Man is what he eats

Feuerback's [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Feuerbach ] next step was to declare that the motive force of history was not spiritual, but the sum of the material conditions which at any given time determine the men who live in them to think and act as they do. Their material distress caused them, however, to seek solace in an immaterial ideal world of their own, albeit unconscious, invention, where as a reward for the unhappiness of their lives on earth, they would enjoy eternal bliss hereafter. All that they lack on earth -- justice, harmony, order, goodness, unity, permanence -- they transform into transcendent attributes of a transcendent world, which alone they call real, and which they turn into an object of worship. If this illusion was to be exposed, it must be analysed in terms of the material mal-adjustments which psychologically gives rise to it. Like Holbachand the author of "L' Homme Machine" Feuerbach's hatred of transcendentalism often led him to seek for the crudest and simplest explanation in purely physical terms. "Des Mensch ist was er isst" -- "Man is what he eats" is his own Hegelian caricature of his doctrine: human history is the history of the decisive influence of physical environment of men in society; therefore knowledge of physical laws alone can make man master of these forces by enabling him to adapt his life consciously to them. ~ Page 58