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40d:Food
Food is anything dwarves eat to ward off starvation, but if they are not able to attain sustenance then they will eventually die. The most common foods are meat, fish, crops, and gathered shrubs. Each dwarf has a preference for certain foods.
Types of Food
Food comes in two main varieties: meat and plants, with cooked food possibly mixing the two.
Plants can be grown underground or on the surface, and a single dedicated grower/harvester can produce enough food for all but the largest of fortresses. The advantages of plants are the infinite and readily available supply, and the versatility; plants can be brewed, made into clothing and dye, and also used as further ingredients for cooking. Further processing plants leads to greater amount delivered as an end product. The disadvantage is it's exponential growth; without control, seed/plant stockpiles will envelop all available space.
Meat can be obtained from hunting and fishing, as well as raising livestock. Uncooked meat and fish is subject to wear and will eventually rot if it is not cooked, even in barrels. The advantages are the additional skills raised during hunting, and there is less mass labor required for butchering meat than planting a seed, waiting for it to grow, eating it, moving the seed back, etc. Turtles leave behind bones and shells when consumed raw, and animals, when butchered, leave behind large stacks of bones, and usually raw hides and skulls. An export industry devoted to bone crafts can be profitable, and marksdwarves always benefit from a cheap supply of bolts. The disadvantages are a limited supply of food; in the current version, animals are eventually depleted from a map, and even though aquatic life restocks, there are limited numbers present at a particular time, so larger fortresses usually cannot be supported with hunting alone. There is also no way to make alcohol from animals, so some plants are always necessary. Finally, even though livestock breeding can be unlimited, the additional units on the map required for this to work put additional strain on the CPU, slowing the game down.
On occasion, if you have a trapper that has captured a vermin creature in an animal trap, a dwarf may eat that creature instead of other food.
Eating
A dwarf with the "Eat" task will pick up a unit of food, often according to his or her dietary preferences, then bring it to an available table or chair for consumption. A private room will normally be chosen over a public room; for this reason, note that a dwarf who owns a table-less office but no dining room will complain about the lack of tables, even if a high-quality public dining room is available. This problem is easily solved by adding a table next to such an office-chair (like you would in a dining room). Also note that eating in a high-quality dining room does wonders for a dwarf's mood.
Storage
Food is stored in food stockpiles and can be placed in barrels and, in the case of seeds, bags. Food should be stored indoors, as it will rot if left outside for too long, rendering it inedible and your dwarves hungry.
Cooked food
Raw food can be cooked into meals at a kitchen. The wider the variety of ingredients that a meal contains, the greater the number of dwarves who will have a preference for that meal. Additionally, some foods must be cooked before they can be eaten.
Obtaining food
The possible sources of food are farming, foraging, fishing, trading, butchering animals, hunting, and a few exotic processes. Farming is by far the most reliable, foraging is perhaps the easiest to manage, and fishing is good early in a fortresses' life. If you are constantly experiencing problems with starvation, you are well advised to look into alternate means of procuring food.
Processing food
Some food is inedible raw, and needs processing first. For example:
- Fat must be rendered (kitchen) into tallow and then cooked (kitchen)
- Raw fish must be cleaned (fishery)
- Sweet pods must be either milled into dwarven sugar (mill/quern), processed to barrels of dwarven syrup (farmer's workshop), or brewed into barrels of dwarven rum (brewery) before they can finally be cooked (kitchen)
Unprocessed food and non-food crops will be stored in a food stockpile and take up barrel space, the bookkeeper can tell you how much of each type of "food" you have in the stocks screen.