[2021] Fast metabolism drains food to zero in 1 second

You're misunderstanding the food system. There is a thin green bar (and a blue one) below your hotbar that represent your hunger and thirst levels. When it's full, You're full.

When you're not full, the number from eating/drinking ticks down slowly and replenishes the bar; When you're full, it ticks down more rapidly as you're over-eating.

You can see hard number values in your character menu- But tbh, the bar is enough to go by most of the time.

And there's no ill effect to not eating until roughly the 70% mark, where you'll get a small debuff, and then the 30% mark, where you'll get a bigger debuff. (0% is death)

The number on the left side is just representing the slow absorption of the foods value.

Originally posted by Scourn: The food system in this game does not make sense and its not balanced in this alpha. Food starts off literally starving to death as a new player and then by level 20 you are swamped with food and filling meals to the point it just piles up with no use.

For a new player not knowing what to do early on for food is a real issue as you are always starving basically and any activities deplete your hunger and thirst significantly. Basically OP you need to make real food in the chef perk. Also Iron gut is super important then followed by living off the land. The other route is running trader dig quests where you get like 5 cans of food most of the time.

Is it, though? Shouldn’t food security be one of your most pressing challenges at the start of a survival game? Shouldn’t starvation be something you get under control as you go from surviving to thriving?