Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's new HBO series "Ballers" begins Sunday night. Johnson plays a former pro-football player who becomes a financial advisor for current athletes.
This sparks us to ask once again, how on earth does he maintain that muscular physique?
Well, we found out. In an interview with "Muscle and Fitness" magazine, Johnson explained in detail what he eats every day.
In a fitness plan that consists of seven full meals and two and a half hours of exercise, Johnson admits to eating cod in four of those seven meals, adding up to a staggering two-and-change pounds of the fish each day. Every day. All year.
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Walt Hickey of FiveThirtyEight did the math — Johnson eats about 821 pounds of cod a year (here's the full meal plan).
Mallory Ortberg of "The Toast" documented her reaction to reading Johnson's meal plan in real time.
MEAL 2: 8 oz cod/12 oz sweet potato/1 cup veggies: DWAYNE THE ROCK JOHNSON YOU JUST HAD A WHOLE THING OF COD A MINUTE AGO HOW MANY CODS HAVE YOU GOT STUFFED UP IN YOUR FRIDGE MY MAN?? I MEAN.
Because that much cod a year is ridiculous to even imagine consuming (as is working out for two and a half hours a day, seven days a week), we plugged in Johnson's cod intake to a mercury calculator to see if 800 pounds of cod per calendar year was in the unsafe zone for mercury consumption.
For fun, we guessed Johnson weighs about 260, and, according to his meal plan, consumes four medium-sized servings of Alaskan cod a day. The calculator determines safe mercury levels by weekly intake, so that's 28 servings a week.
Alas, the calculator does not allow you to plug in a number that exceeds 10 servings a week! But even when we plugged in 10 servings, the NRDC calculator concluded what we kind of already assumed: At 10 servings of cod a week, Johnson is above the safe level of mercury intake (and he's consuming more than twice that amount.)
To quote Ortberg: "I got nothing left to say at you, my man, I gotta lay down on the floor for a real quick minute, please continue doing you until you can no longer do it."
