Metabolic Flexibility: The Clinical Case for Inverting the Food Pyramid
Jan Gorczynski — Founder & Global CEO @ BeKeto, The Collagen Company
Jan K Gorczynski is the founder of BEKETO and The Collagen Company, a leading keto and low-carb brand across the UK and EU. In five years, he expanded BEKETO to nearly 200 products across multiple categories and a presence in 30 countries. A serial entrepreneur, his companies generate more than 10 million EUR in revenue. He is committed to healthy living, low-carb and keto diets, biohacking, and sauna.
Many chronic conditions share the same root: high insulin levels and impaired cellular energy production. Standard high-carbohydrate guidelines have done little to prevent insulin resistance. This presentation explains why the flipped food pyramid prioritizing quality protein, healthy fats, and nutrient-dense foods (while reducing refined carbohydrates) may restore the body's ability to switch between burning glucose and fat, ultimately delivering the metabolic flexibility needed for a longer life.
It is not the lifespan that matters; it is the health span—healthy living until old age. We want to be forever young, and that starts with the diet and teaching your body to be flexible in your metabolism.
Summary
- Historic food guidelines were based on flawed studies and corporate influence that demonized fat while ignoring the harmful effects of excessive sugar and carbohydrate intake. - Metabolic flexibility is the body's ability to switch between burning glucose and fats, preventing the energy crashes and chronic inflammation caused by metabolic rigidity. - The traditional food pyramid should be inverted to establish healthy fats and proteins as the dietary foundation, with carbohydrates used only strategically during intense activity. - Improving insulin sensitivity, mitochondrial health, and reducing systemic inflammation are the primary drivers for moving from medical intervention toward effective prevention. - Transitioning from the Standard American Diet to a ketogenic approach by cutting sugar is a critical step for improving health span and maintaining long-term metabolic efficiency.
Article
Metabolic Flexibility Took Centre Stage In Nice
Jan Gorczynski Made A Provocative Case For Turning Dietary Orthodoxy Upside Down At Hololife Longevity Cote d'Azur
At **Hololife Longevity Cote d'Azur** in **Nice, France**, on **12 March 2026**, entrepreneur and wellness founder **Jan Gorczynski** delivered one of the day’s most combative talks, arguing that modern nutrition guidance had failed the public and that the time had come to rethink the food pyramid from the ground up.
In his presentation, **“Metabolic Flexibility: The Clinical Case for Inverting the Food Pyramid,”** Gorczynski rejected the familiar dietary hierarchy that had long placed grains and carbohydrates at the base of daily eating. In its place, he proposed a model built first on healthy fats and protein, supported by fibre-rich greens and collagen, with carbohydrates used more selectively and strategically.
The speech was part manifesto, part market argument, and part personal plea. It was also a sharp reflection of the broader mood running through the event, where prevention, healthspan and self-experimentation repeatedly overshadowed conventional healthcare narratives.
One Liner
Jan Gorczynski argued that modern diets had trapped people in metabolic rigidity and that longevity demanded a return to fat-burning flexibility.
Description
Speaking in Nice at Hololife Longevity Cote d'Azur, Jan Gorczynski presented a forceful critique of mainstream dietary advice, claiming that decades of institutional guidance had wrongly demonised fat and elevated sugar and refined carbohydrates. Drawing on the language of biohacking, preventive health and metabolic science, he framed “metabolic flexibility” as the body’s ability to switch efficiently between glucose and fat as fuel. His answer was an “inverted food pyramid,” one that placed healthy fats and protein at the base of nutrition and relegated carbohydrates to a more strategic role, particularly around athletic performance.
The Argument Against Nutritional Orthodoxy
Gorczynski did not ease into his thesis. He said he had spent years troubled by what he described as false dietary narratives, and he used the platform in Nice not to sell products but to challenge the assumptions that had shaped public health advice for generations.
He traced the roots of the problem back to the late 1960s, arguing that research linking sugar to heart disease had been sidelined while fat was made into the dietary villain. He pointed to the influence of institutional guidance, including the USDA food pyramid, and criticised what he saw as conflicts of interest in nutrition policy.
For Gorczynski, the consequences were visible everywhere: soaring obesity, type 2 diabetes and widespread metabolic syndrome. These outcomes, he suggested, were not random but the result of a long-running nutritional experiment that had gone badly wrong.
