1/ It's time to talk about fat and why you should eat it

By every measure - milk, butter, eggs, lard, animal fat, there has been a huge decline in consumption

I don't want to rehash the sat fat argument, but to give some historical context

2/ Homo habilis, our first ancestor, lived around 2 million years ago, they are considered to be gatherer scavengers, making simple stone tools to crack animal bones to extract and eat large amounts of marrow, likely raw.

3/ Neanderthals, our extinct cousins, lived around 400,000 years ago. They ate a meat based diet, including dolphins, rhinos, bears and elephants. They boiled huge amounts of bones to produce a bone grease which they would have eaten to avoid protein poisoning

4/ Modern humans in the Upper Palaeolithic, circa 25,000 years ago, preferred to hunt large ruminants in order to harvest marrow, brain and subcutaneous fats. These would have been crucial to surviving the harshest temps of the last ice age.

5/ As the ice receded, Mesolithic people lived in new wetlands. They developed ceramics to boil and simmer fish and aquatic animals, in part to render large amounts of fish oil. One theory is that this was drunk in communal feasts.

6/ The Neolithic brought domesticated animals and dairy became a major source of fat intake. Evidence showed that people made cheese, yoghurt and started feeding milk to their children from an early age. Ruminant animals produce more fat than wild animals and become staple foods

7/ Ceramics become an important way to extract fats from plant foods. In the Woodland period around the Great Lakes (AD 0-600), foragers developed pots to boil up vast quantities of nuts, including acorns, black walnuts and hickory. The nut butter was skimmed, stored and eaten.

8/ It is worth noting of course that grain agriculture provides an alternative source of calories to fats, which begins to diminish the amount consumed. By modern standards though people ate a lot more fat, esp at feasts and celebrations.

9/ Until recently animal fat was eaten regularly in most cuisines. Lard is popular served sliced in the Tuscan dish 'lardo', and in the Polish dish of 'smalec', lard mixed with apple, onion and spices into a spread

10/ Others better than I have addressed the rise in vegetable oil consumption and its effects on the body. As a rule, if it has no prehistoric or early historic precedent, don't eat it. We've been eating animal fats for several million years, soya oil for barely a generation

11/ Eat fats and plenty of them. If you can eat dairy go for whole fat, unhomogenised and raw if possible. Cook with lard, tallow, ghee, butter, duck and goose fat. Eat marrow, suet crusts, oily fish, blubber, nut butters, eggs and cheese. Choose good quality, learn to render.