Do residents actually need to eat?

[Lion Bird Plate Plate Feather Fe]

I have a lot of questions about what happens when they take it from shared boxes and since the guides are not telling me much, I'm gonna have to post them here.
1. Do their stats increase as if they were in the player party?
2. Will they starve to death if there is no edible food? Are there any other penalties?
3. What happens to livestock when the pasture runs out?
Already know story characters do not take any food. Left some kibble in a box in Vernis and none of them took it.

[noname979427]

1. Food they eat does give stat's yes.

2. Generally if they aren't in your party, they pull something out of there ass and eat it, it's either random or something from a shared container.

Otherwise they stop healing at starving, but won't die.

3: they stop producing, and no longer grow there hair back.

[Astasia]

1. Their stats can increase based on what they eat, from what I have seen. They don't take raw food, or certain other foods from containers. I don't think it's worth trying to feed them.
2. No. No.
3. They stop making eggs/milk/etc.. Nothing else.

As mentioned above followers just stop healing without food. So really the only person you have to feed in the game is yourself, everything else is optional.

[Iyasenu]

1. Their stats do change from the food even if they're not in your party. Also the food they materialize out of thin air when they're not in your party and there's no food in a shared container also does still have stat change info.
I've seen stat ups and downs from townspeople I have sitting at the edge of my view who ate something, From random bread to raw fish and more.

2. NPCs, and even party members, won't ever take damage from being in Starvation status.
They'll stop regenerating health (and possibly mana) naturally, until they're out of Starvation, though. Probably best to feed them before heading into combat.
3. They will stop producing eggs/milk and their wool/fur/hair/etc won't grow until they get some Pasture again.

Also, livestock can get hungry like NPCs and also pull food out of thin air, but this doesn't count as being fed Pasture, for the purposes of producing livestock stuff.

[Lion Bird Plate Plate Feather Fe]

So the general idea is feed them to make them stronger, and livestock pasture to produce stuff. Awesome. Thanks.