Remember the last time you got sick? It sucks, right? Lying around wishing away several highly uncomfortable and utterly useless days. What would you give to never have to experience that again?

The good news is that a nutrient-laden diet might be all that’s needed. After a cancer scare back in 2008, I got swept up in a wave of motivation for healthy living, with a healthy diet front and center. My intention was only to prevent more serious diseases in the long-term future, but after a couple of years, I noticed a rather peculiar side-effect: I wasn’t getting sick anymore.

Aside from healthy food, my new healthy lifestyle included plenty of exercise, and Norway’s pristine air and water played their part, too. But the other two pillars of health; sleep and low stress, remained far from ideal for most of my ongoing perfect-health streak.

This tells me that an excellent diet and regular exercise could ward off almost all common illnesses in otherwise healthy individuals. And a diet that supplies the body with every nutrient required to maintain a supercharged immune system must take most of the credit.

So, without further ado, here’s the story behind the 12 foods that kept me in perfect health for the past 12 years.

1. Avocado

When this journey started, all I knew about nutrition was that we should eat more fruit and vegetables. To put it mildly, I was no veggie-fan, so I decided to start with the fruits I like best. And crushed avo on crunchy bread/toast, seasoned with a bit of Aromat (later replaced by regular salt and pepper), was right at the top of that list.

Since then, I averaged about 5 medium-sized avos per week. Over 12 years, that means that I’ve devoured more than 3000 of these fatty fruits! I was mighty chuffed when I found out later that avocados are among the healthiest things on Earth, but pure enjoyment remains the chief driver of my avo habit.

2. Kiwi Fruit

My second big love from the world of fruit is the kiwi. These odd creations were always a pricey luxury growing up, but my career had just started, and I had some money for the first time. So, I decided to splurge on a big bag of kiwis every week.

This little story doesn’t have a completely happy ending though. Since I like my kiwis rather sour, all that acid eventually caused some damage to my teeth. Hence, I had to downgrade these delicious vitamin-C-bombs from a staple to an occasional indulgence a couple of years back.

But kiwis played a big role in keeping me healthy through those early years when I was still a nutrition noob. Nowadays, I can effortlessly max out on natural nutrients without having to OD on kiwis.

3. Free Fruit

Another big factor in kickstarting my perfect-health streak was the free fruit baskets we receive at work. My new health obsession joined forces with my great love of free stuff (a remnant from my student days) to help me exploit this privilege with shameless vigor.

Over the years, as I’ve learned more about the societal impacts of health, it became clear that this simple free fruit basket is one of the smartest things any employer can do. The amount of productivity the world loses due to absenteeism and presenteeism is just ridiculous, and a modest fruit basket can make a big dent in these astronomical costs.

4. Cucumber

My deep-seated fear of vegetables lasted for years into my 12-year streak, but cucumber was a rather unusual exception. I especially enjoyed the crunch it gave to a ham and cheese spread sandwich, which I indulged in a little too liberally back in the day. Self-help guru Tony Robbins’ spirited endorsement of the humble cucumber for its alkaline benefits also played its part.

Ham, cheese spread, and bread have long since departed from my diet, but cucumber remains a prominent feature, mainly as a bit of green next to my warm meals.

5. Salmon

Fish was another food group I expertly avoided in the years leading up to my great health journey. I grew up as an enthusiastic meat lover in South Africa, heavily influenced by our beautiful braai-culture. But life had decided to take me to Norway — a country that doesn’t exactly have the best BBQ weather and produces much of the world’s salmon.

So, it was not long before people started serving me various kinds of salmon. The first few times, I was mentally preparing myself to put on a brave smile and politely suffer through this fishy meal, but, to my great surprise, I genuinely liked it! Baked salmon soon became my weekend staple.

Recently, I cut back a little, based on the questionable environmental and health impacts and the high price of farmed salmon (shifting more to sustainably caught pollock and mackerel). But salmon still had a decisive role to play in getting my health journey started.

6. Yogurt

For many years, most of my days started with sweetened fruit yogurt (passion fruit and melon of all things) and fruit muesli. Yes, the added sugar was not so great, but yogurt still brings several health benefits to the table. And, above all, I really enjoyed it.

In the long-run this proved invaluable, forming the basis for the superfood breakfast I enjoy today — the single best combination of health, taste, and practicality I’ve ever come across. In the next sections, you’ll hear more about the list of ingredients that jazz up the much healthier plain Greek yogurt that binds that beautiful breakfast together.

