What are food dreams about?

You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.

The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience food in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.

Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about food in dreams. See how you feel about food now, in your waking life.

Dreams about the condition and needs of the body are among the most common, and the symbolism can be expressed through food. But sometimes they’re straightforward representations of foods desired by the body. For example, a banana can be a phallic symbol, or a suggested food for getting more potassium in your diet.

Food in a dream can symbolize something that you consume. It can relate to diet or nutrition, but also to other things that are consumed or absorbed, like opinions, information, media, entertainment, knowledge, and facts. Food is consumed and absorbed into the body, in an association that branches out to connect with many ideas.

You consume and process emotions and feelings.

You consume information and knowledge.

You absorb experiences and learn from them, doing which in turn shapes your self-image, direction in life, values, and decisions.

The saying goes that “you are what you eat.” It means that whatever you take into yourself shapes what you are as a person. The saying is often meant as the connection between physical health and diet, but as an idea it can be used as symbolism in dreams for whatever you feed your mind and spirit. See: Eating

For example, exposure to someone who is negative or a bad influence can give you a negative outlook and influence you in bad ways, which can be symbolized as eating food that’s bad for you. Reading or watching news reports that focus on murder and death can negatively influence your outlook on society and color your perceptions. You “feed” on the negativity.

On the other hand, exposure to people who are positive and a good influence can give you a positive outlook and shape your thinking and feelings in positive ways, which can be symbolized as eating good food.

To digest something in a dream can symbolize absorbing something you take into yourself. It could relate to digesting what you eat, but dreams are known for creating physical representations of personal situations, such as when you “digest” a thought, idea, or feeling. In this sense it means “to process.” It means taking time to break down and fully absorb something.

Foods shaped in a circle, like pizza and cookies, can relate to the idea of wholeness as a person. See: Circles

Food in dreams can speak directly to nutrition and the needs of your body. You can dream about specific foods because your body is saying, “Hey, I need that.” It can speak to other needs, such as a lemon symbolizing the need for sunshine or optimism, or a steak representing the need for satisfaction or fulfillment.

For example, a man dreams that he goes with friends to dinner at a nice restaurant and orders a steak. He’s told to pay for it first. So he does and it arrives, but then he’s told to fill out a questionnaire before eating it. He does, grudgingly, and by the time he gets around to eating his steak, it’s cold. In the image of the cold steak the dream sums up a situation where the dreamer moved to “the big city” after long planning and much expense, symbolized as the questionnaire and paying ahead of time for the steak. It’s his “dream come true,” but when he gets there he finds the reality to be much different from what he imagined and he’s disappointed and left feeling cold and unfulfilled.

Eating raw meat can symbolize plunging ahead unprepared. Something isn’t ready. Or you want to get past the surface and down to the “meat.” You want it raw, unadorned. Just the facts or truth. It can mean you feel raw or used, just a piece of meat.

For people who are particular about how thoroughly their meat is cooked, raw can symbolize fear of contamination, probably in the figurative sense, such as protecting yourself from being contaminated by being associated with someone with a bad reptutation.

Spicy food can symbolize something too hot to handle, or the “spice of life,” connected with feeling passion and intensity. Consider possible physical stimuli, too, such as spicy food used to symbolize the sensation of acid reflux.

Buying food can indicate a desire to buy the attention or sympathy of other people.

Individual foods get into all sorts of associations based on color and appearance, texture, temperature, taste, and personal experience. The possibilities for symbolism it opens up are way too many to delve into here, but you can explore further by using the entries listed below.

See also: Body parts, Candy, Chefs, Chicken, Circles, Colors, Clothing, Cows, Devouring, Dinner, Eating, Eating, Eggs, Emaciation, Excrement, Fish, Fitness centers, Grocery stores, Hunger, Kitchens, Menus, Orange, Stomachs, Teeth

This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.