Short Stuff: Sardines!

The episode starts with a running joke: Chuck tried sardines because Josh told him to a couple of weeks earlier — a recommendation Josh has zero recollection of making. Both hosts land in the same place: the flavor is fine, not unlike tuna and nothing like anchovies, but the texture of a whole tiny fish looking up from the tin skeeves them out. The proposed fix, borrowed from Spanish tapas, is to fry or grill them until they crisp.

The nutritional case is the heart of the episode. Sardines eat plankton rather than other fish, so they sidestep the mercury bioaccumulation that makes regular tuna a once-a-week food at most — the hosts invoke Jeremy Piven's sushi-induced mercury poisoning as the cautionary tale. Because you eat the soft bones, a single tin delivers roughly a third of a day's calcium, plus vitamin D, B12, phosphorus, selenium, and omega-3s, with a protein-and-healthy-fat balance that actually satiates. Along the way Josh shares why he stopped taking daily omega-3 supplements: a recent large meta-analysis found that in people with a family history of heart disease — his includes atrial fibrillation — omega-3s may raise the risk of developing it, while remaining protective for people who already have heart disease.

The caveats close it out. Sardines are high in purines, so people with gout, kidney stones, or high blood pressure should go easy; the protein load can tax chronic kidney disease; sodium varies by pack (water-packed is the pick); and like anything canned, the tins carry the bisphenol-liner problem the show covered in an earlier Short Stuff on BPAs.