7. Nuts

Peanuts were about the only nut I knew growing up. They were OK to eat when they ended up in front of me, but I would never buy them myself. However, by this time I was starting to become more informed about the wide variety of nutritious foods at our disposal. Nuts kept popping up in my research and it wasn’t long before a bag of mixed nuts became a regular on my shopping list.

I started with some fancy nut mixes containing a little-too-liberal helping of raisins and those delicious little sweetened papaya blocks. As a snack food, this turned out to be a bit dangerous. Nowadays, I buy a pack with a much lower concentration of sweet fruits and reserve it only for my super-breakfast and as a convenient energy booster on long ski trips.

8. Berries

Aside from fish, Norway also introduced me to another nutritious source of culinary enjoyment: berries. Even without knowing about all the phytonutrients and other fancy-sounding health-boosters, berries would still find a regular spot in my diet on taste alone.

It started out with the good old blueberry-breakfast combo. But after a while, the unreliable quality and wild price fluctuations of fresh blueberries drove me to the mixed packs of fresh-frozen berries that bring a lovely bit of sweetness and even more variety to my superfood breakfast.

9. Seeds

As I read more books on nutrition and health, one strange thing kept popping up: hemp seeds. These suspicious-sounding seeds were supposed to be the most nutritionally complete food on the planet so, naturally, I had to have them in my diet.

Initially, the crazy price of small packs of hemp seeds forced me to use it as a little luxurious sprinkle of perfect health on an early iteration of my ideal breakfast. But then, one fine day, I saw a 20 kg bag of hemp seed online that worked out more than 3x cheaper per kilo than the small packs I’d been buying up to that point.

It was still a sizable investment, but, per calorie, it was actually a little cheaper than my overall diet. Once I realized that I could include generous helpings of the world’s most nutritionally complete food in my diet and actually save money, it was a done deal. Bulk purchases of various other (much cheaper) seeds soon followed, creating the “seed bank” solution that underpins my breakfast today.

10. Spinach

I’d be hard-pressed to name something I like less than cooked spinach. So, when I read in The World’s Healthiest Foods that spinach is the most nutrient-dense thing on the planet, I was not very pleased with Mother Nature.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way. After several failed attempts at making spinach tasty, it eventually became the inspiration behind my decade-old green smoothie habit together with other scary green stuff like kale and celery. Indeed, with some apple, cucumber, ginger, and a generous helping of orange juice, these green health-bombs become downright tolerable.

11. Orange Juice

Good old OJ has had a tough time of late. You can even find claims online that fruit juice is just as bad as soda. While there might be some truth to that when talking about highly processed juices with lots of added sugar, pressed orange juice with pulp is pretty close to a whole orange (only much more convenient).

Orange juice regularly found its way into my fridge in those early years, simply because I liked it. But it became a staple when I committed to my green smoothie habit. Since then, I’ve consumed my weekly liter of this good old immune booster like clockwork.

12. Cooked Vegetables

Last but not least, we get to the most recent advance in my health journey: a major pivot towards higher concentrations of cooked vegetables in my warm meals. Given my historical aversion to vegetables, this counts as a major life achievement.

Like several other things on this list, I came away from the experience pleasantly surprised at how pain-free it was. In this case, I used the “meat as a vegetable dressing” philosophy to get maximum taste out of my cooked veggies, while simultaneously reducing my meat intake. It’s highly recommended, for health, environmental, and animal welfare reasons.

The Takeaway

This experience taught me that the human immune system can take care of almost any common bug if it’s kept in tip-top shape via a super-healthy diet (backed up by regular exercise). To make the deal even sweeter, I discovered that this super-diet can still be deeply enjoyable and highly practical.

Our world would be a much happier and more productive place without common illnesses in the short-term and serious degenerative diseases when we get older. So, how about it? Let’s build this world together — one healthy meal at a time.

Thanks to Alta Cloete.

Please note that this article only shares one guy’s positive experience with switching to a highly nutritious diet containing the above-mentioned foods. I am not claiming that regular consumption of these 12 foods guarantees that you never get sick again (some of the foods may even cause adverse reactions in certain individuals). The story is only meant as an inspiring tale of the good that can come from a super-healthy diet.