Editing v0.31:Food

{{quality|Fine|23:06, 25 April 2011 (UTC)}}{{av}}
'''Food''' is anything [[dwarves]] eat to ward off starvation. If dwarves are not able to attain sustenance then they will get hungry, have bad thoughts, and eventually die. Dwarves can withstand hunger for a while in order to continue working, but will gain bad thoughts from doing so.

Dwarves require 2 units of food and 4 units of drink each season. 

Eating good food will make your dwarves happy, so a good [[cook]] is an excellent investment. Also, each dwarf has a [[Preferences|preference]] for certain foods. Both starting dwarves and immigrants only have preferences for "dwarven" food (basically underground crops and meat the dwarven caravan brings). They will however gain new favorites if you present them with human and elven products (above ground crops e.g.) If you want a colorful game or need any food you can get, fire away. If however you want to optimize happiness from food but still keep stock menues small and tidy, be cautious about what you trade with caravans. For example, presumably, expensive meat makes your dwarves happier than cheap mule meat, but any plants the elves bring are not more valuable than your own.

==Sources==

The possible sources of food are [[farming]], [[plant gathering]], [[fishing]], [[trading]], [[butcher's shop|butchering animals]], [[ambusher|hunting]], [[Milk|milking]], [[egg|eggs]] and [[bee|beekeeping]].

Farming is the most renewable. On maps where they are highly accessible, fishing and hunting can provide large quantities of food quickly, but tend to be less reliable than farming. Butchering animals is often the best option in a pinch.

When starving, dwarves will catch and consume [[vermin]] to survive, resulting in an unhappy thought.

==Processes==

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 [[fish cleaner|cleaned]] ([[fishery]])
* [[Sweet pod|Sweet pods]] must be either milled into [[dwarven sugar]] ([[Millstone|mill]]/[[quern]]), processed to barrels of [[dwarven syrup]] ([[farmer's workshop]]), or brewed into barrels of [[Alcohol|dwarven rum]] ([[Still|brewery]]) before they can finally be cooked ([[kitchen]])
* [[Cave wheat]], [[Whip vine]] and [[Longland grass]] must be milled into their respective flours and cooked.
* [[Milk]] has to be cooked or turned into [[cheese]].
* [[Honeycomb]] has to be pressed into [[honey]] ([[screw press]])
* [[Egg]]s have to be cooked ([[kitchen]])
* [[Quarry bush]]es must be processed to [[bag]] in a [[farmer's workshop]]. 

Unprocessed food and non-food [[crop|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.

[[Prepared organs|Organs]] are edible without cooking.

{{Category|Food|*}}