Lately I've been noticing a lot of people writing and talking about information consumption by using a food metaphor ( example ). I was going to write a post about it until I found that someone already did a great job of that over at ribbonfarm:
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2008/05/26/information-overload-and-the-food-is-thought-metaphor/
The article centers on metaphor theory, particularly as introduced by Lakoff and Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By . If you haven't read it, you should read it. It will probably change the way you think about thinking significantly. The gist of the book, though, is that basic conceptual metaphors pervade our understandings and descriptions of the world. Some examples: