We are what we eat

[TEST] Subtitle

Abstract

[TEST] This is the most cited aphorism about food ever.
The indicted sentence appeared for the first time in a review that the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, father of German materialism, dedicated to the Treatise on food for the people by the Dutch physician and physiologist Jakob Moleschott, published in Germany in 1850. It was a revolutionary work, because it made nutrition as the driving force of human history, placing food at the origin of society, of thought, of religion and even of cultural and class differences. Among other things, it is worth remembering that in 1861 Moleschott was called by Francesco De Sanctis, then Minister of Education of the first Cavour government, to the chair of Physiology at the University of Turin and he also became a senator of the Kingdom of Italy.

The Treatise, translated into Italian in 1871¹, very topical in the light of contemporary “cibomania”, was followed by the essay entitled The mystery of sacrifice or Man is what he eats, which Feuerbach wrote in 1862, twelve years after his controversial review, to respond to the attacks made on him².

The disruptive force of the Treatise for Feuerbach, lies in the fact that it supports a new philosophy, scientifically demonstrating that thought starts right from the stomach and then reaches the head. But the author goes even further. Starting from Moleschott’s affirmation that “without phosphorus there is no thought”, he gives another affirmation used in the common sense: “For you to introduce something into your head and into your heart it is necessary that you have first put something in your stomach”³.