Ketosis Vs. Glucosis: A Metabolic Argument That Cut Through The Noise In Amsterdam

At Biohacker Summit 2023 Amsterdam, Dorian Greenow Made The Case That The Modern Energy Crisis Was Not Just About Calories, But About Fuel Choice

On Saturday, 14 October 2023, at Biohacker Summit 2023 Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Dorian Greenow, founder of Keto-Mojo and president of the Ketogenic Foundation, stepped onto the stage with a message that was both evangelical and cautionary. His presentation, “Ketosis vs. Glucosis: Unlocking the Dual Fuel Strategy for Metabolic Health & Performance,” argued that the central metabolic dilemma of modern life lay not merely in overeating, but in overreliance on glucose.

Greenow, who has long been a public advocate for ketogenic therapies after losing 50 pounds and reversing his own metabolic conditions, did not pretend neutrality. In fact, he opened by naming his bias outright. Nutrition, he told the audience, is never discussed in a vacuum. It is shaped by culture, religion, ideology, and identity. Vegan, carnivore, omnivore, vegetarian, pescatarian: every label arrives with its own assumptions. “Be curious and keep an open mind during this presentation,” he said, urging listeners to do their own “conscientious research.”

That call for intellectual humility mattered, because what followed was nothing less than a frontal challenge to one of the defining habits of industrial eating.

The Two-Fuel Theory

At the heart of Greenow’s talk was a simple but potent contrast. Glucosis, as he framed it, is the fed state in which the body primarily runs on dietary glucose and stored glycogen. It is a system with limits. Human glycogen reserves, he said, amount to roughly 2,000 kilocalories, enough to sustain energy for only so long before the familiar crash arrives.

Ketosis, by contrast, was presented as metabolic expansion. In that state, the body draws primarily on fat, both dietary and stored, while still preserving access to some glucose. The result, Greenow argued, is not deprivation but flexibility. “Unlock the potential of a dual fuel,” he said. “Imagine if you could use glycogen and also utilize metabolic fat; you go from having access to two thousand kilocalories to forty thousand.”

It was a striking line, and it captured the presentation’s central promise: not simply weight loss, but a re-engineering of energy itself. Where glucose creates spikes, insulin surges, crashes, and renewed hunger, ketosis, he said, stabilizes blood sugar and suppresses insulin. In his telling, the difference was between living on a metabolic roller coaster and moving through the day with access to a vast, steady reserve.

The Roller Coaster Of Modern Eating

Greenow described the carbohydrate-heavy daily routine with almost theatrical clarity: breakfast spike, snack spike, lunch spike, afternoon spike, dinner spike. The body, in this view, became trapped in a repetitive loop of glucose management, forever rising and falling, secreting insulin, storing fat, and demanding more fuel.

The imagery resonated because it was so recognisable. The post-lunch haze. The festive meal followed by drowsiness. The “healthy” bowl of rice that still leaves a person nodding off. Greenow’s point was not that carbohydrates were morally suspect, but that frequent dependence on them imposed a physiological tax that many now mistake for normality.

His criticism extended to glucose monitoring culture too. Continuous glucose monitors, increasingly fashionable in wellness circles, were dismissed as useful mainly for revealing dysfunction. For someone with stable metabolic control, he suggested, the data would be “boring.” The real question was not whether one could manage carbohydrate spikes, but whether one might benefit from avoiding the need for so many of them in the first place.

A Rebuke To Official Nutrition

From there, Greenow turned his fire on dietary orthodoxy. Using familiar public health visuals such as the USDA’s MyPlate, he argued that populations had broadly followed the advice to eat more grains, more fruits and vegetables, and less red meat, butter, eggs, and full-fat dairy, only to find themselves in worsening health.

The indictment was sweeping. Rising obesity, type 2 diabetes, non-communicable disease, and even declining life expectancy in the United States were presented as evidence that the glucose-centric model had failed. Greenow cited the immense economic burden of diabetes, placing the annual US cost at $340 billion, and suggested that Europe’s own health financing strains reflected the same underlying crisis.

Whether one accepted every part of the case or not, the force of the argument came from its inversion of received wisdom. The foods sold as prudent and modern, he implied, may have helped create the very epidemics they were meant to solve.

The Long View Of Human History

Greenow’s most ambitious claim was evolutionary. He argued that the carbohydrate abundance of modern diets was historically novel and biologically discordant. Much of what now fills supermarkets, he said, did not exist in anything like its present form a few centuries ago. Tomatoes, potatoes, modern corn, sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkins, and peppers were all invoked as examples of a radically altered food environment.

He pushed further back still, to the rise of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. For most of human existence, he argued, people had lived in conditions where physiological ketosis was common, if not dominant. “Our natural state is physiological ketosis,” he said. “This is our natural state of truly being.”

It was a bold assertion, one meant to recast ketosis not as a niche intervention or dieting trend, but as a return to metabolic heritage. In Greenow’s version of history, agriculture and processed carbohydrates had not liberated the body so much as overloaded it.

