Stews

[Labtop 215]

I might be doing something wrong, but if you already have smoked or dried meat, is there really any point to making things like fish stew and meat stew?  Especially meat stew.

It seems like I'm getting less nutrition per cut of meat that I stew than if I eat the dried or roasted form of that meat.  Same thing if I boil the meat instead of stewing it.  I havn't tried adding herbs to the stew yet though so that might be what's missing.

[PALU]

I haven't bothered with the details of nutrition, so I can't answer that part.
- However, smoked and dried meat last for a long time, and I think you eat a bit more of it than fresh meat. Thus, fresh food is a way to save the preserved food for later, while using up the perishable one.
- Stew adds other stuff to the meat, which means you'll get more food out of a given amount of meat, so it lasts longer. I also think a stew lasts slightly longer than roasted meat, but I'm not sure of that.
- From a role playing point of view, variation is good, and a delicious stew surely is better than delicious dried meat?
- The nutrition model is rather incomplete. I believe it's intended to be fleshed out in the future to request more of a balance to the diet.

[Brygun]

AFAIK the nutrition system preserves the aspects like protein and carbs. The mass and thus density can change.

A stew has a lot of water, which has no protein and no carbs.

As an example
1 lb of meat
3 lbs of water

Eat 1 lb of that stew gives you 1/4 lb meat so 1/4 the nutrition but 1 lb worth of hunger is used. Plus a reduction in your thirst (not sure)

This might be what you are seeing.

[Labtop 215]

Okay, so from a survival aspect, meat stew is a terrible choice then, because all your really doing is combining 3 cuts of meat and a small quart of water, and it takes 4 hours...

When I got radishes from a village to the south (glad I can buy them instead of having to steal them and then avoid the place for like 6 months), I found that fish soup was a little better, in terms of nutrition to meat, since you are adding weight and some small nutrition from the radishes as well.  Still seems strictly worse than roasting, but I like the idea of eating fish soup instead of dried meat all the time at the very least.

On that note, I do hope the nutrition system get's an overhaul at some point.  I know the idea is that you are supposed to require meat in order to not starve, but it seems like meat is too powerful in that regard.  Like if you eat 5 fistfuls of raspberries instead you'll drop like several nutrition levels.  Not even joking, it's like the people of iron age Finland went foraging for potato chips or something.

[PALU]

There are no radishes in UrW, so I assume you mean turnips...

As Brygun said, nutrition input is preserved (no losses and nothing gained through breakdown for easier digestion), so adding just water dilutes the food, making it more filling but with a lesser nutrient density (and it also satisfies thirst to some extent). Thus, a "stew" consisting of just meat boiled in water mean the nutrients are just diluted. If, however, you add other things, such as herbs or vegetables, you add to the nutrient contents on top of the meat, but you're still diluting it.

I use the Njerpezit Cooking Mod, so it was a while since I used vanilla stews. With that mod I tend to make Hunter's Borsch (a meat stew with fresh meat plus dried meat, vegetables, and herbs, most of it optional) as my first choice, a rather boring fish soup (I'd like to see something more like bouillabaisse) as the second one, and Goulash (a vegetable stew with some smoked meat) as my third choice. Dried/smoked meat is used on trips.
Berries in UrW are nearly useless as food, unfortunately, and trying to live on it will drop your nutrition level, but keep you alive (I don't know for how long, though), and an occasional addition of meat from a bird helps a lot in that desperate case. I'm not sure you're better off picking the berries rather than trying to hunt, though.

[Dungeon Smash]

a few berries in the game are actually worth gathering as they have a decent amount of nutrition, i think namely cloudberries, and maybe crowberries?

i can't speak to the nutritional value of cloudberries in real life, but in a survival situation, berries are not enough to keep you alive in real life.  they were an important part of the hunter-gatherer diet, because they added needed vitamins and were so easy to gather that even a small child or pregnant woman could do it while others were hunting.  but in general, they were not a primary source of sustenance.

[Labtop 215]

I suppose.

I've been playing around with the recipies a little more, and it seems like milkweed root soup is enough to get me to abundant if I season it with milkweed leaves.  And yes Palu, you are right.  They are turnips and not radishes.  I don't quite know how I got that one mixed up.

Update:  It also seems like milkweed soup is better than milkweed stew for keeping my character's nutrition high. I would have thought it would be the other way around, since soup uses more water and less roots and leaves.

[Saiko Kila]

I might be doing something wrong, but if you already have smoked or dried meat, is there really any point to making things like fish stew and meat stew?  Especially meat stew.

It seems like I'm getting less nutrition per cut of meat that I stew than if I eat the dried or roasted form of that meat.  Same thing if I boil the meat instead of stewing it.  I havn't tried adding herbs to the stew yet though so that might be what's missing.

