Mom asking “did you eat?” for the fifth time is affection with a limited vocabulary. Answer nicely.

Plenty of people care in a language with only a few words in it. The question about food is not about food, and asking it five times is not forgetfulness; it is the available phrase for wanting to know you are all right. The content is thin and the feeling behind it is not.

Answer properly rather than with a grunt, and give one extra detail about what you actually ate. Then try answering the real question once: say that you are fine, or that you are not. If you want to go further, ask her the same thing, since nobody asks the one doing the asking.