Dreaming about
eating

Eating is the first thing any of us learned to want, and long before we had words for comfort or company, we had milk and someone holding us. Dreaming about eating usually goes back to that. It points to a need you're feeding, or one you're not, whether that's comfort, pleasure, belonging or the wish for something new.

What you ate and who you ate with change everything here. A family meal around a big table is a different dream from eating alone in the dark. And a plate of your favorite dish is a different message from a mouthful of glass. Your waking life feeds in too, because if you're dieting, fasting or just went to bed hungry, the dream may be as literal as your stomach.

What dreaming about eating means

English is full of eating words for things that have nothing to do with food. We find ideas hard to swallow, swallow our pride, eat our words, and say that worry is eating us up. The dreaming mind uses the same language, and most eating dreams come down to one of these readings.

A need you're feeding

The most common reading is hunger in the wider sense. A dream of eating hungrily, or of a table full of food, tends to come when something in your life has been missing, rest, affection, fun or recognition. If the food was something from childhood, the need may be for the care that came with it more than the dish itself. And if you couldn't get enough however much you ate, ask where in your life nothing feels like it fills you.

Something you're taking in

Eating is also how something outside becomes part of you. Dreams of eating often come when you're absorbing a lot at once, a new job, a new language, a new relationship, and digesting it takes time. Was the food easy to eat, or hard to chew? That tends to match how the new thing is going down.

Comfort and control

Eating alone, especially secretly or past the point of hunger, is often about comfort, but comfort of a kind that doesn't quite work. It can show up in stressful weeks, after a loss, or when you're lonely. But if food is something you struggle with in waking life, the dream may just be carrying that struggle on into the night.^[1] None of this is a judgment, only the dream telling you which way you've been reaching when things get hard.

Dreaming about eating glass

This is the most searched eating dream, and it's as unpleasant as it sounds. Glass in your mouth usually means you've been swallowing something that hurts (words you didn't say, criticism you took without answering, a situation you're putting up with to keep the peace). If you were trying to speak and the glass cut you, look at a conversation you're avoiding. And if your teeth broke on it, the dream joins one of the most common anxiety dreams of all.

Dreaming about eating with other people

Eating together is one of the oldest ways people show they belong to each other, and a dream meal with family or friends is usually about that bond. A warm, noisy table tends to come when you feel part of something, or miss feeling that way. If you were left out, served last or eating something different from everyone else, the dream points to where you feel on the edge of a group. And sharing bread with strangers, a very old picture of hospitality, can be about being welcomed somewhere new.

Dreaming about eating fish

Fish brings its own associations to an eating dream. In Chinese the word for fish sounds like the word for surplus, which is why fish is served at New Year as a wish for plenty. In the Gospels, a few loaves and two fish feed five thousand people. So eating fish in a dream often has a feeling of abundance or nourishment about it. Was it fresh and good? Then it tends to come when you're taking in something healthy, a new idea or a better habit, but a fish that tasted off points the other way. Freud, for his part, listed fish among the sexual symbols, which is worth a thought if the dream had that kind of charge.^[4]

Dreaming about eating sweets

Cake, chocolate and ice cream are treats, and treats are about pleasure and reward. Eating them in a dream with enjoyment can mean you're letting yourself have something good, or wish you could. Eating them guiltily, hiding the wrapper or unable to stop, points to a pleasure you feel you don't deserve or can't control. A birthday cake adds celebration and the passing of time, so look at whether you've been thinking about your age, or about being noticed.

Dreaming about eating raw meat

Raw meat or raw chicken is food you're not supposed to eat yet, and the dream often feels wrong in a way you can't shake. It tends to be about rushing something that needed more time, a decision, a relationship, a plan. And because raw meat is the food of predators, it can also be about a hungry, aggressive side of you (anger, ambition, desire) that's closer to the surface than you're used to.

Dreaming about eating feces

Few dreams leave people more embarrassed, and few are more common than they'd admit. Eating something disgusting is usually about shame, or about being made to accept something degrading, a job you hate, someone's contempt or a compromise that goes against what you value. Folklore is kinder about dirt than dreamers are. In France, stepping in dog mess with your left foot is supposed to bring luck, and plenty of popular dream books read excrement as money coming. So the image isn't always as bleak as it feels, but the shame is still the part to look at.

Dreaming about eating according to Jung and Freud

Both men left ideas that fit a meal, though they point in different directions.

Jung: the appetite you don't own

The shadow, for Jung, holds everything you've disowned in yourself, the traits and appetites you'd never admit to.^[2] Applied to eating (ours, not his), raw meat, a mouthful of something disgusting or a cake eaten in the dark with the wrapper hidden are the shadow's kind of meal, an appetite you refuse in daylight getting fed at night. His essay on the mother archetype also lists the cow, a garden, a ploughed field and an oven among the mother symbols,^[3] all of them things that feed, which puts a meal at your grandmother's table close to the person who fed you first.

Freud: the wish on the plate

Freud built his theory on the idea that a dream fulfills a wish, usually in disguise. Applied to eating (our application), a hungry person who dreams of a feast is the plainest wish-fulfilment there is.^[4] Where the dream is stranger, he'd look for what the food stood for, and for the day's events that put it on the menu.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of eating in dreams

Two old texts have someone eating something that isn't there, one in a vision and one in a dream.

Ezekiel eats the scroll

In the Bible, Ezekiel is told in a vision to eat a scroll, and when he does, it's "in my mouth as honey for sweetness".^[5] The prophet takes in a hard message and makes it part of himself. It's an old picture of what many eating dreams are about, swallowing something new until it becomes yours.

Dream food in the Atharvaveda

The Atharvaveda, the Veda of hymns and charms for daily life, has a one-verse prayer for food a sleeper eats in a dream and doesn't find in the morning, that it be "propitious" to him.^[6] The verse doesn't say what the meal means. It asks that the meal do no harm.

Questions to ask about your eating dream

The menu matters less than how the meal felt, so go back over it with these questions.

• What were you eating, and did you like it?
• Were you alone, or with people, and who?
• Did you eat until you were full, or could you never get enough?
• Was there anything you couldn't swallow?
• What do you feel hungry for in your life right now?

Once you've got the answers, describe the dream to Oniri and it will ask about these details too before giving you a reading.