Snails

While it is more true, in a quite a more robustly literal fashion than is often considered, that 'you are what you eat' - that is, the metabolites of one's own digestion is imminently incorporated into their own biochemical makeup so that we literally are what we have consumed after the remarkable cascade reactions of physiology have run their course - it is perhaps more true, though in a more metaphysical sense, that 'you are what you read'.  Consuming endless pizza box contents will inevitably make your artery walls thicker and your waistline more rotund (and quite possibly your demeanor more irritable, though that's not the whole story there), while consuming escargot would would do something for you both physically and socially - it would make your stomach acid come into full contact with snails and it would make your social status soar...although I'm not so sure that eating snails says as much about the person eating them as it does about the mental health of the one who observes the person eating them and assesses them as more bourgeoisie in clout.  I think bohemian would be more accurate.  A steady diet of 'Cosmopolitan' and Vanity Fair' magazines might make one more metropolitan but it would also have the conspicuous displeasure of making them more vain. Reading '50 Shades of Gray' and its counterparts would probably make one more sensual and cause them to have a harder time distinguishing between black and white in their moral persuasions. 

One has to wonder how snails were not as prolific in folklore and children's stories as tortoises, as I don't believe tortoises garner any more favor on the order of 'cuteness' or 'cuddly'-ness (although I'm sure if I'm wrong I'll be corrected) and I'm quite sure they would lose the race in swiftness.  The tale may have just as well have been not the "The Tortoise and the Hare" but "The Tortoise and the Snail" with the tortoise being the swift one in the newer epic.  Not to mention, I presume more children have encountered a snail firsthand as opposed to a tortoise. Also, had the snail replaced the tortoise in Zeno's paradox with Achilles, the paradox would have not taken so long to resolve because Achilles would have caught him much more quickly.  The tortoise taught us persistence but it is the snail that can teach us to take our time. That is, important endeavors are usually lifelong. What's more, not wishing life away to the next phase but being present in and enjoying the, well...present. The snail may actually be in the biggest rush of all God's creatures, but if so he has me fooled, because he sure seems to be relishing in the scenery.