(Originally published by Adam Mogelonsky as a LinkedIn article on July 26, 2024)

Okay, I realize this is not normal. The picture above is one of my own midweek ‘breakfasts’ typically falling around 8am and it deserves some long-form exploration for your edutainment. Yes, I’m a bit crazy with this whole longevity and biohacking pursuit, but the point in showing some of the longevity meals I prepare is both for healthy inspiration and to give you a glimpse at the future of food so that your organization (most likely a hotel as that’s my industry) can plan accordingly.

—FIRST SOME CONTEXT —

Humanity’s total knowledge of nutrition and ‘food as medicine’ is lightyears ahead of where it was five years ago. Incredibly smart scientists and doctors collaborating from around the world (and using some very snazzy technologies) are starting to tease out the nuances of the cellular mechanisms of disease as well as aging being a contributing factor for all diseases. There’s now an armada of evidence-based foods, beverages and supplements that one can take to help with antiaging or ameliorate various illnesses while they are in their nascent stage.

Unfortunately, eating is identity, and habits takes much, much longer to change. For instance, the idea of ‘three square meals’ is not grounded in science but came about as a marketing slogan alongside ‘snacking boosts your metabolism’. We now know that intermittent fasting (IF) and caloric restriction (CR) are both commendable methods for the body to self-repair; you can’t fix a car with the engine on, as they say. There’s the 16:8 (eight hour eating window, 16 hours off), the 5:2 (five days regular eating, two with CR), OMAD (one meal a day) and ETRF (early time-restricted fasting).

And yet, the world still operates around three square meals and constant snacking: bed and breakfast hotel incentives, late-night snack foods and convenience stores shilling ultra-processed foods. Barring certain medical conditions, the best overall breakfast may in fact be plain old water (filtered, of course) and your preferred form of caffeine or herbal tea. As an existent question, how will select elements of society will change when most people are on the IF or CR bandwagon? Or, as wishful thinking, why aren’t restaurants offering supplements a la carte with food orders?

—NOTES TO FILE—

Musings aside, the purpose of walking you through everything here is so that you can take what’s possible and apply it to your at-home practices. Furthermore, know that each and every day more people are adding various hacks to their daily consumption in order to boost energy levels, improve cognition, optimize weight, bolster longevity or all of the above. There’s a demand, however nascent and immeasurable, for hotels and restaurants that cater to the biohacking crowd.

Also note that while there’s a lot going on in the below, I’m never just standing around preparing and consuming these items. I’m simultaneously listening to a nonfiction audiobook, a podcast or a YouTube video, while also doing a bit of morning movement – laundry, cleaning, emptying the dishwasher, stretches, leg swings, hip airplanes, Cossack squats, sissy squats and so on. Mobility is immensely important for longevity and requires constant focus, while increasingly non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) and variable intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) are being shown to be equally as important for vitality as that one dedicated workout you do everyday.

Finally, I’m throwing a ton of perhaps-foreign biochemical and nutritional terminology at you. For instance, I could’ve simplified this by labels different families of molecules like carotenoids, flavonols and polyphenols as ‘antioxidants’ but that’s not who I am, nor would that ultimately help you in your health pursuits. The story is in the specificity, so let’s get started…

—FOODS (left side)—

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO): This green gold of the Mediterranean has long been cited as a pillar for the Blue Zones diets of this region. I slurp down 2-3 tablespoons with the rest of what’s pictured in order to get a small dose of EVOO’s unique spectrum of polyphenols (oleuropein, oleocanthal, hydroxytyrosol etc.) as well as the oil’s heart-healthy monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), predominantly oleic acid. These fats also activate the release of various digestive enzymes to help breakdown the pills and add in fat-soluble molecule absorption.

Specifically here is a bottle of the Peranzana varietal from Puglia, although I change it up with every purchase depending on what the local merchant has in stock. Importantly for your own purchases, take ahead as a lot of what’s out there is adulterated with unhealthy, neutral-tasting, omega-6-dominant seed oils, or producers are using old, blended olive oils that are likely half-rancid (as chemicals, polyphenols have short half lives).

I’m now paying upwards of $50CAD for a bottle of real EVOO, but I only use this for the breakfast slurp or as salad dressing – never for cooking as EVOO isn’t stable under medium heat – so it lasts me awhile. You can use markers like the price tag or the presence of a specific harvest date to verify an EVOO’s authenticity, but the best indicator is to follow Dr. Gundry’s timeless mantra, ‘more bitter, more better’. When you sip a bit of the oil and it leaves you with a peppery bitterness on the back of your throat, this feeling is elicited by the presence of a high concentration of polyphenols.

