Junk Food - how great a threat?

Game Talk The Bunker
1

Ok, so with the current (experimental) system, I have a couple gameplay questions around health:

  1. Does Junk Food actually harm your health stat, or does it just lack nutrients so that if you over-rely on it, your health is affected?

  2. Is there any real way to track your current health?

I have a fast metabolism character, who eats a pretty robust and balanced diet for the most part - but because they have to eat SO MUCH to maintain weight, they aren’t shy about chowing down on passing snacks off of zombies as they go through their day.

In a realistic scenario, this wouldn’t generally be a problem because their vitamin intake from their main meals would be sufficient - but if junk food just magically attacks your health directly rather than acting as nutrition-less calories, then it’s obviously a bad idea.

2

  1. Most junk food affects your health mod which determines the direction your actual health stat will (slowly) drift towards. Lack of vitamins has much less impact as:
    a) multi-vitamins exist,
    b) Vitamin deficiency is currently cosmetic only.

  2. Taking Self-Aware at chargen will report your exact health value every time you wake up. Nurse bots might also be able to tell you your health stat if you undergo a checkup but I need to test this to be sure. I tested this doesn’t work

3

Ok, so in-game junk food is effectively toxic. Good to know.

4

I wouldn’t say junk food is toxic, but you do need to eat food that boosts your health mod (i.e. healthy food) with it if you don’t want to have long term health problems. Or use the Leukocyte Breeder CBM and forget about health altogether.

1 Like
5

Actually, I wouldn’t say long term is the issue since it go back toward 0 overtime. It’s more the short term since having a negative value will get you sick eventually.

But yeah as you say filling yourself as much healthy as junk food is fine (unless you have other outside source reducing your health, like being obese)

6

I find if you start with XS (basically borderline starvation) junk food can actually be “healthier” since the caloric density helps achieve a healthy weight fat sooner, which far outweighs the negative health modifier. Especially if you’re getting most of your food from the woods, since a lot of the recipes that use woodland forage have a positive health modifier anyway.