3 ms·

You are what you eat. I'd say no.

• lucb1e 6y ago
  I'm not versed in this at all, but wouldn't one call "food" what sustains us in our current state and a "drug" what alters some aspect of us? (Paracetamol suppressing pain and fever, for example.)
  • derefr 6y ago
    You might describe an (ideal) food as something the cellular agents in our bodies take in to use as passive raw material for their own homeostatic processes. Most foods are not ideal in this way, though. But this still seems to be the ideal, as those things within foods that act on the body are almost always considered unwanted impurities in the food, not a desired “foodlike aspect” of the food. You might equally look at the other end of the spectrum, and describe an ideal... something as a substance that actively comes in and affects the body, without the body’s active help. The closest word for that “something” in English is “toxin.” But this is both imprecise (some toxins only act with the body’s assistance); and overspecific — “toxin” implies negative effect, but this “something” could be a positive thing (a chelating agent, for example.) “Drugs” don’t really hew closer to one side or the other of the “food” / “toxin” spectrum. Many of them are just chemicals your body should be making anyway but isn’t. Many do act directly on the body. And many interact with the body through mechanisms the body has in place specifically to allow exogenous chemicals to do that.