Manuka Honey: Comparing refined sugar to honey is like comparing a Toyota Carolla to a Lamborghini. Society is now rightfully demonizing added table sugar and other deceptive marketing names for it – evaporated cane juice?! – as a culprit in type-2 diabetes, type-3 diabetes (otherwise known as Alzheimer’s), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and numerous others. But consider this: the Hadza people of the rugged highlands of Tanzania seasonally get roughly 50% of their calories from raw honey, and yet they remain non-obese and almost never incur the illnesses of modern Western civilization. Clearly, there’s something else going on.

Renowned for its antimicrobial properties since before Egyptian records indicate as such, honey has a life of its own. Each morsel is a ‘matrix’ or structured lattice of trace minerals, vitamins, amino acids, phenolic acids, flavonoids and other sugars like trehalose. There’s an incredible variety of honeys from around the world based on the region and the types of flowers the bees are pollinating. I’m always looking for new ones to try, but a staple that I regularly consume is manuka. This type of honey is especially prized for dense antioxidant concentration, including the presence of unique manuka factor (UMF), also known as methylglyoxal, which is actually toxic in high doses yet acts as a hormesis stressor in low doses like what a human would be capable of consuming in one sitting.

Here I never take more than a teaspoon of honey. This is just enough to stimulate the release of carbohydrate digestive enzymes to aid in the breakdown of the supplements, but not enough to cause an insulin spike and initiate the anti-autophagic growth cascade that involves IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) and mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin), thus preserving a fast.

—DRINK (middle right)—

Matcha Green Tea: Cited as one of the main superfoods behind why Japanese people live far longer than those of other nations, the most-celebrated molecule underpinning this longevity is EGCG (epigallocatechin-3-gallate), although all members of the catechin family are showing health benefits. Green tea also contains a low dose of caffeine for that morning jolt in addition to the related compound theophylline which stimulates the brain in a more subtle way and L-theanine which has a direct calming effect.

Any green tea is better than no green tea, although ceremonial-grade matcha is most highly prized and likely to have a substantial total antioxidant concentration – organic better than not, of course. What I do is fire up the tea kettle as the first step in my overall preparation routine of everything that’s pictured here then move on to the coffee.

As cool tangent, the catechins in green tea are also being studied for their ability to activate brown adipose tissue (BAT) through a process known as the ‘beiging’ of white adipose tissue (WAT), wherein white fat is converted back into the thermogenic brown fat – tissue that not only stores energy but produces heat to keep you warm. This retrofitting of baby fat was thought to be a one-way road, but a few foods like green tea and hot sauce as well as cold plunges are changing this belief, wherein the actual beige comes as a result of a sharp uptick in the number of intracellular mitochondria and uncoupling proteins on each mitochondrion’s phospholipid bilayer – both good things to have from the macro process of bodily aging. In other words, green tea has benefits beyond just a subdued cognitive perk.

Hibiscus Cold Tea: Also known as the Flor de Jamaica in Spanish, I do a cold-water extract the night before, wherein the cold preserves the red-spectrum polyphenols and vitamin C present in the dried flowers (vitamin C is highly heat sensitive). This involves me dropping two full tea cages into a 2L pitcher of water and leaving it overnight in the fridge for a minimum of eight hours.

Unlike preparations in the Caribbean, I do not add sugar to this, giving the hibiscus tea a soft cranberry taste. Not pictured here, I often add a scoop of collagen powder as well as a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (ACV) whose primary ingredient is acetic acid, a short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) that the body can use as an alternate fuel source besides glucose. This makes a bit of ACV in the morning a good tool for fat loss, albeit it should always be watered down as the acid can be quite harsh on the tongue and gumline.

Mud Coffee: This coffee is what I drink while getting everything else ready. This one is an acquired taste, and I chose the name ‘mud’ for its gritty mouthfeel. The first step here is to brew a long pour espresso of your preferred roast. Next, you add in:

• Heaping teaspoon of raw cacao powder (packed with flavonols and theobromine, a molecule similar to caffeine in the xanthine family)
• Generous dash of cinnamon (regular cassia cinnamon is fine but Ceylon is preferrable if you can source it)
• Pinch of cloves (pungent but incredibly high in ORAC, oxygen radical absorbance capacity, at almost double that of turmeric)
• Pinch of activated charcoal or food ash (this helps to chelate or bind up the heavy metals that naturally accumulate in cacao plants)

—SUPPLEMENTS (bottom right)—

By now your eyes are likely tired and your brain is swimming in biochemical acronyms, so I’ll leave the subsequent nerddom to a minimum. Above all, know that supplements are supplemental, meaning that not one of the pills mentioned here or anywhere else can substitute for a bad diet, lack of proper exercise, poor sleep or antisocial relationships. There are no panaceas; there’s no free lunch; you have to put in the work to get the results and that starts with the fundamentals before you add in the supplementals.

