I remember on fallout it gave little heath, and took forever to eat someone.

If your goin to the dark side then yes its a good perk but not for somone trying to keep a good karma state

From what I've gathered... It's almost exactly the same as it was in Fallout 3 - which means pretty useless and having only some curiosity value. More useful in HC-mode, but not much.

Topic: No, except perhaps for RP reasons.

-HD

Very useful imo.
That way one does not need to drag around a bunch of food items which takes inventory space.