Okay, so one of the things that has always ticked me off about The Sims 2 and 3 (and 1 to a lesser extent), is that despite having a huge amount of food choices, it makes little difference what your sims eat, as long as they eat enough of it to fill that hunger bar... I mean sure, there are exceptions, like Grandma's Comfort Soup, and Cheesecake in 2, and there are a lot of mild buffs which have no real function beyond effecting their mood in 3, but ultimately it doesn't matter whether your sims eat toaster pastries or lobster...

So, I was eating lunch today, and came up with an idea that would not only give all the different foods purpose, but open up a whole new area of gameplay... So, as many people know, in The Sims 3, there are ingredients for just about every food in the game, and many have choices about the ingredients you can use... So, what if ingredients had certain mild effects, which effected the food your sims eat?

For example, if you use lemon when making lobster thermador, you would get a mild immune system buff, which would make it slightly harder for your sims to get sick, while butter would (after seasons are added) give you a mild buff against the cold, but also effect the way your sims gain weight...

The basic idea being that all of a sudden the variety means something. Foods with fish ingredients might help them skill a tad faster, while foods like eggs, meat and cheese would make them able to work harder without getting tired quite as fast... Sugar would be good for a quick energy boost if your sim needs to just get something in them to fulfill a little hunger, while keeping in mind that it will make them tired later...

But that's not the best part of my idea... What if there was a pharmaceutical branch of the Medical Career? The idea being, that your sim gathers ingredients, and uses them to distill expensive medicines that have a more highly potent version of the ingredients effect... Maybe even being able to mix them together to get some traditionally sims style silly effects, like a Mr. Hyde potion or something...

So, what so you guys think? Would you like to see something like this in a future sims game, or am I the only one...

Sims don't get sick anymore and they love snacking on onions. Your ideas are nice though and it would be nice if food made more sense and sims could sit and eat meals together again.

Well, we kind of did get some experimentation with food altering effects with "herbs" in Uni when added to food, although it took a while to figure out what did what and when................

Then there's the whole other aspect, nutrition. As in, actual nutrition. Will cheeseburgers, fries, and beer juice give you a big gut? Would your vegetarians live longer, although look somewhat frail and peaked? And how do you handle regional variations of diet? What's popular in say New York is not the same as say El Paso, Tx, or L.A., let alone the vast variety of world diets. Do you implement it following real dietary standards to educate folks about proper nutrition? You could, but it would make for a LOT of work, and, unless very, very well done, probably quite boring.

I'd like to know if will sims finally be evolved enough to swallow their food without choking every damn meal.

I'm sorry, but in some houses I can barely keep track of all my Sims names, much less their health and diet. I would be fine if there was a system where there were three categories of food: Normal food (90% of food options, unhealthy food, and healthy food) Normal food would function the same as in the last three games, it would simply raise your hunger bar and if a Sim with a high cooking skill made it there will be some sort of positive buff. Unhealthy food will give Sims a large positive buff, but will add a slight amount of weight and ultimately give them shorter lives. The large buff balancing out moodlets like "Heartbroken" or "Upset" could represent a sim "eating their feelings" so to speak. Healthy food will help your sims get and stay at at light weight, extend their lives and help their exercise. Unfortunately, healthy food will not be appealing to Sims at first and could be more expensive than normal food.

Overall, I think a system like this would work for everyone. If you're lazy like me you would just always feed your Sims the good 'ole regular stuff their whole lives, but if you have a sim that you want to be particularly healthy or want to feel better short term by eating unhealthily then you can do that too.

TS3 sims have those vegan options but they still don't make much difference for their lifestyle. They could munch on onions, or spagetti, or salad, and it doesn't make much differrence to them. Why bother cooking or buying baked alaska or lobster thermidor if their hunger is filled just the same with an onion or those dry adventure food? Also, it's weird that you can cook a single serving and a multiple serving with the same amount of ingredients and you can buy everything automatically through the fridge.

Well, I feel nutrition could be a step too far, and way too complicated... For one thing, everyone has very different bodily needs. Genetics, height, blood chemistry, immune system, activity, environment, and natural metabolism all play a part in what your body needs...
I personally have some disorder that gives me mild bouts of hypoglycemia, so I find I can't really eat sweets or carbs without having some kind of protein to keep my pancreas from spazzing out... Meanwhile, I have a friend who needs a relatively high fat and carb diet, because she has some kind of Epilepsy, and fats, oils and carbs seem to make her less prone to seizures... In order to have a nutrition system in The Sims, you would have to do what far too many of the crazy health fanatics seem to do, which is make dumbed down generalizations of a very complex system, where they assume fatty and sweet foods are alway evil to everybody, while vegetables and proteins are always good for you, no questions asked...

My suggestion pertains to the fact that in real life everything you eat has natural (and sometimes unnatural) chemicals that effect your body. People then discover what makes it work, make it more potent, and sell it as medication... Penicilin is a chemical extracted from the mold in blue cheese, Penicillia, and Aspirin is found naturally in certain edible tree barks that certain nations of Eastern American Aboriginals used to use to help with headaches...

I just think having an element of that would give some kind of function to the fact that we have so many different foods in these games that act completely identical other than how much your sims have to eat to fill the hunger bar...