Also, 10000 babies starve to death EVERYDAY so I guess god has favorites.

Food can be tasty but not nourishing. Any nutritionist care to comment?

It's all part of the indoctrination. Continue to repeat meaningless words and go to church and all will be well in the afterlife. Not a group I want to spend eternity with!

Yeah I remember mumbling some kind of b*** don't remember what the words were because it didn't matter I was f** hungry.

We would pray that the food would "strengthen and nourish our bodies," which I always thought was odd when we were eating something like french fries and hot dogs. I would wonder, is god really going to change this food so it nourishes our bodies?

I went to an Indian school in the apartheid days from beginning to end. "They" gave us a syllabus that included the christian prayer (that our father one) every morning at assembly before you went to your respective class. My mother would tell is to pray before sitting down to supper. I was 11 yrs old. I asked to which god? She would end up closing her eyes, saying something that wasn't clear, while my eyes were open watching her until her mumbling was over. She used to tell us about people in the townships and Ethiopia that didn't have a meal and therefore we should thank god for our food. I asked why is god angry with them? ...must they still say thank you to god for not having food? Why do parents get angry with these questions?

It could be used for a food fight.

lol nope, never ever! not just not THAT prayer, but none. we didn't do that.

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Hahahaha, I used to wonder the same thing! I was raised Lutheran, just a few incantations shy of Catholic. Saying "grace" before any meal was like our ongoing protection against certain disaster, of some unknown sort. Away from home, we were to say it silently to ourselves, and not doing so was a Terrible Thing. But it never was. I haven't thought of those practices in so very long, and now after some 40 yrs of spiritual exploration blurring into agnostic thought it all seems incredibly bizarre.

At my grandmothers house every Sunday afternoon we all sat down to a dinner, I remember it was a good experience except when we did not finish all the food on the plate. She would tell us, "There are starving kids in India who are starving." Being the smart one I was I asked if we could send it to them. That was not accepted, no one laughed until my mom got us into the car when she told me that was the best thing I could have done. It was spontaneous on my part and I was young enough I had no idea what it meant.

In Catholic School some teachers said “grace” before lunch.

It went as, “Blessed our lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, through Christ our lord amen”.

Anytime my hubby was asked to give a meal time prayer he would say, "Father, Son, Holy Ghost... bless the one who eats the most."

Family stopped asking. Lol

Never heard of it. We never prayed over food.

For the furtherance of obesity, heart attacks, strokes, varicose veins and doctors' wages.

LOL, oddly enough I only had to hear it on holidays, they had a quicker prayer they repeated with minor variations typically caused by current events that didn't include the phase, thank God, or whatever.

A lot of the food Americans eat these days has almost zero nutritional value, so they probably do need to pray it nourishes them.

gluttony, drunkenness... according to Christian lore.

Yeah I still fake it in front of my 6 year old niece because she doesn't know better yet. 2 more years and I can stop.