Why wouldn't you want to eat your cake?

I've never understood the saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too."  What purpose would there be for having your cake other than to eat it?

Does anyone know how to make sense of this saying?

Comments

[Mike]

"The things people want are often incompatible. This proverb is easier to grasp if it is understood to mean 'You can’t eat your cake and have it too.'" Via Bartleby

[Ben]

Well, I think of it in terms of my wife's view of our wedding cake. She liked all that the cake represented, and how pretty it was, but also wanted to eat it. I only cared about how it tasted. For her, this was a dilemma. For me, rich, chocolaty goodness.

[Tung Yin]

Thanks, those are very helpful, especially the wedding cake example.

[Jack]

So, do you need help with "It's the exception that proves the rule"?

[Tung Yin]

So, do you need help with "It's the exception that proves the rule"?

No, that was covered already.

[Jack]

Oh. Sorry!

[Colleen]

Can't have your cake and eat it too.....
I thought of this saying today and realized I never really understood it, but today I have a sense of it for myself that seems valuable as a spiritual lesson: the cake represents the material, and to eat it represents the spiritual - one's tangible and one's not, one's a noun and inactive, and ones a verb; active. It's the intangible that we seek to derive and sometimes through the tangible - the trick is that you cannot obtain the intangible or active component by making the "cake" your goal, your focus. You must be active, you must see beyond the material to obtain the "eating of the cake". Otherwise, you can have your "cake" but it won't be very filling! The eating of the cake can be whatever your own personal goal is in life, your purpose or your philopsopher's stone. The "cake" can be your possessing of this as an idea, an object, a dream, but never really experiencing it or living it and so never truly achieving it. This is what I thing today this saying means for me.

[Paul]

I have wondered about the saying as well, and still do. The best I can come up with is that the word "have" is used as a synonym for the word "eat", and that once you have your cake, you can't eat it because it has already been consumed.

[Heather]

That's because you've got the phrase backwards. Grammatically correct it would read "you can't eat your cake and have it too." In other words, once you eat it you can no longer have it, because it's gone- you ate it!

[Jundamoonda]

Personally, I think that saying is retarded. Nobody ever says it right, and it doesn't make sense when you really think about it. Cakes are meant to be eaten, and nobody wants a cake just to "have" it! We want it to eat it, period! We don't want to stare at it all day! We don't want to keep it-it's for eating! Duh! How can this apply to anything in life?

[RD]

It's supposed to be "You can't BAKE your cake and eat it too." Somewhere along the line the word "have" replaced "bake" and the saying no longer makes no sense. The meaning becomes more clear when the correct verb is used. I just think it's really amusing that most Americans don't think enough to realize that the verb is wrong. People just imitate what they hear, like dumb parrots. It's no wonder George W is in the Whitehouse.

[ksis]

just learnt that it means in many situations you have to make a sacrifice in order to get what you want

[bfdl]

me and my best friend decided the other day that you can have your cake and eat it too, because the cake is yours and you have it, and you can still eat it

its your cake you can do whatever you want with it

[Kathy]

Here is a joke that means the same thing..
What did the eskimoes learn when they lit a fire in their kayak?

You can't heat your kayak and have it too...

Ha ha