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I’M WRITING THESE words at 11:15 a.m. on a Thursday morning, which means I’m about 100 grams of protein into my day. The fact that I know that—and know exactly where those grams came from, and exactly how I’m going to ingest another 100 before bed tonight, and that I supposedly “need” all 200 to protect the muscle I have and build the muscle I want—well, I sometimes wish I didn’t know so much. I sometimes wish I were one of those junior ad dweebs on Mad Men who would roll into a diner for lunch, order a ham on white with a cup of coffee, and never, not once, think about nitrites or macros or glucose or, I dunno, death. I sometimes wish I could just eat, you know?
But here I am, 100 grams of protein in my day and armed (burdened?) with a half century of nutrition knowledge that Pete Campbell never had, and I’m staring at a tin of cooked cod from David Protein. It’s small—about the size and shape of a fresh bar of soap—and it has roughly the same amount of protein as four large eggs. I first encountered David’s cod last fall, in an excellent story by Tom Foster about the protein-bar behemoth and the controversy surrounding the ingredients that make its blockbuster bars possible. The story ended with what I, along with a great many other people, assumed was an elaborate marketing joke:
[David] launched single-serving pouches of cod. No, not a cod-flavored protein bar, but frozen, wild-caught Pacific cod, with instructions to boil before eating. On Instagram, the launch video played more like a perfume ad than a food drop. A beautiful woman dressed in a white unitard walks into a locker room, opens a steel locker, and pulls out a plate of cod. She takes a slow, sensual bite. The camera lingers on her chewing face. “Introducing Boiled Cod,” the screen reads. “Slightly more protein per calorie than our bars.”
Did I gag a little at the mention of “boiled cod?” I may have. Then Tom introduces both David founder Peter Rahal and his then-chief science officer, Dr. Peter Attia, and things start to make a little more sense:
“A six-ounce serving of boiled cod contains about 23 grams of protein, zero fat, zero carbs, and about 100 calories, making it one of the leanest whole-food protein sources available. A David bar, by comparison, delivers a little bit more protein but also more calories. Side by side, cod is the healthier choice.
The idea traces back to Attia and the effort, early in David Protein’s prelaunch development, to coin calories-from-protein as the key quality metric and create a comparison chart showing David’s protein number topping those of other bar companies. As Rahal recalls, “Peter [Attia] was like, ‘No one will trust your comparison chart if you’re number one,’ so he set out to find something better and came back and said, ‘I’ve found it and it’s perfect! It’s boiled cod. And it has to be boiled; it can’t be sautéed.’” Rahal thought that was “hilarious,” he says, so he posted a picture of a piece of cod on the site to fill out his protein comparison chart.
“LESS PUNGENT than sardines, SOFTER than tuna, LIGHTLY SALTED and with a faintly MEALY TEXTURE, it is the kind of thing one imagines Bryan Johnson eating with JOYLESS RESOLVE.”
So what began as a protein-maxxing joke has evolved into the consumer product in front of me, dubbed Cod 2.0, because the fish is now sourced from the Atlantic, pre-boiled, brined in salt, and ready to eat for about $10 a serving. It comes in a package that reads “Super Protein for the Human Form” (catchy!) and features an old master–ish painting of a shirtless man being eaten by a giant fish (ironic!). Unlike David’s protein bars, it contains only two ingredients—cod and salt—and qualifies as the type of “whole food” that we Men’s Health types are always recommending for nutrients. (Chicken and tuna and red meat may pack more protein, but they can also come with higher calorie and fat counts.) It is, by virtually any measure, about as clean and lean as protein gets.
Also unlike a David protein bar: It does not smell or taste like a candy bar. I crack the tin and—whoa. Yeah. It’s fish, with top notes of freshly opened tuna giving way to something altogether funkier. (I’ve heard other people compare the base notes to cat food, but I’ve never owned a cat and have never knowingly smelled cat food, so I’m going to stick with “funky.”) I poke at the meat with a fork. It’s pale and flaky and slick with brine. I scoop some up and take a bite.
It’s…fine, I guess?
Less pungent than sardines, softer than tuna, lightly salted and with a faintly mealy texture, it is the kind of thing one imagines Bryan Johnson eating with joyless resolve. David recommends adding lemon or putting the cod on top of a salad. I tried both, and it frankly seemed like a waste of a perfectly good lemon and an otherwise delicious salad. The cod still tasted bland. It still felt mealy. And I wasn’t thinking about the motherlode of macros entering my body. I was thinking that there are limits to what a person should be willing to do in the name of efficiency and optimization.
Maybe Cod 2.0 is an elaborate marketing ploy, a useful distraction from the continuing questions about David’s protein bars, which the company has vigorously defended. (The company has also just launched an ice cream line, which our seasoned tester greatly enjoyed.) Or maybe it’s just a brilliant way to capitalize on the protein-maxxing craze—an exceptionally efficient macro-delivery system for people who have trained themselves to experience food as a collection of numbers.
It could be both, but I’ve had my last tin for a while. I may never again be able to eat without doing the math, but I know that I don’t want every meal to feel like homework.
Richard Dorment is the editorial director of Men’s Health and Women’s Health.
