Why do We Bless the Food?
Why do we bless food? I once had an institute teacher issue a challenge for anyone to find scriptural support for the practice of blessing our food, and I’ve not been able to find any. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be thankful for our food, but thanking the Lord and blessing our food are two different things as I see it.
And first of all, I want to make that distinction. I believe in saying a prayer before I eat, and I believe in thanking the Lord for the food in that prayer. I just think the practice of calling it a blessing has occasioned some practices I don’t understand. That is to say, if we call it a blessing, then we should do some blessing, and we do . . . and it always has something to do with nourishing and strengthening our bodies.
Now, if we really had a problem with finding nourishing food, this might be called for. Perhaps we could ask, if stuck on an island (actually somthing that could happen to someone on the North Shore when power lines go down) with limited nutrition, that that nutrition might go farther. However, we (I, at least, I don’t know who may be reading this) live in a time and place where we have incredible control over our culinary choices, and we can choose whether to eat nourishing food. Perhaps the changing information about health and nutrition could lead us to ask this blessing to cover our back sides when we do our best to make good choices about our eating. But we don’t mean this at all. At least we don’t seem to, because we go out and buy big macs and fries, food so toxic people are suing over it, and pray that it will nourish and strengthen us. Do we have any right to do this or any expectation of its efficacy?
I would submit that we have no idea why we are praying this. Though the idea shocked me at first, and I resisted, I have come to drop the customary blessing on the food, since I don’t know what it does and I can’t find any evidence that it does anything or is commanded or even reccomended by God. My wife hasn’t gotten on my personal bandwagon yet, but it is actually at her instigation, yet again, that I write. She has actually suggested, and I think it is a good idea, that we should, instead, pray that we will be able to use the food (and the nutrition it gives us) to do worthwhile things, since God gave it to us and we should be putting it to good use.
Besides, with all due respect to those who do bless their food–the majority of church members, I would believe, and not a group I’m looking to offend, I wouldn’t know what to do when I am done with blessed (and thus holy?) food. Am I allowed to put it down the garbage disposal? 
First off, I do not “bless” the food. I say prayer at mealtime, asking the Lord to bless the food. It is His blessing upon it I seek. And aside from the general injunction by the scriptures that we should pray without ceasing, there are many talks by prophets and general authorities who tell us to pray over our food. Note, I did not say “bless the food” because I think this is just a lazy thing that has crept into our language, and it inaccurate. Here is just one quote supporting our need to pray at mealtime, to give thanks to God for our food:
“I am sure that if we pray fervently and righteously, individually and as a family, when we retire at night and when we arise in the morning, and around our tables at mealtime, we will not only knit together as loved ones but we will grow spiritually through communion with our Heavenly Father.”
–Spencer W. Kimball, “Pray Always,” Ensign, Oct. 1981
By the way, I do not believe this makes the food “holy” like the oil that is consecrated for healing of the sick.
Comment by Peggy Snow Cahill — 3/7/2005 @ 7:10 am
J,
I have it on VERY good authority that in the Hinckley family, every single food prayer is the exact same: “…we thank thee for this food and ask thee to bless it. In the name of…” I guess if you’re sincere every time, that’s a great prayer! Simple, and to the point. If only I could be as concise in my prayers.
Comment by Rusty — 3/7/2005 @ 8:39 am
In my family, we used to joke that to save time we should bless our preferred supermarkets. Sorta like in the temples, only with a wider variety of magazines.
Comment by John C. — 3/7/2005 @ 10:21 am
This is one of my beef’s as well. I don’t “bless” food any more, just offer thanks. It used to drive me nuts when we would pray, and then someone would say “oh wait, we didn’t bless the food” and another prayer would be offered explicitly “blessing the food”. There is scriptural support, in a way. In Jewish tradition, a prayer of thanks was offered AFTER the meal. See http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=155
Comment by Ben S. — 3/7/2005 @ 10:29 am
I’m actually more than fine with the prayer at mealtime thing. I really think it helps to bring the family together in recognizing the blessings the Lord has given us. I would say that there is plenty of scriptural and prophetic support for this. It’s the blessing specifically I’m interested in.
Peggy,
Your difference between blessing the food and having the Lord bless it is interesting, though I’m not sure it helps me understand what the blessing should do. Also, I hope the joke at the end wasn’t offensive. I really don’t think anyone is trying to set their food apart as holy.
