Food Gatherers Starving

[Atzu]

Is there a way to make food tasks feed the person doing them?
Think of berries that are good now but won't last. Tasting meat you are cooking to see if it's done. Eating bread dough or flour to avoid starvation while making it.
This might resolve the food gatherers dying of starvation first issue

[Draken]

They will do so automatically.

If their hunger gets too low and you have no food, they will even go to random nearby berry bushes or fruit trees to feed themself.

I think they might even consume some normally cooked food raw? Not 100% sure about that.
The big exception is grain and flour. Those are inedible until turned into bread.

[korac]

They already go to quite some lengths to avoid actual starvation, given the opportunity. In addition to the berry bushes and fruit trees @Draken mentions for Summer snacking, they will also divert to nearby chestnut trees in harvest season if needed and too far from a stored food source. Hunters will plop down and eat some of their kill raw when hungry enough, and a peckish fisherman will turn his latest catch into sushi at the drop of a hat.

What actually screws things up (other than a severe shortage of stored, edible food, that is) is your Workload. If there are way too many tasks still pending you will see people actually take food from a granary and sometimes immediately start work on the next pending task - taking the food with them (which, hopefully, they will later eat before they actually starve to death while being severely overworked in this fashion). They may do this even if it's bread, milk or fruit - suggesting that there's still too much work to be done even to spare a minute to plonk down on the spot and eat something already in their inventory first... This sort of occurrence is a 'you' problem (i.e. assigning way too much work), not a 'them' problem.

Originally posted by Draken:

I think they might even consume some normally cooked food raw? Not 100% sure about that.

I'm fairly sure I've witnessed that at some point in the past... but these days, since I never have a granary far from a hearth (or a hut with a cooking fire) - and tend to avoid overworking my people wherever possible - they do much prefer to go properly cook their cured meat & fish first, so eating it 'uncooked' is not something I can attest to for certain.

Edit: neglected to mention - if you see someone carrying food to their next task, while actually hungry, simply select them and right-click on the ground - either next to a hearth if it's something in need of cooking, or right in front of them if it's something they can just plop down and eat. This way they will usually take the hint and eat something before actually resuming work... take that time to go shorten your list of pending tasks, because you're almost certainly overworking them.

[Maehlice]

If a villager is in actual starvation, they will eat raw meat, but it greatly decreases their morale, which contributes to the "death spiral".

Originally posted by Atzu:

This might resolve the food gatherers dying of starvation first issue

That isn't a game issue but a village issue. Gatherers will sit down and eat the berries and nuts in their own inventory (sometimes even raw meat) if their hunger dips low enough.

If your villagers lack for food or morale, they simply need more free time.

In general, if you approach the game by trying to give your villagers as much free time as possible, the village will run itself like a well-oiled machine. When you adopt the typical city-builder mindset of keeping them busy and active 24/7, the whole thing will rapidly go to ♥♥♥♥.

[threethreethree]

In short, things already happen like you're wishing OP. But not in a way so that you magically get extra food for any villager in question. Only that which exists, and it is consumed. Food gatherers cannot starve from gathering food, unless it involves a stage wherein the 'food' needs to be processed in some way, or you are over-working your people in some way.

[some moron]

There is no "food gatherers dying of starvation" problem, not sure what you are talking about.
It DOES sound as though there is a "player failure to provide enough food" problem.

Everything works out very well when there is more than enough food.
It IS true that when there is sufficient food that your village will "thrash" which means it's using more time to meet emergencies than it is to gather food. But that's a problem with the player not the game.

Produce more food.

[wildguy]

never had a problem with starvation if i had enough food and the morale is good although i think the game can occasionally get bugged and cause some problems, this starvation thing happen in all your games or just one ?. Had one game where the people just refused to repair anything (medium Flatlands) for no reason that i could see, my town crumbled to dust. only happened in one game and in another game the raiders stopped coming and I found them on the other side of the map (about 100 of them). they would walk towards my base them turn around and run back to the edge of the map then rinse and repeat. Just saying that sometimes the game can get bugged out although it's pretty rare, happened to me twice in about a 1000 hours of play.

[Gafwmn]

An issue that does happen is the villager finishes a task and is close to the point of needing food but not quite yet and takes the next task which may be far from camp and food.
it's always a good idea to scan the area and see how the people are doing. In an extreme case where many people have orange or red symbols above them, sound the attack horn for just 1 blast then shut it down. It causes everyone to stop and run for defense, then when you shut it off, they take care of their needs, like food, moral, warm clothing, etc.....Then they go back to work.

[Draken]

Originally posted by Gafwmn:

An issue that does happen is the villager finishes a task and is close to the point of needing food but not quite yet and takes the next task which may be far from camp and food.
it's always a good idea to scan the area and see how the people are doing. In an extreme case where many people have orange or red symbols above them, sound the attack horn for just 1 blast then shut it down. It causes everyone to stop and run for defense, then when you shut it off, they take care of their needs, like food, moral, warm clothing, etc.....Then they go back to work.

If you have multiple orange or even yellow symbols in your settlement you are very likely already doing something wrong. Especially if it's a regular occurance.

I am pretty sure once people get to red needs they will actually drop their tasks on their own.

[korac]

Originally posted by Draken:

I think they might even consume some normally cooked food raw? Not 100% sure about that.

I can now confirm this for a certainty. A guy very low in the red for Nutrition grabbed a cured meat from a granary and immediately plopped down to eat it, even though very close to a hearth. I'm pretty sure there was some morale loss, but perhaps not as bad as for eating raw meat fresh from a kill.

Another guy, still in the brown for Nutrition (i.e. very hungry but not quite starving), went and cooked his cured meat first.

I've yet to observe the same thing with pulses, but it wouldn't surprise me in similar extreme situations.