Food consumption appears to be totally unbalanced.
Protein is consumed out of all proportion to the rest of the food groups leading to an inordinate amount of decay. Bread is the most useless food out there. Nobody seems to eat it and most of it rots.
I would like to suggest food is consumed in the following order (irrespective of type) as a general rule as we still need meat, veg and fruit intake to be balanced for good health.
food nearing expiry gets eaten as a priority, then
fresh food (meats, veg, fruit, bread) then
smoked meats and nuts
preserved foods (in jars)
Spoilage is incredibly high due to an inefficient rule set on when things are consumed.
Bread could also be split into standard white bread with a short shelf life and a dark rye bread that has a longer shelf life to even out the spoilage/consumption rate.
The problem with bread is you make it faster than the population eats it. And if you don’t pay attention it or the brewery can quickly wiped out the food stock for your cows.
What would be nice is a feature to set maximum production rates per month so this can’t happen. Just let me tweak how much bread is made per month so it’s made at a rate that is eaten, even if it’s only 25% of what a single worker can make a month. Just let me put in a yearly limit then divide that by 12. If they have to make 10 bread at time and I set it to 100 max, then just have them make 10 a month and stop after 100.
I agree, ten66, and I think your priority list is right on. An alternative preparation route for meat that would last a while would be to have a colonist who specializes in drying foods. Fish and meat could be dried easily, and drying is a very old method of preserving food. Herbs can be dried, as well. Veggies would be better canned.
@OIPioneer agreed, there could be some advanced options around meat preservation that would extend shelf life perhaps with barrels as a pre-req (salting, here’s a new mining industry!, pickling)
Salting! Yes! And pickling. Then that could expand the veggies available for farming – cucumbers, beets, okra . . . They could become available for farming after we build, for example, cannery.
