Neo Should’ve Picked the Blue Pill

What if I told you… we burn better than we think?

If you think long and hard enough, for most of human history?

We burnt fat.

I don’t mean that metaphorically or philosophically. This is before food rituals even existed. Our ancestors built empires with it. They lit temples and survived sieges & famines by taping into a secret stash that every one of them carried:

Animal fat

It came with labels a many. Tallow, lard, suet, even whale oil. Fat was a currency for survival. When a Roman army marched, their grease trail marked their route. When a Viking set out, his fat-packed stores¹ wrapped in cloth & legend marked his fury.

In the frigid lairs, Inuit tribes powered their bodies² on a diet that modern dieticians would label as madness! But they weren’t concerned, they were warm; they were alive!

And thus, the story of fat unfolds, not the one of decadence (which is really all too familiar), but rather, the one by design.

Sugar is but a finicky flicker; fat a fiery forge.

The Science

You’ve likely read it all. You probably know by now. Still, if only to measure the ~~steaks~~ stakes, one must understand the alchemy.

A molecule of triglyceride slips into the bloodstream, escorted with the ceremony of a royal guest. The liver, ever the master chemist, performs it’s incantations. Beta oxidation. Ketogenesis. A slight tingle behind the eyes. And then it happens.

Fire in a new form.

Ketone bodies emerge. Acetoacetate. Beta-hydroxybutyrate. But perhaps the most poetic of all? Acetone.

Yes. Nail polish remover.

You smell it, faintly, on your breath in the morning. That sharpness. That chemical ghost of your body burning its reserves, sending signals from the inside.

A whisper of fire on your tongue, and no, it’s not the curry.

Nor is it dysfunction. ‘Tis elegance. Evolution’s quiet contingency. When sugar is scarce. Burn slow. Burn clean. Don’t panic.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot. From the tender age’s introduction to sweets, to the Gluco-rush, to the Crash. It’s the Cycle of life as we knew it.

We invented breakfast cereals and energy bars, forgetting that our species once traversed deserts on camel milk and clumps of butter wrapped in leaves. Sugar became king.

But fat was always sovereign.

And then Hollywood came along and tried to plug us in.

The ScienceFiction

Let’s talk about The Matrix. That 1999 blend of leather & latex and characters who wore shades like it was battle armor.

It asked all the big questions. What is real? What is freedom? And, bafflingly, what if machines harvested humans to generate… electricity?

Electricity.

From our bodies.

Sure.

Now, let’s be kind and assume the machines had it rough. The average human brain outputs less electrical power than an LED bulb. (Not the fancy ones, the cheap ones at the back of the shelf)

Meanwhile, the same human body contains around 100,000 kilocalories of stored fat, a biochemical goldmine, if you’re even halfway serious about harvesting energy.

And if that energy did in fact come from humans, you wouldn’t bother with the cerebral cortex, you’d go straight for the subcutaneous treasure chest.

They plugged into the wrong end.

The brain emits thought. And thought demands the most complex of systems to sustain.

The gut is where the real power plants were.

A futuristic person with orange orbs rising through her body, surrounded by wires in a glowing Matrix pod. — Digital artwork of a woman in a sci-fi chair with wires and orange glow, evoking themes of cybernetic augmentation.

Had the machines understood metabolism, they’d have redesigned the pods. No cranial jacks. Just long tubes that siphoned short-chain fatty acids, fermented butyric acid, maybe even the odd ketone pulse.

They’d have skipped the whole “simulate life” nonsense and gone full bioreactor. Keep the host in fasting, in a peaceful coma. Maintain low insulin.

Humanity would’ve just sat there, blissfully ketotic, dreamlessly sipping away in sleep while our livers kept the world running.

And it would’ve worked. We aren’t made to be plugged in but we’re sure as hell made to burn.

Slowly.

Elegantly.

Like an oil lamp in a howling Nordic storm.

The machines got it wrong.

The Matrix didn’t fail because humans are rebellious.

It failed because no one taught the machines to count calories.

Book References on Amazon

Book cover for 'The Fat of the Land' by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, featuring a steak on slate. — Cover of ‘The Fat of the Land’ showing a seared steak with rosemary on a dark background.

Book cover for 'An Early Meal', a Viking Age cookbook. — Cover of ‘An Early Meal’ featuring a Viking ship on calm water at dusk.

¹An Early Meal – a Viking Age Cookbook & Culinary Odyssey
²The Fat of the Land

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**What in the world is tallow and suet?**

Tallow is rendered beef or mutton fat, once a cooking staple, now a misunderstood gem of old-world kitchens. Suet, its raw sibling, is the hard white fat found around the kidneys and loins of cattle or sheep. While tallow can be stored and cooked with, suet is prized for its high melting point and was once the backbone of everything from pastries to battlefield provisions.

Is ketosis really how humans were meant to run?

It’s not the only way but it’s certainly one of the oldest. Ketosis is the body’s natural backup engine when carbs are scarce. It burns fat efficiently, fuels the brain with ketones, and maintains energy for days or even weeks. For early humans facing seasonal scarcity, it wasn’t a diet. It was design.

Was The Matrix scientifically accurate?

Scientifically accurate? Not unless you’re powering machines with warm hugs and phone-level voltage. Morpheus name-dropped bio-electricity and body heat, then bailed with “a form of fusion.” It’s less physics, more poetic licence.

But hey, it looked cool.