I could put honey on it. It definitely makes sense that honey is a food that I would bring on a desert island. Like it just makes sense from so many different aspects.
Plus, if I got injured and I needed some recovery, There is some evidence that maybe a little bit of an insulin spike might help me with that injury repair. It might help the muscle protein breakdown. What carbohydrates are good at, contrary to what maybe some people in one camp would say versus the other, is they are good anti-catabolic. So if I ever got to a point where I needed to like stop muscle breakdown, honey could come into good play there. I put a link down below for Thrive Market, by the way.
That's a 30% off discount link for your entire first grocery order through Thrive Market. They now have sustainable meat and seafood options. So some of the things I'm talking about, like the meat and the dairy and things like that, they have some options for you now. And some members, they've rolled out more of a fresh option too, where they can actually get cottage cheese and veggies.
It's only for some members, so I don't want to speak too soon. But additionally, honey, they've got all different kinds of honey. They've got manuka honey, they've got raw honey.
Honey, they've got clover honey, they've got all kinds of different kinds of honey. So when I'm mentioning honey, it just makes sense to mention Thrive Market. But it's an online membership-based grocery store.
So whatever you're shopping for in the health category, you can find there. And it gets delivered to your doorstep. They've been a sponsor on this channel for going on a decade. I trust what they do.
They trust what I do. We have a great relationship. And truth be told, it's a heck of a lot easier to shop Thrive Market's website than it is to go to the grocery store. and flip around labels all day, trying to make sure you're getting the right things with the right nutrition facts and yada yada.
Might as well have them do the heavy lifting for you and only put foods that have good ingredients. So that link is in the top line of the description for 30% off plus a free $60 gift. Number five, I would bring broccoli. I'm not one of these people that thinks that it solely has to be animal-based.
I feel like honey and heavy cream and meat and eggs are great, but I also feel like there are specific greens that are really, really good. Like sulforaphane, which is in broccoli, is one of the most potent antioxidants that we could get. So many benefits throughout its entirety that it even supersedes the fact that it has a fair amount of oxalates in it.
Yes, broccoli has oxalates. They're gonna build up. They're gonna build up in the kidneys. That's not always ideal. When I had Dr. Jacob Torres on the channel, we talked about this, but he still chose broccoli as one of his go-to's.
The benefits from a potential like detoxification standpoint with broccoli are actually quite strong. So that would be my veggie of choice. Plus the cruciferous aspect of it, I feel good and digestively it's great. So that would be my one main vegetable I'd bring.
Number six, I would bring Greek yogurt. And I know I kind of mentioned fermented dairy already when I talked about heavy cream, but Greek yogurt would be a way for me to get an easy to digest protein that I could put on anything, that I could eat straight up, and I get the bacterial effect. Maybe if I ended up getting sick, I ended up getting some foodborne illness because I ate a mongoose that wasn't cooked all the way over my crappy little fire, and I ended up with some foodborne illness that made me really sick, I could at least replenish some of my gut bacteria with something fermented.
You know, a lot of times after I get some kind of stomach illness or whatever, I will have yogurt. I will have kefir. So I would say Greek yogurt or kefir. I would elect for the Greek yogurt, mainly because then I'm getting more protein out of it. And in this particular case, I'd choose the high-fat Greek yogurt.
Sometimes when I'm at home and I'm not on a desert island, I will choose the lower-fat option, just to have more protein to calorie ratio. Next up, I would bring green tea. I find that green tea is one of the most potent antioxidants that you could consume. And when you're exposed to all kinds of conditions, a little bit of caffeine, a little bit of antioxidants, and a little bit of caffeine, A little bit of chlorogenic acid, a little bit of these catechins, probably quite beneficial coming from green tea. Not to mention when you look at the evidence, people that consume green tea live longer.
Is it healthy user bias? I actually think not. I think green tea is one of the most potent concentrated forms of antioxidants that we can get.
So yes, I would want to sip on it as much as I possibly could and I would start my day with it and I would probably take the occasional day where I'd fast and only drink green tea. I find that if I'm on a desert island, I don't want to be cracked out from coffee. I want to be calm, cool, and collected with a little bit of a pick-me-up from the green tea. Number eight was a tough one because I wanted to find something that would encompass a lot of the benefits of like olive oil, but also get me more than just olive oil.
Because olive oil is great, but it's just an oil and doesn't taste amazing to me. It tastes good, but it's not like I'm like, oh my God, I need olive oil. It's like, no, okay, it's good considering how good it is for me.
And it's a good monounsaturated fat. Good oleic acid, oleoethanolamine, OEA, and also it's tremendous because of the hydroxytyrosol. It's got antioxidants in it.
Olive oil, bar none, is a tremendous, probably one of the healthiest, if not the healthiest oil, but I would choose avocados. So not only do I get the fatty acids, the monounsaturated fats that I would get from olive oil are very similarly, but I'm also getting antioxidants. I'm also getting fiber, and I'm also getting it wrapped up in a shell that's helping it from getting oxidized, even though they go bad very fast and oxidized very fast anyway.
But I figure... That way I'm getting the fats that I want with the olive oil, but I'm getting some actual substance and fiber and antioxidants that are naturally occurring as well. I would find a way to fish for or have an endless supply of sardines and mackerel.
They are so densely fatty. And the bones, I would get a good amount of dietary vitamin D, and I'd get my collagen from it. And the skin, I would get more fat and I would get more collagen. It's the perfect mix, right?
And the cool thing is, if I ever needed to catch a bigger fish, I could use the sardines as bait. So being on a desert island, it would be perfect. Now, mackerel, slightly higher fat content than a sardine. But a sardine is going to be a better protein to fat ratio.
So I'd probably say a mix of sardines and mackerel. And also, they're not so delicious that I would just want to eat them all the time. I feel like I'd be somewhat conservative with how I consume them. And lastly, I'd get the omega-3s that clearly have some benefit to the brain. So I combine the omega-3s for the cell fluidity so the cells can communicate and have that longevity aspect.
And then I have the heavy cream where I'm getting the C15 that contributes to the cell structure and rigidity versus that fluidity I get with omega-3s. And lastly, I put this here because I feel like it has a place. Purple sweet potatoes.
I love my purple sweet potatoes so much. And although I consider them a starch, they're more of a root that's bringing me... I don't know. They are a starch, but I view it less like a regular potato.
and more like a vegetable. I would go with purple sweet potatoes because I want those anthocyanins that are powerful for the brain. They have the ability to keep my brain clear. They have the ability to help have a neuroprotective effect and they're fairly low glycemic in the grand scheme of things.
Not to mention I'm getting my fiber and I'm getting something that's gonna help me feel like I'm digestively satiated, even if I'm having a carbohydrate. So if I had to sprint around the island chasing something or I had to swim out to a boat that I ultimately missed, Or I'd just swim out to another area so that an airplane could try to see me, even though it's not, and I had to swim back, and I burned all this energy. I'd probably have that sweet potato along with a little bit of that honey on it, along with some ground beef and a couple eggs. As always, keep it locked in here on my desert island.
I'll see you tomorrow.