(Btw, takakoo, when you put in shokuji, correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't shokuji a meal? I don't mean to be nit-picky, but I'm just trying to learn. Can shokuji be used in the sense of tabemono?)
Yes it does mean meal. Tabemono食べ物 means food, the mono物 making the verb taberu食べる into a concrete noun. I suppose it would be better just to say shoku食 by itself when talking about food rather than adding koto事 to make it an abstract noun, making it mean the abstract action of eating food (i.e. meal) rather than the food itself.