Rusty,
I’d be interested to know how you know this. Anyway, though I can’t claim Pres. Hinkley as a supporter in this, it seems he doesn’t get us any closer to determining why we sould bless the food. Before I gave up blessing the food, I started getting rid of the strengthen and nourish thing.
John,
What about opening our mouths if we accidentally take a bite first so that the blessing can get down there?
Comment by S. Hancock — 3/7/2005 @ 11:32 am
I’ve often thought we could do something along the lines of Kosher. Get a bunch of Mormons to hang out in the food manufacturers and have them “bless the food” then throw a “circle M” on the label. Voila, pre-blessed Mormonified food - ready to nourish and strengthen.
Seriously though, I think you are spot on Steve. With no intent of being offensive, if we take the ideas that we don’t actually know what blessing the food actually means, and that we say it without actually thinking about it, we get something very close to a vain repetition. No?
But when did this start? Justin B. where are you!
Comment by J. Stapley — 3/7/2005 @ 12:16 pm
S,
It’s straight from the horse’s (or president Hinckley’s grandson’s) mouth. And I only offer the information because I think it’s funny, not because it offers some deep insight.
J,
I love your “circle M” idea. That’s awesome. I always thought we could be much more efficient if we just assigned a number to our desires in our prayers so we could just say, “a number 1, 5, 17, 3, and a 9. In the name of…” I think “nourishing and strengthen” would be numbers 3 and 4.
In all seriousness, we always talk about prayer being our alignment with God’s will, isn’t this the same. Shouldn’t we take this (the fact that a Big Mac CAN’T nourish and strengthen us) as direction to not eat it and to seek out those things we can truthfully ask the Lord to bless to nourish and strengthen our bodies? We should align our will with God’s so that we can sit down to a plate of food and truthfully say, “okay, you’ve given me this food and from what I know, it’s good, so please make sure it follows through.”
Guatemala posed a different situation. We were given food that we prayed wouldn’t harm us (i.e. tap water, some chicken, some juices, etc). I guess that’s a different prayer though, one of protection, not sustinence.
Comment by Rusty — 3/7/2005 @ 12:41 pm
Rusty,
I’ve occasionally prayed over under-done chicken myself, or hamburgers from ward picnics with a lot of pink in the middle, though those prayers have not all been vocal.
Comment by S. Hancock — 3/7/2005 @ 1:14 pm
Nice ideas J. and Rusty. You could combine the ideas for Circle M and have a sticker saying something like “fortified with eight essential blessings!” Including #s 3 and 4 (strengthen and nourish body). Nothing like a little priestcraft to get the day off to a nutritious and delicious start!
I like the idea your wife mentioned, Steve. Thanking God for food makes sense to me (though I think we might weight food a little heavily in the church and leave out other nice things he provides for us… like air) When I ask for strength in a prayer on food I always include a caveat “and that we’ll use that strength to do good”. I mean, how useful is good health if we are wasting the time of our probation anyway?
Comment by Geoff Johnston — 3/7/2005 @ 2:04 pm
J,
Quite a while ago I noticed this same thing. I changed my prayers to ask the Lord’s blessings upon me and my family instead of the food. My guess is that this goes back to the fact that they ate the sacrifices after the sacrificial ceremonies in the old testament.
Comment by Russ Johnston — 3/7/2005 @ 2:26 pm
I have thought about this before, and when I was recovering from an illness, asking a blessing and thanks over food became the most serious thing on my mind. Being able to just eat food was a blessing.
But I think some of the thoughts about it being a vain repetition is right on the money.
Comment by Dallas Robbins — 3/7/2005 @ 10:29 pm
25And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.
This is why I thank the Lord for blessing my food - because it is in the scripture - Exodus 23:25 (King James Version) does anyone here read the real Bible?
Comment by crossharp — 6/7/2005 @ 11:18 am
crossharp - Now, that wasn’t very kind. Of course we read the Bible. There is indeed some president, Jesus blessed food on several occasions (all of which resulted in miracles of one sort or another). I’m not sure this verse you cite has anything to do with praying before meals though.
