Food, dish, meal, or cuisine?

In today’s lesson, I’ll explain when to use these words so that you’ll understand them clearly. If you want to learn more, check out my e-book, 600+ Confusing English Words Explained.

Food聽is the most general word, referring to聽anything you can eat. A banana is food. A hamburger is food. A salad is food. Simple things (like a piece of bread) and complex things (like a seafood stew with many ingredients) are all in the general category of聽food. In everyday English, you’ll often hear sentences like:

The word food聽is聽usually singular – so you should say “I ate a lot of food (not foods) last night.” But there are some exceptions – we use聽foods,聽plural, when specifically talking about multiple distinct types, for example, “At the international festival, I tried聽foods聽from around the world.”

The word聽dish聽has two meanings. One is a physical object used to hold, cook, and serve food. When we talk about washing the dishes, we are washing the plates, bowls, pots, pans, spoons, forks, etc.

The word dish can also refer to one prepared item of food, like a聽lasagna or a fruit salad.聽If you go to a type of social event called a potluck, each person who attends brings a dish – one person brings a salad, another person brings an apple pie, another person brings beef stew, etc. Each of these prepared items of food is a dish.

At a restaurant, you might encounter the terms main dish (a large amount of food – like a steak)聽and聽side dish (a small amount of food that accompanies the main dish – like a small bowl of broccoli).

The word meal聽refers to the customary time/occasion of eating food. Most people eat 3 meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Meal聽also refers to all the food eaten during one of these occasions – so one meal can include multiple dishes. Dinner is one meal, but you might have chicken, rice, salad, and ice cream. Each of those is one dish, and when eaten all together on one occasion, they are a meal.

A meal may include many dishes.

You might have a big/heavy meal (with a lot of food) or a light meal (with little food). A meal can be elaborate (with many different and complicated dishes) or simple (with just a few easy-to-make dishes).

The word聽cuisine聽describes聽a typical manner/style of preparing food. We usually use this word with country adjectives (Italian cuisine, Brazilian cuisine, Moroccan cuisine) or ethnic or regional adjectives (Cajun cuisine, Jewish cuisine, South Indian cuisine). In everyday English, however, many people simply say “food” when talking about getting something to eat:

When talking more specifically about the techniques and traditions, then we would say聽cuisine: