Stews: Rebalanced
...is a Minecraft Datapack made using Beet and Bolt that replaces the old hunger bar system with a cooking mechanic and various well thought-out meals, each with it's own purpose. This encourages food diversity, and makes hunger an engaging (but not punishing) gameplay mechanic.
Food now directly affects your health in various ways. Different meals will give different effects, such as directly healing you, or giving you a maximum health boost. Different meals have different stats depending on the difficulty of obtaining them and how easy it is to farm, thus making early-game foods distinct from late-game foods. This ensures you don't simply start a farm on day 1 and live off it for the rest of your life.
It also encourages you to decide on what food to carry on adventures depending on how long you expect your expedition will be; better foods generally don't last as long. This prevents you from relying on just one food source.
You now start with 4 hearts and cook meals to increase your max health. Natural regeneration is disabled and you must eat to heal. This encourages you to cook without punishing you if you don't; even if you don't eat, if you're really skilled and don't take any damage, you aren't hindered.
Cooking Meals
Food items now act as ingredients instead of consumables. If you place a cauldron with water in it above a heat source (such as a campfire) and throw the correct ingredients into it, it will boil for a few seconds with a sound effect before turning into a meal.
Note: you must put in the exact amount of ingredients. If you put too many or too little in, the cooking process won't start.
Recipe and Drop Changes
Cauldrons now use stone slabs to craft instead of iron (similar to a composter).
Beetroot soup, rabbit stew and mushroom stew can no longer be crafted, and are made with the new cooking system instead.
Bushes sometimes drop carrots (so you don't have to find a village to get them).
Compatability
Likely incompatible with mods or datapacks that add their own food items, however it probably isn't too difficult to add custom recipes that involve those new items.
Modpacks / Crediting
Feel free to use in any modpacks.
Please don't reupload to other sites without proper credit and a link to the modrinth page.