Food for thought

Posted by Paul Salimans January 28, 2004In 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!