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7 Perfect Survival Foods

If you could take only seven kinds of food to a deserted island, what would they be? Bacon might top your list, but you won't have a cardiologist to bail you out when your arteries fill with fat.

If you want to survive at least long enough to listen to your top seven CDs, read your top seven books, watch your top seven movies and do all the other things you want on this magical island, then your diet needs to be healthy.

Diets benefit from being diverse. U.S. health organizations advocate eating five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. In Denmark the number is six, not because they want to be healthier but because six sounds like the word "sex" in Danish, and the campaign plays on the pun of "sex every day." The Japanese try to eat 30 different kinds of food each day.

But sticking just to the following seven foods would likely serve you better than the typical American diet and meet your needs for macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals).

-- Christopher Wanjek, LiveScience's Bad Medicine Columnist