Food for Charades: 100 Words From Easy to Hard

Need food ideas for charades? This list has 100 words in three levels: 40 easy, 40 normal and 20 hard, from fruit and snacks to full dishes. Choose a level, then act out how you eat, cook or serve each one.

100 food words for charades

Start with easy fruits and snacks, move on to full dishes at the normal level, and save the hard words for players who already know your acting style.

Easy (40)

Apple
Banana
Carrot
Hamburger
Ice cream
Pizza
Cake
Pancake
Donut
Orange
Hot dog
Cookie
Grapes
Sandwich
Popcorn
French fries
Egg
Spaghetti
Cheese
Watermelon
Bread
Milk
Rice
Soup
Strawberry
Corn
Chicken
Peanut butter
Cucumber
Tomato
Muffin
Broccoli
Fish
Sausage
Pretzel
Pineapple
Lemon
Chili
Cupcake
Taco

Normal (40)

Mashed potatoes
Caesar salad
Barbecue ribs
Roast beef
Crab cake
Vegetable stir-fry
Coleslaw
Potato chips
Pepperoni pizza
Pork chop
Chicken wings
Grilled cheese
Chicken soup
Garlic bread
Oatmeal
Maple syrup
Beef stew
Sweet potato
Eggplant parmesan
Meatloaf
Stuffed pepper
Potato salad
Tuna salad
Clam chowder
Fried rice
Lamb chops
Beef jerky
Apple crisp
Lemon tart
Peanut brittle
Ham sandwich
Barbecue chicken
Spinach dip
Deviled eggs
Meat lasagna
Pot roast
Chocolate mousse
Garden salad
Cinnamon roll
Chicken curry

Hard (20)

Hard does not mean obscure: these words are simply harder to act out without speaking.

Boiled egg
Pomegranate
Lettuce wrap
Granola bar
Root beer float
Blackberry
Grapefruit
Coconut water
Hazelnut
Asparagus
Molasses
Almond butter
Artichoke
Beetroot
Cabbage roll
Sour cream
Brussels sprouts
Pickles
Molten chocolate cake
Caramel corn

These ideas are starters. Download Showem free for more words, teams and timers, and same-phone play on one device - from the App Store or Google Play.

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How to act out food and dishes

Show what you do with the food, not what it looks like. Peel a banana, twirl spaghetti on an imaginary fork, crack a nut, scoop ice cream into a cone. For popcorn, pretend to pop and toss kernels into your mouth. Dishes with several words, like clam chowder or fried rice, are easier when you show the number of words first and then act out one word at a time, using the cooking motion for the first and the eating motion for the second.

Why the hard level is hard

The hard food words have no obvious way of being eaten or held. Pomegranate, asparagus, molasses, sour cream and almond butter look similar in your hands, and spreads or liquids are tough to show without props. Change the angle instead: mime scraping seeds out of a fruit, snapping a stalk, pouring something very slowly, dipping a chip into a bowl. Naming the category out loud, such as vegetable, sauce or dessert, also gets the group closer quickly.

Play these food words in the Showem app

The Showem app holds 200 food words in three difficulty levels, and this page shows 100 of them. Showem runs timed rounds for teams on one phone, so you can spend the evening miming instead of dealing with paper slips. It is free to download on iOS and Android and also includes animals, jobs, movies, books and more.