What He Meant By Metabolic Flexibility
The core of the presentation rested on a simple distinction. Most people, Gorczynski argued, were metabolically rigid, dependent almost entirely on glucose for energy. The healthier alternative was metabolic flexibility, the capacity to move between glucose and fat, or ketones, as fuel sources without dramatic energy swings.
He described this flexibility as foundational to stable energy, sharper focus and lower chronic inflammation. In his framing, chronic inflammation stood as one of longevity’s greatest enemies.
Rather than promoting an absolutist keto doctrine, he made a more nuanced case. The goal, he said, was not to eliminate one fuel source forever, but to train the body to use both efficiently. That capacity to switch, he suggested, was where resilience began.
The Food Pyramid, Turned On Its Head
Gorczynski’s “inverted food pyramid” placed **healthy fats and protein** at the base, followed by **greens, fibre and collagen** as structural support. Carbohydrates remained in the model, but only as **strategic carbohydrates**, reserved for periods of intense exercise or athletic output.
It was a framework designed not only to lower insulin volatility but also to support what he described as the body’s “engine” and “chassis”: metabolism on one side, structural integrity on the other.
The language was vivid and often personal. Reflecting on a torn ligament from boxing, he linked recovery and resilience to adequate protein and collagen intake, folding anecdote into a wider commercial and nutritional message.
A Speech That Mixed Science, Frustration And Salesmanship
That the speaker was also the founder of **BEKETO** and **The Collagen Company** was never far from view. Gorczynski, whose brands operate across the UK and EU, referenced his business repeatedly, noting its rapid expansion to nearly 200 products and a presence in about 30 countries. Yet the commercial element sat alongside genuine anger.
He returned more than once to the idea that the public had been misled for decades. If dietary advice could be reversed so dramatically, he asked, who would be held accountable for the damage already done?
It was one of the talk’s most striking undercurrents: not simply that nutritional guidance had changed, but that few institutions, in his view, had reckoned honestly with the cost of getting it wrong.
Questions From The Room
The discussion that followed broadened the scope of the talk. Audience members asked about keto-friendly snacks, breathing aids and the use of ketogenic approaches in elite sport.
On athletic performance, Gorczynski rejected the claim that keto and high performance were incompatible. He argued instead for targeted carbohydrate use around training, especially for intense output, while maintaining a largely low-carb metabolic base. The point was endorsed in discussion from the room, including anecdotal references to professional athletes and teams adopting such approaches.
Questions about sweeteners prompted a more careful answer. Gorczynski distinguished between sugar alcohols and standard sugars, while also warning that even sweet, carb-free products could provoke insulin responses through neurological association. The message, again, was moderation rather than licence.
Quotes
“I want to make the case for inverting the food pyramid.”
“You need to teach your body to switch from one source of fuel to another easily.”
“If your metabolism is rigid, and this is 95 per cent of the society, you have energy crashes and you have chronic inflammation.”
“I was asked today what is the one thing that one tip I would give for people that want to live healthier and they’re just starting out. I would say cut sugar.”
“It’s not the lifespan that matters. It’s the healthspan.”
Habits You Can Learn
Cut sugar first if you want one immediate nutritional change.
Train your body to become metabolically flexible rather than relying only on glucose.
Build meals around protein and healthy fats rather than refined carbohydrates.
Use carbohydrates strategically, especially around intense exercise.
Pay attention to sleep, recovery and inflammation, not only calories.
Be cautious with snacks and sweeteners, even low-carb ones.
Summary
Jan Gorczynski’s presentation at Hololife Longevity Cote d'Azur in Nice was a forceful challenge to mainstream nutrition advice and a clear defence of low-carb, high-fat principles framed through the concept of metabolic flexibility. He argued that decades of public health messaging had contributed to obesity, diabetes and chronic inflammation by making carbohydrates the dietary default and fat the scapegoat. His solution was an inverted food pyramid rooted in healthy fats, protein, fibre and strategic carbohydrate use. Whether heard as a persuasive critique or a partisan intervention, the talk captured a defining theme of the event: the belief that longevity begins not in the clinic, but in the daily habits of eating, recovery and metabolic control.
Transcript
“I didn’t know that I didn’t see it before. I have to say that the production is really good, you know, with the team, with AI videos and all this. It’s really impressive.
So unlike all the presentations before, I don’t feel like I want to talk about the company or I want to talk about, you know, selling services, products. I want to really get into something that’s been bothering me for years. Why we’ve been lied to, why we’ve been, you know, being fed with false information on what’s good for us, on the foods that we should are supposed to eat and what’s supposed to be the foundation of our diets.