Comment by J. Stapley — 6/7/2005 @ 11:41 am
Crossharp,
Yes, I read the bible. No, I haven’t memorized it. I’m glad you point out this particular verse, because it gives me a chance to look at one possible reason why we might want to bless the food. I think it is interesting that you say in your post that you thank the lord for blessing your food, since it does say that “he shall bless thy bread.” This could mean a lot of things, but it sounds like it’s a natural thing God does for those who serve him, as a consequence of serving him.
That said, it also sounds like the purpose is to “take sickness away” from our midst. I imagine that there was quite a problem with food poisoning at the time. I would probably think this would be a very good reason to bless our food–that it might be safe to eat. I can imagine the preaparers of the food being a little offended if I prayed that, but it’s not like food poisoning doesn’t happen, and it seems as if this verse would suggest that avoiding sickness from your food would be part of the blessings of serving the Lord. So, if nothing else, I now feel safer about the dangers of salmonella if I do my part and serve the lord. I’m not kidding there; good verse in that way. Also, even in my original post, I mention that I do think we should take seriously the fact that God has given us food and we should thank him and ask him to help us do good with it. My point was that many of us don’t have any idea what to say in a blessing because we don’t know what it is supposed to do. Your idea helps, perhaps, to some degree in that respect.
Comment by S. Hancock — 6/7/2005 @ 3:03 pm
I’m with Peggy on this one.
Peggy, are you saying consecrated oil is holy or not holy?
Comment by Kim Siever — 6/7/2005 @ 3:28 pm
Kim,
I’m also with Peggy. the food is not holy either way. That last line (in the orignial post), as I state above, was being snide. Sorry.
Comment by S. Hancock — 6/7/2005 @ 3:38 pm
where are we commanded to pray for the food to nourish our bodies? read Matthew 26:26 it says that Jesus blessed the food…then in the next verse it says that he gave thanks for the cup…it looks to me like in the greek that the word for blessing seems to connote some kind of setting apart of something (saying a blessing). Matthew 14:9 says it also. Look at the greek.
Comment by john smith — 10/27/2005 @ 8:34 pm
Wether you do, or wether you don’t … it’s the heart that matters.
Philippians 2:14 - Do all things without arguing or complaining.
Colossians 3:17 - Whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the father through Him.
Comment by C Racca — 10/30/2005 @ 8:23 am
My husband is not a particularly spiritual guy, he’s big and has a deep deep voice and is a task oriented person. One of the things I love about him is he always blesses his food. I will be puttering around in my office and he will make a bowl of cheerios, sit down and bow his head and pray silently. It is simply endearing and I so respect him for it.
Comment by annegb — 10/31/2005 @ 12:13 pm
You said that no scripture is available
that you can find that says why we bless
our food.Read this verse:
“For every creature of God is good,
and nothing to be refused, it it be
received with thanksgiving: for it is
sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” I Timothy 4:4-5 (sanctify
means to make pure.
Comment by Beverly — 11/20/2005 @ 1:00 pm
I am writing a research paper on food blessing as a project for my Naturopath class. I keep hearing that blessing food does actually change the molecular structure of the food. It is hard to find scientific proof. However, through muscle testing, I am able to show that blessed food does make your body stronger, while unblessed food makes your body weaker and microwaved food makes it very weak. I am very interested in talking with anyone who has any scientific information regarding this. Has anyone done any studies, similar to Dr. Emoto’s studies with water, to show molecular changes when food is blessed?
Comment by Anne H — 12/17/2005 @ 2:13 pm
Ummm…Anne H., I am a food chemist (Ph.D.) and a devout Christian. The thought of blessed food changing molecular structure seems quite preposterous. I would be astounded if you found any effect. I would venture that every possible means to test it would show no change.
I’ll also bet you that in a double blind placeabo controlled study, you would find no differences in body metabolism of the foods. And what do you mean by stronger?
Comment by J. Stapley — 12/17/2005 @ 4:13 pm
I too was curious to where the practice of praying over ones food came from. I found that it has Jewish history in this action from all the searches I have done as in it is a pleasure to serve God and by praying or ” blessing” the food you are serving God by recognizing that it is He that has been so wonderful as to give us the bounty and nourishment that we enjoy. It greatly saddens my heart from some of the responses that I have read here. We have been such a blessed people, surely the small thing as recognizing our Creator and all that he does for us through out our lives and all that he has or will do for us is not so much as for us to postpone the rush to fill our stomachs. And greatly Thank Him for what he has done. You are putting too much literaly meaning on the word Blessing our food. No we are not making it holy but we are recognizing our good fortune and where it comes from. Please pray about any other questions your have and do not harden your hearts to the principles that have been placed to help us stay on the straight and narrow. Small things bring about Great things but satan uses small things to bring down great people! Go read the first presidency message and listen to President Faust…http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,2043-1-3945-1,00.html
2 Nephi 9:52
52 Behold, my beloved brethren, remember the words of your God; pray unto him continually by day, and give thanks unto his holy name by night. Let your hearts rejoice.
