Tkinter button text/image not updating after incrementing a value in another class

I'm working on a Tamagotchi-like app in Python with Tkinter. I detect clicks on a canvas item and increment a "clicks" counter stored in a JSON-backed character object. When the clicks reach multiples of 10, I also increase the "food" count and want to update the button text or image to reflect the new food amount.

My click handler calls this increment method which updates the clicks and food values correctly in the JSON and in memory:

def increment_clicks(self):
    click_count = self.character.stats.get("clicks", 0)
    print(click_count)
    self.character.stats["clicks"] = click_count + 1
    if click_count % 10 == 0:
        self.character.stats["food"] = self.character.stats.get("food", 0) + 1
        self.ui.update_feed_button()

The method to update the button is:

def update_feed_button(self):
    food_count = self.character.stats.get("food", 0)
    if self.btn_feed:
        self.btn_feed.config(text=f"{food_count}")

And the button is defined like this:

self.btn_feed = tk.Button(
    self.root, text=f"{food_count}",
    font=("Arial", 10),
    image=self.food_photo_on,
    compound="center",
    bd=0,
    command=self.on_feed_tamago
)

here is the call from my game.py file:

if self.character.character_exists():
    self.ui.increment_clicks(self)

However, the button's text or image does not update after incrementing the food count. I suspect this is because the self references in the click handler and the button might be pointing to different instances or files, so the UI update doesn't reflect the changed value.

How can I properly update the button UI when the food count changes in this kind of multi-file Tkinter application?

I'm not an python expert just wanted to have fun if you need anything i can send more context