Ben Saunders has dragged sleds across Antarctica, skied to the North Pole, and spent months alone in temperatures that would freeze a steak solid in minutes.
So when the British polar explorer opened up about his expedition diet, America sat up and listened.
And folks — what he revealed is NOT for the faint of heart.
Saunders, who famously completed a 1,800-mile solo trek across Antarctica in 2014, has been candid about the brutal reality of fueling a human body at minus 40 degrees.
On a recent podcast appearance, he broke down exactly what went down his throat during those endless white days.
We're talking roughly 6,000 to 8,000 calories a day, packed into frozen blocks of fat, sugar, and freeze-dried regret.
Breakfast: oats drowned in butter and oil.
Lunch: frozen chocolate bars that shatter your teeth if you bite too fast.
Dinner: rehydrated meals with an entire stick of butter melted on top, chased by handfuls of nuts and cheese.
But here's the part that really got people talking.
Saunders admitted he'd sometimes eat straight blocks of pure fat — yes, like a candy bar — because his body was burning through everything he threw at it.
When you're hauling 300 pounds of gear through waist-deep snow for 10 hours a day, your metabolism becomes a furnace that never, ever quits. "I was basically a human garbage disposal," he joked.
Viewers were equal parts horrified and fascinated.
One commenter wrote, "I gain weight just reading this." Another demanded to know how his stomach survived.
The answer, according to Saunders: it barely did.
Digestion slows in extreme cold, and eating becomes a chore, not a pleasure.
Which is the twisted irony nobody expects.
Here's a man burning more calories in a day than most Americans burn in three — and he STILL had to force-feed himself.
He described choking down food when his body screamed "no," because the alternative was losing muscle, losing strength, and losing the expedition.
Saunders has said the mental battle around food was almost harder than the physical one.
You eat what's in the bag, or you don't make it.
Despite inhaling butter by the brick, Saunders still dropped serious pounds.
That's how savage the energy demands were.
For the rest of us sitting in heated homes with DoorDash on speed dial, it's a wild reality check.
The man treated lard like a power bar and still came home lighter. **Our take:** Saunders isn't selling a diet — and thank goodness, because this one would wreck the average person.
But his story is a jaw-dropping reminder of what the human body can endure when survival is the only item on the menu.
Final Thoughts
Next time you complain about meal prep, remember: at least nobody's asking you to eat frozen butter in a blizzard.