you are what you eat

English dictionary entry

Meanings

proverb
  1. Personal health and wellbeing is determined by one's eating habits, in both positive and negative ways.

Word forms

you are what you eat

Etymology

Semi-Calque of German Der Mensch ist, was er ißt (literally “The human/man is what he eats”), coined in 1850 by Ludwig Feuerbach in a review of Jacob Moleschott’s Lehre der Nahrungsmittel. Für das Volk (Erlangen, 1850). Compare German man ist, was man isst.

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