Synonyms
Introduction
While it is possible to trace the roots of the phrase “you are what you eat” to early Christianity where the body and the blood of Jesus Christ were represented by bread and wine (Gilman 2008), the phrase has become a token statement indicating a strong association between physical well-being and eating, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. In contemporary parlance, “you are what you eat” refers to the idea that one’s eating habits determine and also are a manifestation of the health of the person in question. The phrase became a slogan of healthy eating in the English-speaking world during the 1940s through the efforts of nutritionist Victor Lindlahr with his radio broadcast and then his book entitled You Are What You Eat: How to Win and Keep Health with Diet, which sold around half a million copies (Levenstein 1993). During the 1960s, influenced by the hippie culture, healthy...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Brillat-Savarin, J. (2008a). Philosophical history of cooking. In D. Inglis, D. Gimlin, & C. Thorpe (Eds.), Food: Critical concepts in social sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 93–110). London/New York: Routledge.
Brillat-Savarin, J. (2008b). On gourmandism. In D. Inglis, D. Gimlin, & C. Thorpe (Eds.), Food: Critical concepts in social sciences (Vol. 3, pp. 107–113). London/New York: Routledge.
Drayton, A. (trans.). (1994). The physiology of taste. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Ferguson, P. P. (1998). A cultural field in the making: Gastronomy in 19th-century France. The American Journal of Sociology, 104, 597–641.
Fischler, C. (1988). Food, self and identity. Social Science Information, 27(2), 275–292.
Gilman, S. L. (2008). Diets and dieting: A cultural encyclopedia. New York/London: Routledge.
Hook, S. (1994). From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the intellectual development of Karl Marx. New York: Columbia University Press.
Levenstein, H. (1993). Paradox of plenty: A social history of eating in modern America. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McKeith, G. (2005). You are what you eat: The plan that will change your life. New York: Penguin.
Mennell, S. (2008). On the civilizing of appetite. In D. Inglis, D. Gimlin, & C. Thorpe (Eds.), Food: Critical concepts in social sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 65–92). London/New York: Routledge.
Pietrykowski, B. (2004). You are what you eat: The social economy of slow food movement. Review of Social Economy, LXII(3), 307–321.
Spang, R. (2000). The invention of the restaurant: Paris and modern gastronomic culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Tucker, R. C. (1978). The Marx-Engels reader. New York/London: W.W. Norton and Company.
Turner, B. S. (1996). The body and society. London: SAGE.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Celimli-Inaltong, I. (2014). You Are What You Eat. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_55-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_55-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6167-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities