Food for thought

Posted by Paul Salimans on January 28, 2004

In Reply to: Food for thought posted by Word Camel on January 04, 2004

: : In the Phrase Finder on this website the phrase 'you are what you eat' is said to originate in the sixties - hippy time. Now I've always assumed that this phrase was used (maybe even coined) by Sigmund Freud: 'man ist was man ist'. You will notice the pun: the German words for 'are' and 'eat' are (pronounced) exactly the same (I may have misspelled at least one of the 'ists' - someone with a better grasp of German might be able to help here).

: : Can anyone shed some light here?

:
: If you follow the link to the discussion in the archives, you'll see that the a more extensive disccusion of the origin of the expression. It is based on a German proverb. I know Feuerbach used the expression but I've never seen it attributed to Freud.

Thanks!