So we’ll get a little bit on the metabolic flexibility and something that we have been in the market for in about five years. And we’ve been teaching and preaching why metabolic flexibility is very important.
Any one of you knows what I’m wearing, you know, you know, okay, you know, you know, anyone wants to understand what it is. So it opens up the nasal passages and you get more oxygen in so you can breathe in more easily. I have some. Some of those for you if you want to get more focused on the presentation.
So you can. Yeah, come in. Come up to the stage. There you go. Tatiana. That’s it, Alex. Fantastic time for Lex. Mister Monk. Maybe it’s a gift for somebody else. There’s also more. There’s also more with. With my team, Olivia and Lana, you can walk up to them. All right, Olivia. Larena, thank you so much. Oh, guys, sorry for this. So you stick it to your nose. It opens up nasal passages. Thirty percent more oxygen intake. Something you want, you want might to try and instant relief. I. In fact, we’ll be going because I have like a service month, you know, now with the hand, the wrist, torn ligaments, and in next week, nasal septum surgery.
So for a year, when we developed this product, it’s also from our brand, I’ve been using this, and I found out that for my whole life I was breathing poorly. And now I understand how to breathe it in. So since I cannot walk all the time with twenty four seven with the nasal strip, it’s a bit bizarre. So I decided to do the septum surgery because this is like the effect of the septum surgery.
So coming back to the metabolic flexibility, the girls, they have the strips. I want to make the case for inverting the food pyramid. So where we are now and what we’ve been. What we’ve been, you know, the experiment that us and all the organizations World Health Organization, USDA have made us is this. It’s three times more globally obese people. From nineteen sixty seven until today, it’s almost one billion people that are obese. It’s five hundred thirty seven million people with type two diabetes. That’s one sixteenth of the world. We’re talking huge problems and huge issues and thirty five percent of US society is now under metabolic syndrome.
So this is not just so you know, it’s pure data, it’s confirmed, it’s if you want to see my appendix, I’m glad to show you later on. And what led to this is how the pyramid was built. So I just want to give you a little bit background information on how all of the things came to this point.
So in nineteen sixty seven there was a study that linked sugar to the problems with hart. But then the industry decided to pay three Harvard individuals around fifty thousand US dollars for today’s money to completely disobey this link and link not sugar, but fat to heart related disease. So this is the beginning of where the fat became the villain.
Then there was mcgovern comedy and a very famed Ancel Keys seven countries study which is very interesting because when it collapsed when all the countries were taking into account. So Ancel Keys basically proclaimed that in the seven countries they found that sugar is unrelated to heart disease and heart disorders, but fat is. But when they took all the twenty two countries into consideration, it turned out that the whole study collapsed. Study on which basically everything of the food pyramid and of the guidelines was based.
So then we have in nineteen ninety two, USDA Food pyramid, usda. Anyone knows what organization is? Usda, USDA promotes agriculture, US Agriculture. So there is some sort of conflict of interest between the organization that promotes agriculture and then it promotes the grains as the foundation for the food pyramid. I’m not pointing in any direction, I’m just letting you know that there is certain correlation.
And then there is my personally favorite organization, which is World Health Organization. And the representatives of that organization in twenty twelve admitted that they were heavily influenced and systematically influenced by the big corporations, by Nestle, for example, in their war on fat. So the big organizations were promoting sugar as the better alternative to fats and that sugar is not really a problem. They were trying to convey the message that it’s the fat that we should really disobey.
So what did they this experiment for the past sixty years, what it led us is to metabolic rigidity, which is on the opposite end of flexibility. So metabolic rigidity means that we are locked into only one source of fuel in our bodies. You know what it is? The source of fuel that most of us are running on? No, it’s ketones. It’s glucose. Perfect. But we’re trying to run on both. So I don’t want to be now on the other end of the spectrum, and since the wind blows in our way of me as the company that is promoting fats and ketones, so I don’t want to now, you know, show you the complete opposite direction. I want to show you that there’s two types. But in order to be healthy, in order to find the best way to make your lives longer, you need to be flexible in your metabolism. You need to teach your body to switch from one source of fuel to another easily. And that’s called flexibility.
So if your metabolism is rigid, and this is ninety five percent of the society has rigid metabolism, you have energy crashes and you have chronic inflammation, and chronic inflammation is the absolute opponent of longevity, while on the contrary, there is flexibility. So you can easily switch from burning fat to burning glucose and then burning fat is ketones, like you rightly pointed out, Elena. So there is stable energy and stable focus when you can run on the two types of fuel.
