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Good Eating

This mod alters the food-eating mechanics to be more useful and immersive.

This is to give you a reason to pick up food in the world. The pathetic healing effect granted by food in the vanilla game is useless, unless you carry about 40 pounds of venison chops around with you all the time, which is silly. And even then, you're stuck with the totally immersion-breaking experience of stopping in the middle of an intense boss or dragon fight to instantaneously scarf down enough food to feed the entire population of Whiterun for half a week, and then having that somehow result in your terrible burns and sword wounds vanishing.

Instead, I've made a simple change - instead of food healing you by 1-10 health, it fortifies your max health, stamina, or magicka (or some combination of the three) depending on what type of food it is, for a few ingame hours.

It's basically the same line of reasoning that many of the soups and stews already follow, just with a fortify effect instead of increasing regen. This was a fantastic approach to the concept and I haven't the slightest idea why Bethesda didn't apply it to other, easier-to-cook foods as well when it was such an elegantly simple mechanic that worked so effectively.

This provides you with a good boost that is helpful in gameplay, though not game-breaking, and gives you a reason to sit down every once in a while, even out of combat, and enjoy a good, balanced meal. And being deprived of food isn't actually damaging, you just lose a modest bonus, which is far less harsh than a lot of the survival mods out there.

The effect is fairly modest - only +5, +10, or +15 for most food types. This may not seem like much on its own, but when you get 2-4 food types at once (again, a balanced meal), you can enjoy a decent edge in combat, for at least a few fights. Even so, it's still only a modest advantage, but if you want something more potent, that's what potions are for.

This only affects cooked foods - raw meats and veggies will still have the same tiny healing benefits they've always had.

Benefits typically last either 4 or 8 minutes (or hours of ingame time). It may not seem like much, and it is less than things like Vegetable Soup and Beef Stew, which last 12 minutes. I may change it, but for now it seems fairly balanced to me - I typically take a good 8-10 minutes to complete half to three-quarters of a dungeon, unless it's a really tough one or I'm really moving slowly and methodically (for sneak attacks - I generally leave looting until the dungeon is cleared anyways). This means you'll either spend the later portion of the dungeon partially depleted, or stop for a quick snack so you're still decently-fed for the tough guys at the end (this is what the 4-minute food items like Salmon Steak and Grilled Leeks are good for.)

Cooked meats (Horker Loaf, Venison Chop, etc) will fortify your Health.
Cooked vegetables (Baked Potatoes, Apple Cabbage Soup, etc) will fortify your Stamina.
Treats and sweets (Honey Nut Treat, Sweetroll, etc) will fortify your Magicka.

A few exotic foods boost several stats at once, like Seared Slaughterfish, Mammoth Cheese Bowl, and Long Taffy Treat.

Should be compatible with most survival mods, all this does is change the effects granted by food.