Remember the last article about gut health and mental wellbeing? It's now time to set the scene for one of the most misunderstood macronutrients of our nutrition: fat.

Yet, as anyone starting the journey of biohacking has learned, I've come to understand that healthy fats are not just beneficial; they are essential to wellness. And no, fat doesn’t make you fat, at least not all types of it. And yes, everything you know from a young age and the TV ads about your perfect healthy breakfast with cereals and milk is a big lie! Sorry to be so blunt.

The Corporate Myth: How Big Business Demonized Fat

In the 1970s and 80s, a significant shift occurred in public health narratives around diet, particularly concerning fats. This shift was largely propelled by misleading studies financed by large food corporations intent on demonizing fats while promoting carbohydrates. Guess who was behind these studies after all? A certain Mr. Kellog and co. Yes, the same Kellog of your dreams’ cornflakes!

A book, or better yet a bible, about this topic I already cited in previous articles, is Dr. Robert Lustig’s book, "Metabolical". I’ll leave you all the nitty gritty details about how fats are made of from a chemical composition nor how they specifically interact with the body, but here is what you need to know. Good fats, and we’ll see them in a second, are extremely important to lower inflammation in the body and they are used by lots of “good” bacteria in our guts to produce other very healthy and useful molecules that give us energy, focus and - guess what - decrease our body’s fat-storing process. So yes, we can say that good fats make you slimmer!

Not All Fats Are Created Equal: Understanding Good vs. Bad Fats

Not all fats are the same, nor do they affect our bodies in the same way. And since it’s not a nutrition class, to keep it simple the main categories, in order of “healthiness” benefits are 1) saturated, 2) monounsaturated, 3) polyunsaturated and last but not least 4) trans fats.

Thanks for the image and the great book: The Great Cholesterol Myth by Bowden and Sinatra

Letting aside the trans fats which are - I hope! - the most well-established negative ones above all. Very often uncertainty and ignorance lie among the other ones.

If you grew up with the positive sticker on Extra Virgin Olive oil, you have picked the most famous monounsaturated fat. It’s rich in Omega fatty acids, and if you like we can dive deeper into why it is not that easy to source a good one anymore in future articles. But for now, let’s debunk the most important problem I believe is shared among those who still have to digest these notions.

Debunking Family Traditions: Lard vs Vegetable Oil

For generations, families—including mine—have passed down cooking traditions that, at some point in the last 50 years, have become modern society's biggest nightmares. Lard, butter, and beef tallow all suddenly became feared for their saturated fat content and were instead replaced by highly processed vegetable oils. Remember TV ads a few years ago when people eating butter were sentenced to suffering miserable high-cholesterol lives while the ones eating sunflower oil were running happily around with smiley faces?

Polyunsaturated fats, aka most vegetable oils, are causing much inflammation in our gut due to their unstable molecular structure and often highly refined process of extraction. These oils in turn make our metabolism slow down, we are less effectively eliminating toxins and, the biggest problem for any high-performance individual, they make us lose mental energy and focus.

Embrace good saturated fats in your life and you will immediately see better blood sugar level regulation, you’ll boost your cognitive function and reduce the overall inflammation in your body.

Good fats can even be the single most impactful tool to reverse diabetes! (more on this in future articles if you like, drop a comment below)

Embracing Healthy Fats: A Biohacker’s Best Friend

It's crucial to challenge and rethink the myths that have long surrounded the role of fats in our diet. Healthy fats and other “biohacking” practices such as fasting - we’ll see this topic in a dedicated article - dramatically helped me boost my metabolism and improve my mental energy.

What about you? Are you still worried about being killed by a heavy slice of butter in the morning? Or did you already welcome good fat in your life?