Is An All-Sardine Diet The Key To The Next Superhuman Surfer?

Sardines tend to be a contentious meal item, but we all know they’re packed with not only protein, vitamins B12 and D, calcium, and iron, but that holy grail for health food freaks: Omega-3 fatty acids.

So when the Harvard- and Oxford-schooled Nick Norwitz (MD, PhD) began to wonder whether a diet not just rich but rife with sardines would give him dolphin-like superpowers and couldn’t quite scientifically deduce that the answer was no, he set out on the brave journey to consume 1,000 sardines in 30 days.

Norwitz, a metabolic researcher, ran the month-long “sardine fast” in midwinter, which led him to his first and perhaps most remarkable finding: A few weeks in, the good doctor found his line, ectomorphic figure extraordinarily more cold-tolerant than it had previously been. Saturated with EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid), his cold tolerance had gone through the roof, mimicking that of the very dolphins currently frolicking through late-winter New England coastal waters at this very moment.

“For me this started off as a pure sardine fast. It meant eating about 100 grams of sardines per 50 pounds of body weight, and then supplementing with electrolytes as needed.” “I felt great at the beginning,” he recounts in his 18-minute YouTube recap of the experiment. “But at day five or six, and definitely by end of week one, I was feeling pretty depleted, to be honest.”

His hypothesis was that he wasn’t getting enough fat, particularly for his body type. So he added between a quarter-cup and a cup of extra-virgin olive oil or coconut oil. 

After that? “I felt great. I felt light and energized. I lost six pounds in just the first week, and drifted down to about 7% body fat.”

He also developed an odd impulse to invert himself and stand on his head—not unlike dolphins, which are known to root around in mud and grass in such a fashion for crustaceans and fish. Curious? Indeed.

 “This made the sardine diet quite easy, at least from a dietary perspective.” There was one major side effect: His Omega-3 levels went off the scale. He found that his blood contained about 16%. It was “closer to dolphin levels than human levels,” he reported.

“So what are the benefits here?” Norwitz posits. “To be honest, we don’t really have any literature to sight, because levels these high aren’t reported in humans—maybe in marine mammals, but…”

He also developed another compulsion: to take the stairs to and fro his 37-story apartment.

Of course, close friends and loved ones began to inform him that he started to smell like sardines. No amount or type of deodorant, Norwitz reported, could conceal it. “My girlfriend threatened that if I continued like this, I wouldn’t get much physical affection because the scent and taste were off-putting.”

Alas, Norwitz conducted this experiment on himself to see how this type of fasting might benefit muscle preservation while reducing body fat, and he did not manage to paddle out into a blizzardy New England swell in that cold water that was starting to look all the more tempting. So as it stands, the jury is out on the superhuman surfer.

Perhaps it’s time that this experiment be conducted on surfing’s great Hercules, Mr. Laird Hamilton. What do you say, Laird? The surf world needs to know. We’ll respectfully hold your Superfood Creamer.