Nutrition

Nutrition is a property of food and plants, that represents the how much saturation it gives the creature eating it. 1.0 nutrition is enough to satiate a adult human from 0 saturation; they will seek out food before then, though. Body size impacts how much saturation a creature can hold.

Food nutrition

	Nutrition
Agave fruit	0.05
Baby food	0.05
Berries	0.05
Carnivore fine meal	0.9
Carnivore lavish meal	1
Cassowary egg (fert.)	0.5
Chicken egg (fert.)	0.25
Chicken egg (unfert.)	0.25
Chocolate	0.1
Cobra egg (fert.)	0.25
Corn	0.05
Duck egg (fert.)	0.25
Duck egg (unfert.)	0.25
Emu egg (fert.)	0.5
Fine meal	0.9
Goose egg (fert.)	0.5
Goose egg (unfert.)	0.5
Hay	0.05
Hemogen pack	0.1
Human meat	0.05
Iguana egg (fert.)	0.25
Insect jelly	0.05
Insect meat	0.05
Kibble	0.05
Lavish meal	1
Meat	0.05
Milk	0.05
Nutrient paste meal	0.9
Ostrich egg (fert.)	0.6
Packaged survival meal	0.9
Pemmican	0.05
Potatoes	0.05
Raw fungus	0.05
Rice	0.05
Simple meal	0.9
Tortoise egg (fert.)	0.25
Toxipotatoes	0.05
Turkey egg (fert.)	0.5
Twisted meat	0.05
Vegetarian fine meal	0.9
Vegetarian lavish meal	1

Plant nutrition

While rooted plants can't be eaten directly by human pawns, plants provide nutrition when eaten by herbivorous animals. Dendrovores like alphabeavers can consume trees, while the thrumbo can eat both trees as well as the typical herbivore diet of grass, dandelions, healroot, ambrosia, and fungi. All plants are completely destroyed upon animal consumption, trees do not leave stumps in this case.

Hungry, herbivorous animals will find and consume accessible plants after plant growth reaches maturity, typically around 65% of its total growing time and when it first becomes available for colonist harvest. Nutrition provided upon consumption is a plant stat, where the final value is a species base value multiplied for plant growth.

Nutrition (final value) = Species' base value * Growth percentage multiplier

The food requirements of an animal is largely species dependent. The relevant stats are called Grass to Maintain and Food Consumption. Food Consumption is the nutrition eaten per day and can be modified by a number of different factors, such as pregnancy.

Tamed animals will eat mature plants and consumable items they have access to, either in their pen, surrounding the Caravan hitching spot they are roped to, or in their assigned zone. Tamed non-pen animals can traverse closed doors and fence gates to reach food if it's all within their assigned zone.

Crops

The harvest yield is a crop stat for the quantity of items the plant is converted into when a human harvests the plant. Harvesting completely destroys most plants, except ambrosia, berries bushes, cocoa trees, and agave fruit, which can produce multiple harvests before the organism dies at the end of its life span. The equation for plant Harvest Yield is

Harvest yield = Species' base value * Storyteller harvest yield setting

The final quantity of product harvested from a plant is a function of the plant's harvest yield as well as the colonist stat Plant Harvest Yield.

Analysis

Harvesting a mature crop plant generally produces more nutrition than letting an animal directly consume the living plant, except in cases where the harvesting colonists have exceptionally low plant harvest yield stats. Keep in mind that low colonist Harvest Yield stats have a chance of botching the harvest completely, yielding nothing while killing the plant.

For example, consuming a full-grown haygrass plant provides 0.30 nutrition. A 100% harvest yields 18 hay with 0.05 nutrition each: a total of 0.90 nutrition. Processing the hay further into kibble increases final nutrition yield at the expense of meat, time, and work.

However, the viability of free grazing depends on the abundance of plant life on your map, e.g. soil fertility, sunlight, temperature, snow, and biome. Animal malnutrition results in slowed Growth rates, miscarriage, health penalties, and even death by starvation.

	Nutrition
Agarilux	0.75
Agave	0.2
Alocasia	0.5
Ambrosia bush	0.5
Anima tree	2
Astragalus	0.25
Bamboo tree	1.5
Berry bush	0.5
Birch tree	2
Bonsai tree	0.25
Brambles	0.5
Bryolux	0.3
Bush	0.5
Cecropia tree	1.5
Chokevine	0.25
Clivia	0.5
Cocoa tree	1.5
Corn plant	0.4
Cotton plant	0.2
Cypress tree	2
Dandelions	0.25
Daylily	0.05
Devilstrand mushroom	0.2
Drago tree	2
Gauranlen tree	2
Giant rafflesia	0.5
Glowstool	0.5
Grass	0.5
Gray pine tree	2
Harbinger tree	2
Haygrass	0.3
Healroot	0.2
Hop plant	0.2
Low shrubs	0.25
Maple tree	2
Moss	0.5
Nutrifungus	0.25
Oak tree	2
Palm tree	1.5
Pebble cactus	0.25
Pincushion cactus	0.25
Pine tree	2
Poplar tree	1.5
Potato plant	0.25
Psychoid plant	0.2
Rat palm tree	2
Rice plant	0.175
Rose	0.05
Saguaro cactus	2
Smokeleaf plant	0.2
... further results