Hear me out. There's nothing innate to an object that makes it "food". It's an attribute we give to certain things that meet certain qualities, i.e. being digestible, nutritious, perhaps tasty or satisfying in some way, etc. We could really ingest just about anything, but we call the stuff that's edible "food". Does that make it a social construct?
I agree that the pile-on wasn't necessary, people tend to just give their kneejerk response and then move on.
Having said that, you probably could have explained your case a bit better too in the original post.