If you give a detailed description of your stew composition (what you used as ingredients), I can tell you. It is possible to lose nutrition value by preparing meals, but it mostly happens with concentrated meals (for example: dried bear meat has less nutritional value than other forms, because of computational limitation, the same with dried fats). Stew shouldn't be concentrated enough, but there might be some rounding errors.

I often do meat stew, it doesn't stay fresh long (longer than roasted meat, though, and if you keep it in the cellar and are lucky then it may last a few weeks), and doesn't give water (unlike soup and some porridges), but seems to keep the value, more or less, and is usually marginally better than the meat itself. If you use plants with stew, it will have some carbohydrates, to increase variety. Meat alone doesn't have carbohydrates, only fat and proteins (good for paleo and ketogenic diets if you roleplay, but their effects are not implemented I believe )

[Labtop 215]

I might be doing something wrong, but if you already have smoked or dried meat, is there really any point to making things like fish stew and meat stew?  Especially meat stew.

It seems like I'm getting less nutrition per cut of meat that I stew than if I eat the dried or roasted form of that meat.  Same thing if I boil the meat instead of stewing it.  I havn't tried adding herbs to the stew yet though so that might be what's missing.

If you give a detailed description of your stew composition (what you used as ingredients), I can tell you. It is possible to lose nutrition value by preparing meals, but it mostly happens with concentrated meals (for example: dried bear meat has less nutritional value than other forms, because of computational limitation, the same with dried fats). Stew shouldn't be concentrated enough, but there might be some rounding errors.

I often do meat stew, it doesn't stay fresh long (longer than roasted meat, though, and if you keep it in the cellar and are lucky then it may last a few weeks), and doesn't give water (unlike soup and some porridges), but seems to keep the value, more or less, and is usually marginally better than the meat itself. If you use plants with stew, it will have some carbohydrates, to increase variety. Meat alone doesn't have carbohydrates, only fat and proteins (good for paleo and ketogenic diets if you roleplay, but their effects are not implemented I believe )

I think it would have been 3 cuts of stag meat and 0.25 units of (Quarts?  Drams?  Liters?) of water.  I could season it a bit with something to boost the nutrient contents perhaps, but I don't see the point.  From my experience, 3 dried cuts of stag meat a day could keep me well fed, while the stew made from 3 cuts of stag meat and 0.25 units of water would be finished quickly, and might leave me temperate or worse if I was relying on it.

[Saiko Kila]

I think it would have been 3 cuts of stag meat and 0.25 units of (Quarts?  Drams?  Liters?) of water.  I could season it a bit with something to boost the nutrient contents perhaps, but I don't see the point.  From my experience, 3 dried cuts of stag meat a day could keep me well fed, while the stew made from 3 cuts of stag meat and 0.25 units of water would be finished quickly, and might leave me temperate or worse if I was relying on it.

I have checked this composition, and it's actually slightly better than the roasted meat. Not by that much (you may read below), but there is some gain in nutrition. There are reasons why you may get better results with meat than with stew sometimes. One is that particular activities have different energy requirements. Basal metabolism would require about 2.6 stag cuts per day. But even light and moderate efforts (making a cord, walking in the snow, crafting paddle) double that requirement, while heavy effort (cutting a tree) triples it. So to regain nutrition, you need the same amount of food after cutting a tree for one hour, as after lying in the grass and counting clouds for three hours. Which means that 3 stag cuts per day are realistic, but more than that are possible too. I suppose you performed heavier task when eating the stew, hence the difference. Or maybe ate something which filled the stomach, but had no nutrients to speak of, which prevented eating all the stew.

Comparison of these meals:
- roasted stag cut (1 lb) has 3 g of fat and 21 g of protein per 100 g, one cut gives 555 kcal, three cuts give 1665 kcal
- stag meat stew (3 lbs, takes 3x stag meat and 0.25 lbs of water) = 4 g fat, 22 g protein per 100 g, total = 1860 kcal
- stag meat stew (3.5 lbs, takes 3x stag meat, 0.25 lbs of water, 0.5 lbs of turnip) = 1 g carbohydrates, 3 g fat, 19 g protein, total = ~1872 kcal
Total, i.e. eating the whole meal, like 3.5 lbs of the stag meat stew with turnip.

This means, that stag meat stew without additives has biggest energy/nutrition density of all three, while the one with turnip has lowest density, but highest total (though not much better than no-additives version). Filling the stomach may prevent characters from eating the whole stew in one sitting, but eventually they will eat it all, and get the nutrients. Eating also takes some time and energy (it is "Easy" effort, so it takes 2 kcal/minute). You may eat something poisonous, like spoiled berry, to regain stomach capacity if need be...

