Food

Resources

Gear

Mods

Resources Menu

For a more in-depth guide to farming and producing food, see Food production.

For information on hunger, see Saturation.

Food is the basic source of nutrition to both humans and animals. Consuming food provides saturation. Deprivation of food leads to malnutrition and, if prolonged, death.

Summary[edit]

Food is measured in units of nutrition. Most raw foods, as well as certain cooked foods like pemmican, give 0.05 nutrition per unit. Prepared meals, such as simple meals or lavish meals, generally give 0.9 or 1.0 nutrition.

Baseline adult humans require 1.6 nutrition per day to avoid being hungry. They can "store" 1.0 nutrition at any one time. As they start to eat while they are "hungry" (0.25 saturation), certain types of meals are subject to overeating. A rough baseline of 2 meals per day, or 32 units of pemmican/raw food, is required to feed a person.

By default, colonists will eat the tastiest valid food; from Lavish to Raw. Certain traits or ideology precepts may change their priorities. You can control what foods colonists are able to eat in the Assign tab. You can also select a colonist's or prisoner's food policy in the Health tab.

Raw food[edit]

For a list of raw food items, see Raw food.

Food found in its natural stage is raw. Most raw foods will give the −7 Ate Raw Food moodlet to an ordinary colonist. All raw food comes with an innate chance of food poisoning. Milk, berries, and insect jelly can be eaten without mood penalty, but can still give food poisoning.

You can cook food into meals at an electric stove, fueled stove or campfire, or process it at a nutrient paste dispenser. In addition to tasting better, cooked food allows you to get more nutrition off the same amount of raw food. For example, a simple meal costs 0.5 nutrition to make, but gives 0.9 nutrition when eaten - this equates to 180% more food. Food poisoning of a prepared meal is based off of Cooking skill and cleanliness of the room. Nutrient paste can never cause food poisoning.

Raw food can be obtained from a variety of sources:

Wild bushes can be harvested to give agave and berries.
Growing zones can be used to plant rice, potatoes, corn, strawberries and haygrass (for domesticated animals).
- Hydroponics basins can also be used to plant rice, potatoes or strawberries, and grows them at a considerably increased rate.
Meat is obtained from fresh non-mechanoid corpses, whether hunted or if they died via other means. Corpses may be eaten raw or butchered at a butcher table.
Occasional drops from cargo pods.

Degradation[edit]

As of version 0.15.1279 (29 August 2016) there is a message telling you when food has spoiled.

Food will be destroyed if left unattended by two entirely separate factors: exposure and temperature.

Items dropped in an area without a roof will deteriorate over time, and lose item HP.

Storing food in temperatures above 0 °C (32 °F) will spoil over time. Temperatures below 10 °C (50 °F) will slow down spoiling by a factor of 1/temp in Celsius. See Temperature for details.
- In the early game, food spoilage can pose a threat if located on warm biomes. A freezer room can be created by placing enough coolers in proportion to its size - the bigger the storage, the more coolers required.

For example: a raider is killed and drops a fine meal outdoors, while temperature is below freezing. The meal will not spoil, but it will still deteriorate, and lose HP. Conversely, a meal stored indoors at room temperature will spoil rather than deteriorating.

Once spoiled, food will vanish and can never be recovered. However, food can be eaten at any stage before spoiling with no negative effect. Food poisoning comes from other sources, such as a messy kitchen, an unskilled cook, or eating raw food.

Food Types[edit]

Main article: Food types

All foods belong to one or more food types, which determine which animals they can be eaten by.

Analysis[edit]

As a rough rule of thumb - 25 tiles of rice / potatoes / corn, in ordinary soil, is enough to feed a single colonist in Losing is Fun indefinitely, when:

They are cooked into and eaten as simple meals.
A grower's Plants skill is competent; 6 Plants is enough.
Crops are harvested reasonably quickly. 25 tiles gives a little extra food in case of emergency, but assumes that Growing is priority #1 in the Work tab.
Your colony has a year-round growing season.

20 tiles of rice/corn in rich soil (not potatoes) is also enough to feed a colonist, in the same conditions, with some food in reserve. Since a higher difficulty reduces plant yield, on difficulties lower than Losing is Fun less food is required. If your biome doesn't have a winter, then just plant your tiles of rice, and you don't really have to worry about managing food unless toxic fallout happens.

Food crop comparison[edit]

Of the three "main" food crops:

Rice grows quickly, but gives the least per harvest. Rice is stable; since each individual rice harvest is small, a blight will not impact a rice harvest as much as it does with other crops. However, because it needs to be harvested more often, you will need more work for the same amount of food. Due to its grow speed, it is a great food to plant at the beginning of the game, or as a "last harvest" when winter is fast approaching.
Corn is the opposite of rice. It grows slowly, but gives the most per harvest. It needs to be harvested much less frequently, meaning corn takes much less work than rice. However, your corn harvest will be impacted more by disasters like blight and fire. Corn cannot be grown in hydroponics.
Potatoes are in the middle in terms of speed, harvest size, and work. Potatoes are notable for their low Fertility Sensitivity, meaning the quality of soil impacts them much less. They are great if you are forced to plant in stony soil or gravel, but bad to grow in rich soil or hydroponics.

Rice, corn, and potatoes give roughly the same amount of food per day per plant, assuming regular soil is used. Rice is ever so slightly higher than the other 2 crops.

