I wouldn't go along with that. In "Everybody likes eating the food", "like" is a catenative verb and the gerund-participial clause "eating the food" is a catenative complement, not an object.

But they say here that it is the object. learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/node so now Im confused.

@trenccan They are wrong, I'm afraid. In almost all cases, non-finite clauses are not objects, but catenative complements.

Okay, so even if it's a non-finite clause it's still a gerund-participle clause thus a gerund.

@BillJ To whom can I trust if the source that should be the most relevant is wrong? I don't know. Is still prefer the answer that eating is subject in this case. I think that "everybody likes to eat and everybody likes eating", both sentences have a different meaning.

BillJ consider the difference between "I like eating" - gerund as a direct object and "I like to eat" - noun infinitive as a direct object.

A gerund-participial clause is one that has a gerund-participle verb as head. In much modern grammar today, there is no 'gerund' and no separate 'present participle' in the verb paradigm, but the single inflectional form 'gerund-participle'.

"Like" is a catenative verb -- In "I like to eat", the infinitival clause "to eat" is catenative complement of "like", not object. "I like eating" is ambiguous, as I explained in my message to trenccan.

@BillJ What is ambiguos?

Ambiguous means 'not having a single meaning or interpretation'.

@BillJ: The verb like is transitive, and as you know a transitive verb is used with a direct object. What's the object in Everybody likes eating the food?

@Mori A fair number of transitive verbs can also be catenative verbs. Compare the transitive "I like healthy eating" where "eating" must be a noun (as direct object) because it is modified by an adjective, and "Everybody likes eating food" which is a catenative construction where the non-finite clause "eating food" is catenative complement, not direct object.complement.

@BillJ Pardon me, but if you're saying this then why not give an answer and provide reference to grammar so that the OP and others learn from you?

I have already done that in my answer to the same OP, see link

@trenccan The point is that non-finite clauses do not behave like objects and hence should be considered a distinct kind of construction.