From left to right we have:

1. Rhodiola rosea (x1): An adaptogen quite popular amongst herbalists and in traditional Eastern medicines, this one is being studied for helping fight all manner of diseases.
2. Bacopa monnieri (x1): Long in use by Ayurveda practitioners, it’s long been regarded as a cognitive booster, making it a great addition to a morning stack.
3. Metamucil (x2): Marketed as an alleviant for constipation, this cheap supplement is one that you should consider irrespective of how regular you are. This is in fact the trade name for psyllium husk, whereupon the ground-up seeds are incredibly high in dietary fiber, specifically inulin which is also often in artichokes, asparagus and onions. The reasons you want a high fiber diet are twofold. To start, friendly gut flora (probiotics) can use the fiber as an energy source (prebiotics) then spit out compounds that our bodies can absorb to our own benefit (postbiotic). The most common of these from soluble fiber is the SCFA butyrate, also found in butter, that a ‘metabolically flexible’ brain can use as fuel, thus staving off hunger pangs from low blood sugar levels. Secondly, when bacteria in our guts get hungry, they can ‘decide’ to attack our gut linings with lipopolysaccharides (LPS) which in turn make us feel hungry or slightly fatigued. Taking a bit of inulin between meals helps to mollify our microscopic partners.
4. Chlorella (x2): Often compared to spirulina, this type of dried green algae has omega-3s and a small dose of carotenoids, namely beta carotene and lutein. Like activated charcoal, this also acts as a chelation agent to trap intestinal toxins and heavy metals.
5. Berberine (x2): Getting its namesake from the barberry fruit where it’s commonly found, this one is now colloquially called the ‘poor man’s metformin’ because of its studied effects as an autophagy inducer. I don’t take this all the time as it can inhibit weightlifting recovery, but it’s a great complement for IR and CR regimens.
6. CoQ10 (x2): Also known as coenzyme Q10 or ubiquinone, I go through a bottle then washing out in six-month long cycles so that the body can adapt to incorporating this compound. This is one of three main fat-soluble antioxidants – the others being vitamin E (tocopherol and tocotrienol) and vitamin K2 (menaquinone) – and being studied as a critical supplement for preserving tissue function, especially cardiac muscle and stomach acid production.
7. Magnesium bisglycinate (x2): The mineral Mg is an important cofactor for many enzymatic processes in the body and our soils nowadays are naturally deficient in it. While you can opt for magnesium citrate, magnesium threonate, magnesium taurate or others, I opt for the form bound to glycine because this amino acid is a precursor to collagen, creatine and glutathione – three important bodily compounds that diminish with age.
8. Krill oil (x2): This is the only animal-based aspect of this liquid breakfast, and while you can get a vegan alternative the krill form is better. The most important molecule within this oil is astaxanthin, a powerful free radical scavenger in the carotenoid family. While you can buy this as pure astaxanthin, the oil form comes along with the long-chain omega-3 fats EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), both of which are well-regarded for preserving grey matter in the brain to stave off dementia. You want the animal-based formulation because these fats come packaged in their phospholipid format – namely, phosphotidylcholine-DHA – so that transporter proteins in the blood-brain barrier recognize them as what they actually are and allow then to cross so that they can be effectively incorporated into neuronal cell membranes for maximal fluidity and plasticity. Lastly, note that any omega-3 supplement oxidizes upon exposure to air and light, so store these in the fridge once opened.

—CONCLUSION—

If there is a point to conclude on from all this, it would be to just learn. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is your knowledge base concerning nutrition, longevity hacks or any other subject of specialization. The above picture is a decade in the making, resulting from plenty of tinkering and adjustments based on what I’ve gleaned from books, scientific papers, other wellness practitioners I’ve met around the globe, podcasts and ‘YouTube University’.

It’s my belief that everyone should make a solid attempt to get up to speed with what’s happening in the world of medicine, wellness and nutrition, not only for your own health but to help those around you. Try to make lifelong learning a part of your daily routine and know that improving your own nutrition will act as a positive feedback loop by also improving your memory capacity – your ‘cognitive reserve’ – to therein allow you to learn and retain even more information. As always, comments and questions welcome.