And I really suggest you should all try, at least try to be able to switch from glucose to fat and vice versa. If you’re now running your body on the Standard American Diet or Western American Diet, or Western Standard Diet, which is the worst type of diet, by the way? Sad, sad. The abbreviation, it reads finally, sad for Standard American Diet, then your body is running on carbs and glucose, so try to change it. You will see how difficult it is in the first place because your body is so much used to carb intake that if you’re going to do it fast, you’re going to absolutely die. But then when you learn the flexibility, when your body is used to switching the types of the fuels, then it will become easier.
So why we should and why. The whole inversion of the food pyramid was crucial based on three fundamental concepts. So, insulin sensitivity, mitochondrial health and inflammation. So these are the three main reasons why the inversion was necessary. Because our society is in the worst state ever. And I will refer to what Timo said in his presentation that we are now medicine. Healthcare is not about prevention, it’s about intervention. And only zero point five percent of the GDP goes to the prevention. And this is why we have the system. That is the system that we have now. I believe that doctor Koenig here knows a little bit of the medicines. The healthcare system is based on the wrong Principle, we should now get engaged in prevention in order also for the system to be sustainable. Because in no country in the world, public health care actually works properly. That’s because too many people are ill.
So if the inversion of the food pyramid, hopefully in the long run will result in better insulin sensitivity, better mitochondrial health and less inflammation, and constant inflammation that is given you by carbs in your body is actually leading to a series of very long term unfavorable issues.
So I want you to take a look at this a little bit. This is like a structure for the pyramid. I’m not sure if you see it. You’ve seen it all, have you soaked in the new inverted pyramid. So it’s completely upside down. It’s from the head to toe, where healthy fats and protein are now the foundation. So the guideline is for the villains to be now the foundation of your diet. Then it’s fiber and structural support. So it’s greens, it’s fiber, it’s collagen that are the second one and only strategic, we call them strategic carbohydrates. So complex carbohydrates that you can use when training, that you can use when lifting weights, that you can use over your intense, intense physical activity.
But the idea of inverting the food pyramid got me actually very upset. Why do you think? Because we’ve been told lies for so long, we’ve been pushed and promoted the wrong concept and nobody is taking blame. You know, in my opinion, if it’s, it’s something that should be prosecuted and people responsible should be actually held accountable. You cannot force and promote the concept for sixty or so years and then just, you know, one day to another completely flip and say, okay, now this is the right.
So in my opinion, obviously this is the right food pyramid. And it’s supposed to be, it’s, it’s looking good finally after all those years. But what, what, what do we do with the history? I mean, this is why it got me upset.
So, you know, metabolism is one thing, and I would say that healthy metabolism is like engine. So your engine can run, you can have a hybrid engine when it takes from the fats and it takes from glucose. So this is the flexibility. You want your metabolism, you want your engine to be flexible like in the good car. And then there’s the chases, which is the stratular integrity, enough collagen, enough protein, something that I probably lacked when I tore my ligament during boxing training. And now I discovered my mistake. I’m doing more supplementation.
So what we’ve been Preaching for around five years. I founded my company in twenty twenty. It was COVID pandemic. So it’s now almost six years. We’re getting to six years and we see the steady growth of the industry. It went from nine billion US to fifteen billion projected in twenty twenty seven. And we’ve developed the company from scratch from the UK based office in London, then to Warsaw, from zero countries to twenty eight countries, maybe twenty nine now. And every day it changes a little bit. We have ten own websites in ten different countries and we promote the idea of the inverted food pyramid. We promote the idea of healthy fats, of the metabolic flexibility of you being able to run on the two types of fuel for your body.
So the wind blows in our back, the wind blows in the backs of the people that trust fats. Proteins are the healthiest way of life and this is the foundation for longevity. It all starts with the diet.
I was asked today what is the one thing that one tip I would give for people that want to live healthier and they’re just starting out? I would say cut sugar. It was a straight clear answer. I would say cut sugar. But there’s obviously, you know, sleep better etc etc, but this is the one thing everyone can do and it’s super simple and let’s move, let’s get on that wave and move from, from the niche and we were sort of, you know, the villains, you know, healthy fats, fat, fat is not healthy. So now we are becoming the mainstream and we’re becoming the future of longevity.
So we want efficient fuel, we are structurally sound with enough protein, adequate protein in the body and we want to be with the right dietary products, with the right diet,
Part of Hololife Longevity Cote d'Azur