When I say my prayers over my food or when I lay this body down at night I ask for whatever I may be burdened with at that time. We are told to pour out our souls unto Him. Another thing that helps me is that Nephi counseled that the evil one teaches men not to pray but that the Lord encourages us to pray. Please listen tot he counsel of our leaders and do not be led down this path. There is great joy ahead for all of us if we will just endure. I testify to you all that I know that Jesus lives and that our Heavenly Father loves us so much. Please listen to the Holy Ghost and stay true to yourself, for those that would lead us astray KNOW who we were before the veil was drawn over our minds. You all are children of God! It is my prayer that this message I leave will touch your hearts and help you find your way. However small of a light this is my hope and prayer. In Jesus name Amen
Comment by Angela T — 1/29/2007 @ 4:36 pm
Angela T,
I hope you don’t mistake me here. I don’t have any problem with thanking the Lord for my food. That isn’t the point at all. The point is that if we understand what we are praying for we can actually be more sincere in our prayers. If we are asking for a blessing on our food, we should know what sort of blessing, perhaps, that we expect. If not, then we should certainly pour out our souls in thanks to God for his bounty. My question in this post was not calculated to discourage anyone from praying, but rather to encourage us to think about a particular instance of prayer so that we could better understand the prayers we are offering. Perhaps in this way our prayers could be less off-handed. When I hear folks struggling in a prayer to come up with specific blessings to pronounce on the food (i.e. “nourish our bodies”), I think that people do take “blessing” literally and I just want us to discuss that so we can have more understanding. I have in fact, been pointed here to a couple of verses that have made me at least give new consideration to my position. I don’t see anything in any of the comments here that teaches a man not to pray. I simply don’t understand the heatedness of your comment, as I don’t see the tendency you are trying to say is here. I do appreciate well-wishing.
Comment by Steve H — 1/29/2007 @ 4:55 pm
Yeah, Jews prayed after the meal. Paul taught to pray over even unclean meat in order to sanctify it, even meat that violated the directives of Acts 15, which he supposedly agreed to.
Comment by Uziyahu — 10/7/2007 @ 12:12 am
Its funny how flipantly people say, “Its not in the bible!”
Comment by Cal — 12/18/2007 @ 1:32 pm
To Steve H - March 07, 2005: Hats off to you; I have always wondered that myself & have never found anything in the Bible that says we should ask Jehovah to “bless our food.”
To: Uziyahu, 10/7/2007: There is no mention of praying over food or any discussion of meat in Acts 15. Where did you mean to say we could find this information on asking Jehovah to bless our food? I am truly interested in finding it.
To: Cal, 12/18/2007: What’s your point?
Comment by Barbara — 1/2/2008 @ 1:41 pm
For quite a while, my little son (probably age 3) used this phrase during his meal-time prayers: “We thank thee, that the food will be good for us.” (I hope the translation from German to English is about correct.)
It seems like it was a normal for him, that Heavenly Father would purify the food and just thanked Him for this fact. This is an interesting idea and shows the simple faith of a child.
Comment by Oliver — 1/6/2008 @ 3:38 pm
Why is this being discussed? Obedience is born by Faith! Cheers for good reading however…
Comment by SirHeffa — 1/10/2008 @ 10:39 am
SirHeffa,
I really don’t understand your comment. You seem to be encouraging the faith to have obedience. I agree. But obedience to the will of the Lord presupposes that we make a concerted effort to know and understand the will of the Lord, and I really think that this discussion has that goal as its end. We cannot simply assume that the performance of any possible task with the look of religiosity constitutes obedience. Obedience assumes that God has asked us to do something. My question was simply what it is, in this case, that God wants us to do. The justification of obedience through faith is surely not in question.
Comment by Steve H — 1/10/2008 @ 9:38 pm