What about the phrase, "You are what you eat"? What does that mean? It means you become what you ingest. You become what you put into your mouth, and I believe this saying operates on many different levels.
If you eat healthy foods, then you're physically healthy, whereas if you eat unhealthy foods, you're diseased and unhealthy. However, you are also emotionally and mentally what you eat. If you eat happy plant foods raised with clean water, healthy soil and natural sunlight, you will tend to be happy and joyous and mentally healthy. On the other hand, if you eat foods that are angry, depressed and oppressed -- like meat from cows that have been conventionally raised (and deprived of access to clean air, water and pasture) -- these foods are going to make you angry, depressed and imbalanced. It's going to affect your mental health as much as your physical health.
"You are what you eat" is a phrase of much wisdom. For example, if you eat processed factory foods, then guess what? You become a processed factory person. What does that mean? "Processed" means you're not natural anymore. You have imbalances. You have too much of some things and not enough of other things, and that's what we see in the mental capacity of people raised on processed foods.
We see kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, people with manic depression and people who are bipolar. What is bipolar? It's too much of one thing and not enough of another. It's a state of imbalance, because they are what they are eating, and they're eating imbalanced foods -- high-glycemic foods, in many cases -- and foods that lack nutritional balance and the essential minerals that should be found in foods.
If you eat processed, manufactured and artificial foods, then guess what? You are also processed, artificial and lacking in clarity. However, if you eat natural foods raised organically in the fresh air and sunshine, without pesticides and herbicides, then you're going to be clean and purified. Even your mental state will achieve higher levels of clarity.
But what is it that most people actually put into their mouths? Dead foods: Foods that have been cooked, processed, milled, refined, homogenized or hydrogenated. These are all dead foods, and so, of course, what will these people become? They become dead. They die slowly, one organ at a time. Their liver fails, their heart fails and their brain function degrades by the month. They become what they eat. We all do.
I find it interesting that folklore recognized these truths long ago. It just shows that an understanding of the fundamentals of nutrition has existed for a very long time and, in fact, precedes the relatively recent discovery by the western world that food is medicine.