idle patrol
The benefits vs food types don't make sense, and the approach does not encourage food diversity.
For example:
Perhaps give foods a few ratings, typical of RL - carbs, sugars, protein, fibre - and then you get stars for getting enough of each. This lets all food be useful, creativity in food combinations, and avoids a single food life.
ionic kestrel
How about instead when you certain foods you get special buffs. rather than a requirement. Personally I don't want to be nailed down to growing and eating a variety.
idle patrol
'requirement' is probably too strong, you should be able to be 2 star with say 2 basic starter foods, but variety becomes key if you want 4 star was what I was thinking.
loud totem
We did briefly consider an ECO or Zomboid style approach to food. However both of the nutrition mechanics in those games are tied into core systems which gives the mechanic meaning (skill progression for eco and weight loss/gain for Zomboid) we don't have either of those in Stationers right now and it felt like it would be adding too much additional complexity. Food and cooking is something we want to revisit, but it's not in our top3 right now