Of the other available crops:

Strawberry plants give less food per day than any of the three food crops. It grows faster than potatoes, but slower than rice. Its niche is that strawberries can be eaten raw without a mood penalty, but this is rarely useful given that cooking food into meals will net you more effective food.
Hay is inedible to humans, but gives the most food per day of all plants. Slightly less work efficient per than corn. Hay can also be used for straw matting.
Nutrifungus is almost identical to potatoes; it grows slightly slower in regular soil, but has even less Fertility Sensitivity (meaning slightly better growth in rough soil). Nutrifungus' benefit is that it has to be grown in complete darkness. This means that it can be grown indoors, allowing it to be grown in heated rooms in the winter, without having to use a power hungry sun lamp. As another benefit, nutrifungus is completely immune to blight. However, most ideoligions give −3 for Ate Cooked Fungus. Tunnelers enjoy eating fungus and despise any other plant. Tunnelers can construct fungal gravel to create fertile soil under their mountains.
Toxipotatoes have no fertility sensitivity at all, and are the only food source that can be planted in polluted terrain. They provide strictly inferior food per work and per day to the standard potato, but do reach full growth between one and three days quicker depending on the terrain.^{[Early harvest?]} They have double the chance to cause food poisoning when eaten raw.

Food preparation[edit]

Nutrient paste is the most efficient way to prepare food, with 300% efficiency (0.3 nutrition of raw food required for a 0.9 nutrition meal) and zero chance of food poisoning, but inflicts a −4 mood penalty for eating it. Great when work is in short supply or if there is no skilled cook, assuming the colony has enough research to build a nutrient paste dispenser.
Simple meals are the simplest and most nutrionally efficient of the standard meals. Good for starting out if a cook is available or if nutrient paste isn't available.
Fine meals take more work and minimum skill to create for a +5 mood boost. There are three variants. Regular fine meals are as nutirtionally efficient as simple meals, but require vegetables and meat/animal products. Vegetarian fine meals and carnivore fine meals can be made using only one type of ingredient but require 50% more food to make. They are good for mid-game colonies that can afford to source meat/animal products (for regular fine meals) or to grow extra food (for vegearian fine meals).
Pemmican and packaged survival meals can survive a long time or indefinitely without spoiling, respectively. They require vegetables and meat/animal products and are less efficient than regular fine meals.
Lavish meals provide a +12 mood boost at the cost of requring more food, work, and minimum skill than fine meals; note that the mood boosts from fine meals and lavish meals stack.

Comparison table[edit]

Name	Nutrition	Taste	Deterioration rate (per day)	Days to rot	Food type
Carnivore lavish meal	1	Lavish	10	4	meals
Lavish meal	1	Lavish	10	4	meals
Vegetarian lavish meal	1	Lavish	10	4	meals
Carnivore fine meal	0.9	Fine	10	4	meals
Fine meal	0.9	Fine	10	4	meals
Nutrient paste meal	0.9	Awful	10	0.75	meals
Packaged survival meal	0.9	Simple	0.25		meals
Simple meal	0.9	Simple	10	4	meals
Vegetarian fine meal	0.9	Fine	10	4	meals
Ostrich egg (fert.)	0.6	Raw	2	15	animal product
Alligator egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Alligator egg (unfert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Cassowary egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Emu egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Flamingo egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Flamingo egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Goose egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Goose egg (unfert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Heron egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Heron egg (unfert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Penguin egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Penguin egg (unfert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Sea turtle egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Sea turtle egg (unfert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Turkey egg (fert.)	0.5	Raw	2	15	animal product
Catfish	0.5	Raw	3	2	meat
Dogfish	0.5	Raw	3	2	meat
Flounder	0.5	Raw	3	2	meat
Frostfish	0.5	Raw	3	2	meat
Marlin	0.5	Raw	3	2	meat
Tuna	0.5	Raw	3	2	meat
Bluebird egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Bluebird egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Chicken egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Chicken egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Cobra egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Crow egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Crow egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Duck egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Duck egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	10	15	animal product
Iguana egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Macaw egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Macaw egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Monitor lizard egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Monitor lizard egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Peafowl egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Peafowl egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Quail egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Quail egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Sparrow egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Sparrow egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Swan egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Swan egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Tortoise egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Vulture egg (fert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Vulture egg (unfert.)	0.25	Raw	2	15	animal product
Bass	0.25	Raw	3	2	meat
Bluefish	0.25	Raw	3	2	meat
Cod	0.25	Raw	3	2	meat
Piranha	0.25	Raw	3	2	meat
Salmon	0.25	Raw	3	2	meat
Tilapia	0.25	Raw	3	2	meat
Hemogen pack	0.1		5		fluid
Chocolate	0.1	Fine	8		processed
Insect jelly	0.05	Fine	6		animal product
Milk	0.05	Raw	10	14	fluid, animal product
Raw fungus	0.05	Raw		40	fungus
Kibble	0.05	Raw	6		kibble
Baby food	0.05	Terrible		14	meals
Pemmican	0.05	Simple	2	70	meals
Guppy	0.05	Raw	3	2	meat
Human meat	0.05	Raw	6	2	meat
Insect meat	0.05	Raw	6	2	meat
Meat	0.05	Raw	6	2	meat
Toxfish	0.05	Raw	3	2	meat
Twisted meat	0.05	Raw	6	2	meat
Hay	0.05		6	60	plants
Rice	0.05	Raw	6	40	seed
Agave fruit	0.05	Raw	6	25	vegetable
Berries	0.05	Simple	6	14	vegetable
Corn	0.05	Raw	6	60	vegetable
Potatoes	0.05	Raw	6	30	vegetable
Toxipotatoes	0.05	Raw	6	60	vegetable