Lewis Carrol knew this. If the ‘Mad Hatter’s Tea-party’ in Alice in Wonderland was a sly dig at the middle-class, he also knew that some foods make us feel safe, as when Alice helped herself to some tea and bread and butter. Others do not, as Alice shrinks and grows, depending on which side of the mushroom she eats.
Poverty can mean hunger. Tom, the chimney sweep in The Water Babies, cried... when he had not enough to eat, which happened every day in the week... But when he leaves his discarded body behind, he eats water- cresses, perhaps; or perhaps water-gruel and water milk.
Enid Blyton used food in her Famous Five series to show happiness:
The picnic was lovely. They had it on the top of a hill, in a sloping field that looked down into a sunny valley...The children ate enormously, and Mother said that instead of having a tea-picnic at half-past four they would have to go to a tea-house somewhere, because they had eaten all the tea sandwiches as well as the lunch ones!