Cancer is classically considered as a genetic and, more recently, epigenetic multistep disease. Despite seminal studies in the 1920s by Warburg showing a characteristic metabolic pattern for tumors, cancer bioenergetics has often been relegated to the backwaters of cancer biology. This review aims to provide a historical account on cancer metabolism research, and to try to integrate and systematize the metabolic strategies in which cancer cells engage to overcome selective pressures during their inception and evolution. Implications of this renovated view on some common concepts and in therapeutics are also discussed.