The maintenance of immune homeostasis in the gastrointestinal tract guarantees our health and prevents the development of serious infection. How this occurs in the gut in the face of the massive load of food material ingested throughout a day, has been unclear. Here, we examine the tempo-spatial mechanism describing how innate lymphoid cells orchestrate this protection and physiologically integrate the multitude of antigenic inputs composed of food and microbes to restrict the development of inflammation and prevent invasion of harmful bacteria.