Ancient Near East, roughly 1500 BCE. Fat isn't just food. It's sacred.
— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) December 17, 2025
Levitical texts detail how the "choice fat" of sacrificial animals belongs to God. The fat of the kidneys, the fat covering the organs, the fat tail of sheep: all reserved for burning on the altar. The… pic.twitter.com/BDvMZk2pdu
Ancient Near East, roughly 1500 BCE. Fat isn't just food. It's sacred. Levitical texts detail how the "choice fat" of sacrificial animals belongs to God. The fat of the kidneys, the fat covering the organs, the fat tail of sheep: all reserved for burning on the altar. The priests consume the meat, but the fat? That's holy. Too valuable for human consumption in religious ceremonies. It goes to the divine. This isn't unique to Hebrew tradition. Across ancient cultures, fat is revered. The Greeks believe the gods prefer the smoke from burning fat over any other offering. Romans save the best fat for festival days and religious observances. Fat represents prosperity, blessing, abundance. Jump forward to medieval Europe. The nobility eats fat with every meal. Fatty cuts are status symbols. The poor eat lean scraps and develop deficiencies. Eating fat means you've made it. You have resources. You're successful. Then something shifts. Around the 16th century, Christian asceticism starts reframing physical pleasure as spiritual danger. The body is corrupt. Physical desires must be denied. Fasting becomes virtue. Deprivation becomes godliness. And fat? Fat becomes associated with sin. Gluttony. Lust. Physical indulgence. The pleasure of eating fat is recast as moral weakness. "Fatty foods" become coded language for excess and lack of self-control. By Victorian times, this is fully crystallised. Fatty meat is "rich" food. Rich doesn't mean expensive anymore: it means excessive, dangerous, immodest. A proper Victorian lady doesn't eat fat. That would be vulgar. She eats lean portions and demonstrates moral superiority through dietary restraint. The temperance movement expands this. They're not just against alcohol. They're against anything that brings physical pleasure. Fatty meat makes you lustful. Spices make you aggressive. Pleasure itself becomes the enemy of virtue. This worldview gets dressed up in scientific language by the 20th century but the moral framework remains identical. Eating fat isn't just unhealthy: it's undisciplined, weak, shameful. People who eat fatty foods lack self-control. They're giving in to base desires. We went from burning fat as an offering to God to treating fat consumption as moral failure. Same substance. The only thing that changed was who controlled the narrative. And who benefited? The grain industry needed fat to be shameful so bread could be virtuous. The sugar industry needed fat to be dangerous so sweetness could be innocent. The pharmaceutical industry needed fat to be disease-causing so they could sell statins. Fat didn't change. The agenda did. Your great-great-grandmother ate dripping on toast and called it breakfast. Your grandmother was taught to fear it. You've been taught it'll kill you. What changed wasn't the science. What changed was who stood to profit.
