Seems that food weighs a lot and has only a small benefit to it which makes it not worth messing with in my opinion. I dont even hunt deer or elk any more cuz the meat is to heavy for such a small benefit. Think Venison is like 2 pounds and only gives you like 5 or 10 HP. Not worth it in my opinion.

Your thoughts?

Not really, but the best 'food' item is the Elsweyr Fondue.

Not worth it at all. I agree with you. I am thinking we will have to wait like for the last DLC like in New Vegas, where crafting becomes better and more use.

There is no hard core mode, so food is really not needed. It is there for roll playing wise. For someone who doesn't use magic to heal, or magic potions to heal, now they have other ways of healing themselves if needed by "living off the land."

I play a mage - she has a healing spell - so I don't even bother picking food up. I need that weight to carry other things.

Even if I wasn't playing a mage, there are plenty of healing potions in the game - think I've found about 20 so far.

I eat food for fun. Sometimes emergency in a fight gone awry.

Scouring for cooking ingredients can be just as fun as hunting for alchemical ingredients. Role playing a chef (even have chef hats), a Foodie, or even a hunter that makes his own meals out in the wild.

Food is good to farm and sell off.

What's a game where you can do anything and go anywhere is you don't have cooking in it? If they didn't, you wouldn't be able to really say "yes, this game really does let you do anything and go anywhere."

I actually do think food is worth it.

Health potions seem to be few (at least I am not finding many) and a few apple pies or half a dozen grilled leeks go along way to keeping my khajit alive!

It was totally worth it at the beginning of the game for me (playing on master difficulty), when potions were too expensive and I didn't know where to find the right alchemy ingredients. As my health, armor and alchemy went up, the need for food went away.

It's called immersion.

Most of it is free, or very easy to steal. And it's everywhere!

Why not carry a much of the free food as you can hold? If you don't end up using it for health
and you are running short of inventory space, you can just dump it or eat it.

There really isn't a downside to carrying it. I take it whenever I see it.

It's not worth it to carry. But the game would be no good without it.

I skip food too, and it's the first place I look when I'm over encumbered to drop crap. Cooked food has added benefits over raw uncooked, but if you use alchemy or magic then there's no need to bother with it. Itis a nice template for future mods though, I'm sure a lot of people will use the cooking system and make it into somethingworth doing.

Food has several minor uses. First of all, it helps you to improve your speech/barter skill (especially in the early stages of the game) by buying and selling inexpensive food items. Also, although not as good as health spells or potions, food can be used in a pinch to recover health and stamina. Further, although I'm not positive about this, I think you can use some food items in alchemy. Finally, although I've not done it, you can cook certain food items to make more powerful food (sort of like in New Vegas).

Speaking of food, I'm surprised the designers didn't include a 'hardcoe' mode like New Vegas where you have to eat and sleep periodically. Although in Skyrim you have to sleep every now and then otherwise your performance takes a hit, I don't believe you ever have to eat any food.

I really think cooked food and prepared dishes should have more benefit than they do.

I can see raw ingredients staying the same as they are, but when you go to a cooking pot and combine venison, garlic, salt, etc. the resulting dish really should heal at least as much as a minor health potion. Cooking dishes is almost as complicated as using alchemy for health potions, so why not provide cooking as a viable alternative just for health or stamina benefits? It's not like it would be over powered, since it takes time and effort to gather the necessary ingredients, especially for the more complex dishes.

I feel they dropped the ball on cooking. The benefits are just too weak to even bother with, and now since food isn't an alchemical ingredient, I never bother to pick it up anymore. Just a shame really, but no doubt a mod will come out fairly quickly to make it worthwhile.

Salmon Steak and Rabbit Haunch are actually pretty handy — pound for pound, they offer the same healing as Minor Health Potions. That's great early on to help conserve/augment the potions you find in your travels.

Personally, I'm hoping for mods to turn some of these food items into minor buffs or low health/stamina regen-over-time effects. A nice little low-impact complement to potions, in other words, nothing too powerful.

@LateWhiteRabbit: I'm very sure they made Cooking marginal so that it couldn't compete with Alchemy in any way. I agree with you though, it's silly to make Cooking THAT weak.

Don't know about food being useful, but with the amount found in barrels and sacks, Dovahkin could open his/her own grocery stall.

I've only found food useful just once, to supplement the restoration spell, at the time restoration was not going to do the job fast enough, the food just gave me the edge.

i think cooked food should give good buffs, grilled leaks can increase magika regen by 2% for 15 mins; horker loaf can be +30 health for an hour

Mammoth Cheese has saved my ass in brawls with giants more than once.

Food is mostly there for the RP elements, which I never do in this kind of game. There are some recipes that are useful though and allow you to recover stamina, HPs and Magicka faster, I think. But anyway, alchemy is the best way to recover from anything when you're not a mage.

If your looking at the "game" side of things, then are a few pointless things here and there, but at least they are there, it just adds to a sense of immersion and knowing that if you really want to be able to do it, then you can.
I actually find it a lot of fun going out hunting and collecting all the pelts and meat the different animals have, and then when you cook it its just so cool knowing that you made that meal.

Yeah, I just cant help feel that the weight to benefit ratio is off in my honest opinion. If I'm gunna take the time to hunt and then go cook these items up I think they should be more effective in there use. I personally think that at least cooked food should weigh less and give more benefits then it dose. I suppose I cant help feel the way i do cuz of my FFXI experience. I have cooking skill 100+6 in FFXI and food in that game has a substantial benefit to your character.

LOL! Yep when I first discovered this stuff I was like WUD!

Beef stew provides a nice stamina boost and the Elsweyr Fondue is great for mages. Aside from that, not really.