YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT:
CONSUMPTION AND CATHOLIC ETHICS by Dr. Marc Lavallee
When I was growing up, there was a “Time for
around the world. It is inescapable – we must
Timer” PSA during Saturday morning cartoons
consume to live, and we thereby depend on
that sang, “You are what you eat.” I thought the
people sometimes half a world away whom we
depiction of the body as a processing factory
likely will never meet or know anything about.
for building muscle and tissue was the clever-
For the Catholic tradition, matter is good, mate-
est idea: what you put into your body makes up
rial things are good; they are created by God
who you are. For Roman Catholics this concept
for the well-being and flourishing of human
has a special significance, for every time we
persons. But while we have become more and
attend Mass we consume the Holy Eucharist,
more dependent on material goods not only
Christ’s precious body and blood. If we are
for our physical needs but also – perhaps more
what we eat, then the Eucharist brings us into
so – for the development of our personal identi-
the life of God and the life of the community of
ties and sense of self often in an almost spiri-
disciples, Christ’s body the church. The idea
tual sense, we have simultaneously become
that we are what we eat – that persons become
distanced from the actual, physical nature of
what they consume – also has social signifi-
material goods, their production, their produc-
cance, particularly among consumer cultures,
ers, and the Earth itself. The great Jesuit poet,
and so each term my Sixth Form Catholic Social
Gerard Manley Hopkins, recognized this when
Ethics classes analyze their own practices of
he wrote: “the soil / Is bare now, nor can foot
consumption.
feel, being shod.”
Each term in Catholic Social Ethics, we engage
Students’ experiences of this class activity
in an activity that comes from my experience as
and subsequent discussion varies, but most
a Benedictine monk. At the beginning of Lent,
students tend to find it at least a little eye-
each monk would provide his abbot with a list
opening. Most students note that it is difficult
of the things he personally owned as a way of
to take stock of everything they own (“I never
thinking about his relationship with material
realized I had so much stuff!”). Some find that
goods. For our class activity, we make a list of
it motivates them to think about what things
everything we own, categorized and counted,
are most important to them (“I’m going back
as well as try to figure out where some of those
to my room and donating/selling anything I
items were made. The purpose of the activity
haven’t worn in four months”). Many students
is not to feel bad (or proud) about the things
have difficulty simply finding out where their
we own, but rather to try to get a sense of how
products are made, or are surprised when they
many things we have, our relationship with
found out where they were made (“it took me
those things, and our consequent relationship
forever to find out where my Forever 21 dress
with the people who make those things. Our
was made,” or “I can’t believe the American
consumption puts us into relationship with
flag in my room was made in China”). Finally,
persons, societies, and structural forces all
students begin to ask the difficult ethical ques-
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