YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT: Consumption Warning

—Respectfully submitted for your perusal — a phrase.

Weight: indeterminate. Calories: variable.

Origin: disputed, though often attributed to philosophers, diet reformers, and those who mean well.

Motives? Therein hangs the tale.

***KANAMIT, emissary from another world—and a mirror held up to the mutual eating society of Earth, where every living thing survives by consuming another.***

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In just a moment, we’re going to ask you to examine a saying that has survived by appearing helpful, nourishing, and self-evident.

Please read carefully:

The C-of-C-C Newsletter

Quotes-of-the-Day:

“You are what you eat.”

—Victor Lindlahr, developer of the Catabolic Diet

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“Der Mensch ist, was er ißt.”

(The man is what he eats translated literally)

—Ludwig Feuerbach, Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism

“That’s a pun in German because ‘ißt’ is pronounced as ‘ist.’ Could this be the origin of the phrase, ‘It is what it is,’ that drives us to distraction. Distraction being that place we don’t need to ‘go to’ because we are always already there.”

—Anna Graham, Language Arts, Puzzles, and Word Games Correspondent

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“I can recall a time in the not too distant past when the overweight person stuck out like a sore thumb.

Then they shipped all our manufacturing overseas but developed the factory farming system here. Surely additives and fertilizers that increased production have also contributed to making us all the more chubby. Someone should be made to eat more crow for this.”

—Daphne Howlsmythe, Our blue-blooded, old stock and old school strident editrix and Food, Fashion, and Pet Care columnist. Author of The ALL-CONDIMENT DIET series of no-need-to-cook books.

From Kanamit’s perspective, the All-Condiment Diet functions less as nourishment than as process: endless supplementation without substance, yielding maximum bulk with minimal effort. An elegant solution, though not for those being fed.

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“Few have noticed the subtle message revealed by Kanamit’s aesthetic. Most will assume as they did from his ascetic appearance that his message was deeply spiritual.

The truth is, you are what you eat.

The Kanamits eat humans. Kanamit is sluggish and dull yet still managed to accomplish space travel. And that may be spiritual enough.”

—Janósh Alovatski, Religion and Alt-Spirituality correspondent

Acclimated to terrestrial norms, Kanamit adopts the proven roles of televangelist, celebrity chef, space entrepreneur, and author. From these positions of trust, he surveys the human stock—well-fed, slow-moving, plentiful—and considers how best such material might be managed, improved, and ultimately put to use.

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“It’s, it’s, it’s—it’s a handbook for the mutual eating society that all the inhabitants of the Earth are a part of!!

Maybe this is what Bartleby, that enigmatic and highly influential character from high school English was trying to escape. We always admired him. Damn Melville!—another bad influence on my education along with Turgenev, Kerouac and the Twilight Zone episodes.

You are what you read? That’s more food for thought.”

—The Accidental Initiate

“Sophie said, feed your head.”
Only later did he wonder whether some books were less a nourishment than a marination—ideas taken in early, fattening the mind, softening resistance, preparing it quietly for appetites not its own. He loved Sophie all the same, and knew that affection often teaches before it protects.

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“Respectfully submitted for your perusal — a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale.”

—The Twilight Zone, “To Serve Man”

Filed under: Defensive Puns

Method applied: Follow the pun

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POSTSCRIPT

—by The Accidental Initiate

(Did I mention that Sophia was Greek?)

Sophie never insisted on wisdom every day. Some days invited curiosity, appetite, and experiment; others—she implied—were meant for rest. Even wisdom, it seems, knows when not to show up.

And now we just came across this link to a scientific study that seems to confirm this :

STUDY FINDS: Why You’re Wise On Tuesday And Foolish On Sunday: Practicing Wisdom In Uncertain Times

The prescience of the algorithm never ceases to amaze.—A.I.