Clinical Claims And The Promise Of Reversal

The presentation gained urgency when Greenow shifted from anthropology to medicine. He pointed to the case of Sami Inkinen, the endurance athlete and entrepreneur who developed prediabetes despite elite performance, as proof that fitness alone could not outrun metabolic dysfunction. Inkinen’s subsequent adoption of a ketogenic approach, and his founding role in Virta Health, became for Greenow a model of what structured intervention could achieve.

He highlighted clinical findings associated with ketogenic protocols, particularly in type 2 diabetes, where remission, medication reduction, and lower insulin dependence have all been reported. In his summary of the evidence, a well-regulated ketogenic diet had demonstrated the potential to reverse disease processes once assumed to be chronic and inexorable.

Greenow also ventured into psychiatric terrain, citing research in severe mental illness where ketogenic interventions were linked to symptom improvements and, in some cases, full remission. For an audience of biohackers, this was the bridge from disease treatment to performance enhancement. If ketosis could affect patients with long-standing bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or depression, he implied, what might it do for healthy people seeking sharper cognition, better focus, and more durable energy?

Ketones As A “Force Multiplier”

The language became more expansive here, but no less deliberate. Greenow described ketones as “a force multiplier” for health. He connected them to reduced inflammation, improved mitochondrial output, protection against oxidative stress, and even epigenetic influence. “Ketones are a massive modulator of epigenetic gene expression,” he said. “This means you can switch genes on and you can switch them off through your lifestyle and metabolic choices.”

Such claims reflected the broadening appeal of ketosis in wellness and longevity circles. No longer merely a weight-loss strategy, it was cast as a tool for protecting telomeres, increasing ATP production, sharpening brain function, and potentially lowering risks associated with neurodegeneration and chronic disease.

The appeal of the argument lay partly in its elegance. The body, in Greenow’s account, was not broken but misfuelled. Change the substrate and the system changes with it.

Nature’s Earliest Blueprint

Perhaps the most emotionally resonant part of the talk came when Greenow invoked infancy. Babies, he noted, are born in a mild ketotic state, with maternal milk supporting that physiology in early life. For him, this was not a curiosity but evidence. Ketosis, he suggested, was built into the developmental blueprint, especially for the brain.

That framing gave the argument moral as well as metabolic weight. It suggested that the earliest form of human nourishment was already aligned with the very system modern diets displace.

Sustainability Without Renunciation

Greenow also anticipated the environmental challenge that inevitably confronts animal-based ketogenic eating. His answer was not denial, but differentiation. Industrial livestock systems, he conceded, are damaging. Regenerative agriculture, he argued, is another matter. Beef produced under regenerative grazing could, he said, contribute to carbon sequestration rather than simple emissions. Meanwhile, much of a ketogenic fat intake could come from perennial tree crops such as olives, avocados, coconuts, and nuts, sources that do not require annual soil disruption.

“It’s not the cow, it’s the how,” he said, reducing a complex ecological argument to a line designed to stick.

A Call For Curiosity, Not Conversion

For all the certainty of the presentation, Greenow returned repeatedly to a note of invitation rather than command. He did not ask the room to take his word as gospel. He asked them to question what they had been told, to interrogate their assumptions, and to test the possibility that metabolic flexibility might be a more powerful lever than most people realise.

“If you want to fully change your game and get those multipliers for your health, this is the ultimate way to do it,” he said.

It was the language of transformation, certainly, but it was also the language that has made ketosis endure far beyond fad status. At Biohacker Summit 2023 Amsterdam, Dorian Greenow did not present ketosis simply as a diet. He presented it as a theory of human energy, a critique of modernity, and a wager on the body’s forgotten capacities.

In a culture addicted to quick inputs and constant replenishment, his argument landed with a more disquieting implication: perhaps the deepest biohack was not adding something new, but remembering how to burn what was already there.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between glucosis and ketosis?

Dorian Greenow framed glucosis as the fed state in which the body runs primarily on dietary glucose and stored glycogen, a system with limits: human glycogen reserves amount to roughly 2,000 kilocalories, enough to sustain energy only so long before the familiar crash arrives.

What is wrong with the modern eating pattern?

Greenow described the carbohydrate-heavy day with theatrical clarity, as a sequence of spikes at breakfast, snack, lunch, afternoon and dinner. The body becomes trapped in a repetitive loop of glucose management, secreting insulin, storing fat and demanding more fuel.

What is his criticism of official nutrition advice?

Using public health visuals such as the USDA's MyPlate, Greenow argued that populations broadly followed the advice to eat more grains and less red meat, butter, eggs and full-fat dairy, only to find themselves in worsening health, with rising obesity and type 2 diabetes.

About the event

This recap is part of the Biohacker Summit 2023 Amsterdam series, recorded in Amsterdam on 14 and 15 October 2023. Read the summary of the whole event or join the next edition, HOLOLIFE Summit 2026 Amsterdam, on 14 and 15 November 2026.