Posted by Paul Salimans 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?