It is also possible to overeat, using more food than necessary, while capping the energy counter (which is capped at 5000, but you are Abundant from 3701, and can't really know if you can safely eat something without wasting it or no). This is wasteful, but sometimes better than allowing the food to spoil, and sometimes you have no choice, because game just doesn't let you character stop eating.

[Labtop 215]

It is also possible to overeat, using more food than necessary, while capping the energy counter (which is capped at 5000, but you are Abundant from 3701, and can't really know if you can safely eat something without wasting it or no). This is wasteful, but sometimes better than allowing the food to spoil, and sometimes you have no choice, because game just doesn't let you character stop eating.

That could be what I'm running into perhaps.  I find that I eat bigger chunks of the stew than I do roasted meat cuts, and if I'm reading that correct (I could be wrong), I have to eat the stew slower in order to absorb the most nutrients.

I'm used to jumping between nourished and abundant when I eat dried meat, and perhaps trying to do the same with stew is a bad idea.

I noticed you compared roasted stag meat but not dried.  How does the comparison stack with dried stag meat, since dried meat seems to be the most common thing for my character to eat.

[davidor]

roasted>raw=salted=dried>smoked
not sure what boil and bake and do in cooking as I never use them

Edit: after checking current version it seems cooking bonus no longer exist, now all type of meat provide same level of nutrition (in past roasted meat have +1 protein and lipid)

[Saiko Kila]

It is also possible to overeat, using more food than necessary, while capping the energy counter (which is capped at 5000, but you are Abundant from 3701, and can't really know if you can safely eat something without wasting it or no). This is wasteful, but sometimes better than allowing the food to spoil, and sometimes you have no choice, because game just doesn't let you character stop eating.

That could be what I'm running into perhaps.  I find that I eat bigger chunks of the stew than I do roasted meat cuts, and if I'm reading that correct (I could be wrong), I have to eat the stew slower in order to absorb the most nutrients.

I'm used to jumping between nourished and abundant when I eat dried meat, and perhaps trying to do the same with stew is a bad idea.

I noticed you compared roasted stag meat but not dried.  How does the comparison stack with dried stag meat, since dried meat seems to be the most common thing for my character to eat.

Dried meat is 10x concentrated, but has 0.1 mass. Smoked meat is 8x concentrated, but has 0.125 mass of raw meat. With exception of bear and fats, eating one dried meat cut gives the same amount of nutrition as a roasted meat of the same species, or salted, or smoked one. No gain and no loss. With bear and fats, dried ones do give less nutrition, because one byte cannot keep the required amount of proteins or lipids after concentrating (that's the computational limitation I mentioned).

There is another difference though. The smallest amount to eat is 0.1 lbs. Since dried meat weighs as much, you always eat whole one. It may be wasteful if you are Abundant already (you require some "free stomach space" to be able to eat, but not much, so can eat again after several steps, when your internal caloric meter is still close to maximum). With non-concentrated foods you can eat less than one cut, and conserve the rest for later, but it depends on the game whether it happens. For some reason some foods are "overeaten" more often than other. It happens particularly often with fats. Sometimes it would be enough to eat for example 1.2 lbs of that 2.33 lbs roasted fat to hit the cap, but the character eats 1.5 lbs, and the 0.3 lbs is wasted. You won't see that, because the nutrition meter says Abundant, but it happens. On another occasion, the character eats less than required to hit the cap and nothing is wasted, but you still don't see the difference in description. I don't know what is the basis of these differences, maybe it's some attributes, or rich foods are irresistible, or it's random to a degree. As far as I know, there are no hidden personal traits (like "likes to stuff himself" or "frugal ascetic").

[Labtop 215]

Yea, basically, I've found it easier to jump between nourished and well-fed with dried and smoked meat.  If I go with soups and stews, should I wait until my hunger meter is full or close to full then or is there a "better" way to eat so to speak.

Essentially, am I eating wrong?

[PALU]

I have my characters eat quite often, typically between tasks. This generally keeps them at Abundant except when doing heavy monster work tasks (such as a botched stag skin bashing task for 12 hours). I guess that results in a waste of food.
I also have my characters eat frequently during winter travel to shed some fatigue while still doing something useful.

I use the Nerpez Cooking Mod to eat Hunter's Borsch (a meat stew), Goulash (a vegetable stew), or fish soup (a fairly boring watery thingie). Smoked or dried meat is used as stew ingredients and for multi day travel (such as e.g. performing a wounded adventurer quest).

It can also be noted that if you're trying to recover nutrition levels, first eating good food and then drinking milk will provide you with additional nutrients on top of what you could eat before the stomach got full. Drinking first will reduce the amount you can eat, however, so the order matters.