You Become What You Consume (u are what u eat)

Udochi Okeke
2 min readSep 22, 2024

There are so many quotes about consumption.

"You are what you eat."
"What nourishes me destroys me."

But there are also many kinds of consumption. Consumption is just absorption of outside material so it becomes a part of yourself. You can do this with any of your five senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling.

You bring a new thing into you, and it becomes a part of your cellular memory.

With this new way of looking at consumption, that opens up the list of quotes even further to things like:

"The more you look, the less you see."
"What you see is what you get."

...and others quotes like it.

I really want to focus on the quote:

"You are what you eat."

...or as I like to say:

"You become what you consume."

I'll tell you why I say it like that. I say it like that, because eating is consumption and there are a lot of ways to consume something. Listening to gossip, or music is consumption. Watching reality shows and the news is consumption. We can see how consuming messages from these media can shape our lives, and even change us to become something or someone more closely related to that which we consumed or are consuming.

Hanging around a group of people alot makes you more like them. They say you become like the 5 people you spend most of your time with.

Every cell in our body is shaped by sound, and other sensory perception as it absorbs and consumes new information about its environment.

"You are what you eat" is about more than just food. It's about life and lifestyle.

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Udochi Okeke
Udochi Okeke

Written by Udochi Okeke

I am working to translate educational resources to the indigenous language of Igbo. If you can financially support me I sell jewelry at https://olaobi.com