[yorwba]

Conversely, 食 also means "eat" in Chinese, but is now used almost exclusively in nouns like 食物 (food) or 食堂 (dining hall). The Chinese character inventory is simply too large to keep all possible uses, especially across different languages.

[spacehunt]

食 is still being used everyday in Cantonese as a verb. Granted there are some who classifies Cantonese as a different language from Mandarin, as there are many differences between the two such as this example.

[rabboRubble]

Yep!