Believe It, You Are What You Eat!

You are what you eat —- this often-used phrase has come to describe the belief that a person’s totality, including his health, appearance, mood, and thoughts, is shaped by the food he eats. Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, 1826: Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es. meaning Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. In an essay entitled Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism, 1863/4, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach wrote: Der Mensch ist, was er it, which translates into English as man is what he eats.

Actually, neither Brillat-Savarin or Feuerbach meant for their quotations to be taken literally. They were merely stating that that the food that one eats has a bearing on one’s state of mind and health. The actual phrase didn’t emerge as part of the common English language until some time later. In the ’20s and ’30s, the nutritionist Victor Lindlahr, who was a strong believer in the idea that food controls health, developed what he called as the Catabolic Diet. The said diet was accepted and gained some adherents. Lindlahr’s theories became so...