More Realistic Nutrition

[antinomian]

In my vision, the nutrition categories would be: carbohydrates, proteins, fat, fiber, and micronutrients. Most foods would give more than one nutrient category. Meats would give both protein and fat, for example, but no fiber or carbohydrates, and very little micronutrients.

"Dairy" being a nutrient category currently peeves me, in this system milk and cheese would still be useful as it would have everything except fiber and be one of the best sources of fat.

This system would also make it so that it would sometimes actually make sense to eat animal fat instead of hoarding it for crafting.

The most important part of this concept is the micronutrients category, currently there is not any incentive in the game to have a varied diet. Different foods would give different micronutrients, but what exactly they were would be hidden from the player. One kind of food could only raise the micronutrient bar so far, you would need to eat a wide variety of foods to fill it up all the way (so you can't just eat turnips forever).

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, antinomian said:

currently there is not any incentive in the game to have a varied diet.

There already is incentive in the game to have a varied diet. Each nutrient bar gives +2.5 extra health when filled; only eating one or two types of nutrition means that the player will be lacking health. While 2.5 hitpoints doesn't seem like a lot, it can be the difference between surviving a fight and dying, especially on higher difficulties or classes that have inherently lower health. There are five nutrition bars to fill, for a grand total of 12.5 additional hit points.

The nutrition system really doesn't need to be more complicated than that, especially since it's already tough enough to figure out nutrition in real life.

[antinomian]

15 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

eating one or two types of nutrition

I was unclear, this is not what I meant. I meant there is no incentive to eat a variety within each nutrition type, as in you currently only need to eat one kind of vegetable, one kind of fruit, etc. to recieve maximum benefits. In my concept you could fulfill 4/5 of the nutrition categories in this same way, but there would be a category that specifically rewards variety.

[The Lerf]

I think he means that you can eat nothing but red meat pie and hefty turnip stew, and more or less max out your satiation stats for meat, vegetable and grain. There's no benefit for consuming a poultry soup or a pumpkin porridge instead, all you're doing is losing out on the maximum possible hunger pause bonus. This idea seeks to give a reason for consuming multiple different meal types within each food category, beyond just role-playing.

I'm all for it. Once you achieve pies, porridge becomes an obsolete meal, and this idea could expand to include wines and brandy which also see limited use in game. 

Although I'm not sure if revising the naming convention of satiation is necessary. Meat, vegetable, gain, fruit, and dairy are easy enough to understand, and while very simplistic I think it gets the point across of diet variance. "Micronutrients" as an extra bar interests me, but I'm not too keen on the name. 

[marmarmar34]

Only if the lack of fiber makes it hard for our sarif to poo.

[LadyWYT]

12 minutes ago, antinomian said:

I was unclear, this is not what I meant. I meant there is no incentive to eat a variety within each nutrition type, as in you currently only need to eat one kind of vegetable, one kind of fruit, etc. to recieve maximum benefits. In my concept you could fulfill 4/5 of the nutrition categories in this same way, but there would be a category that specifically rewards variety.

Ah, gotcha. That does make more sense, but it's still not something that I think would be a very good change. If a player wants to only eat one food type from each nutrition category, that's fine. Most players, I think, do not min-max like that and prefer variety for variety's sake. There is a reason that mods such as Expanded Foods and Wildcraft are popular, after all, and it's not unusual for more food variety to be suggested every so often.

Do keep in mind that realism doesn't always equate to fun. Adding a layer of micronutrients on top of the nutrition system already in place in the game is likely to be more frustrating than fun for most players since it will require players to spend a lot more time planning meals to avoid penalties. For me personally, I really don't want to be spending my time in game counting calories or figuring out exactly what combination of food I have to eat next to avoid nutrition deficiency.

10 minutes ago, The Lerf said:

Once you achieve pies, porridge becomes an obsolete meal

Porridge isn't obsolete once pies are unlocked. Porridge is the fastest way to boost grain saturation, as you can fill all four slots with grain. Even with only two slots filled, it tends to provide more grain nutrition per serving than pie, in addition to being able to warm you up when fresh/reheated as it qualifies as hot food. Porridge can also be cooked on the go, and grain is one of the easiest raw ingredients to pack since it does not easily spoil. Pies, on the other hand, require a table and oven in order to make them, and those are not furniture that are convenient for travel.

 

13 minutes ago, The Lerf said:

wines and brandy which also see limited use in game. 

Wine is a good way to preserve fruit nutrition long term if one doesn't have bees. Brandy is a better version of wine since it never expires. Both can be turned into aqua vitae, which is quite useful for healing, especially when defending one's base from temporal storms. I don't think wine is the most attractive choice for fruit nutrition overall though, as it will get the player drunk when consumed, which isn't a very useful side effect. When it comes to brandy, it takes 10 liters of wine just to make 1 liter of brandy, so it's not worth the cost just from the numbers standpoint when it comes to nutrition.

[jerjerje]

1 hour ago, antinomian said:

In my vision, the nutrition categories would be: carbohydrates, proteins, fat, fiber, and micronutrients. Most foods would give more than one nutrient category. Meats would give both protein and fat, for example, but no fiber or carbohydrates, and very little micronutrients.

"Dairy" being a nutrient category currently peeves me, in this system milk and cheese would still be useful as it would have everything except fiber and be one of the best sources of fat.

This system would also make it so that it would sometimes actually make sense to eat animal fat instead of hoarding it for crafting.

The most important part of this concept is the micronutrients category, currently there is not any incentive in the game to have a varied diet. Different foods would give different micronutrients, but what exactly they were would be hidden from the player. One kind of food could only raise the micronutrient bar so far, you would need to eat a wide variety of foods to fill it up all the way (so you can't just eat turnips forever).

The "Micronutrients" Bar you suggest sounds similar to this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/novelty

But generally I don't think the nutrition needs to be more complex as it is. What you're suggesting might make for an interesting mod, but I don't think vanilla needs that complexity. I would say the current system is a good balance between requiring players to eat a varied diet, while also being simple enough to be easily understandable.