OP and thread proposal credits go to Your Ideas who gave permission for others to launch the thread on their behalf

The laconic simply states "When a video game provides a wide variety of food that its player characters can eat," which feels pretty chairsy to me.

The description has a few problems with it. Its opening paragraph pretty much admits it's just Hyperactive Metabolism, but with more foods available. The three criteria of game must include 12+ foods, in at least 3-4 groups, and is consumed by player choice takes up most of the description and is largely arbitrary.

Admittedly, I might've contributed to this issue as I saw this idea as a legitimate trope 5 years ago and provided some thoughts on it back then here. Looking at it today and seeing how the examples have panned out, I can't say that this is a particularly noteworthy thing anymore.

Wick Check: I performed a wick check and came up with these results from 51 wicks:

• 13.7% (7/51) - Food variety played a part in the story or a non-cooking game mechanic.
• 25.5% (13/51) - Entry either just listed food with no additional context, or was ZCE.
• 52.9% (27/51) - The Game Gourmet entry was describing a different trope(s). Most common overlaps:
  • Cooking Mechanics - 23.5% (12/51)
  • Hyperactive Metabolism - 13.7% (7/51)
  • Rare Candy - 11.8% (6/51)
  • Power-Up Food - 7.8% (4/51)
  • Edible Collectible - 5.9% (3/51)
• 5.9% (3/51) - Entries from non-work pages that had issues, or had a different issue besides other groups.
• 2% (1/51) - Unsure, food seemed incidental to its primary mechanic.

Wick Analysis: In total, at least 80% of entries weren't good, usually due to ZCE or overlap with other tropes. The overlap is problematic because Game Gourmet doesn't add anything to these other tropes beyond "this game has more foods that have this other trope". The Same, but More.

Possible solutions:

• Cut/Disambig - Move examples into other appropriate tropes where applicable.
• Yard - There's some trope ideas here about how food affects a game, but "game gives players a lot of choices of food" hasn't proven to be tropeworthy on its own.

• Neopets.Tropes F To L: There are literally thousands of different items you can feed your pets, including some "gourmet" goods you can win trophies for. Some food has different effects depending on your pet's species (like cheese making Skeiths sick, and apples doing the same for kyriis) or can change your pet's stats. Some Neo Pets like different foods.
• RedDeadRedemption2.Tropes A To L: There are two main categories of consumables - tonics and provisions. The former consists of a variety of items that restore health, stamina, or Dead Eye and are either store-bought or brewed by the player at a campfire. The latter consists mostly of actual food and drink, falling squarely into this trope, and consuming them increases one or two Cores, which govern the regeneration of the meter they're tied to. Fruits, vegetables and snacks restore the Health Core, coffee, chocolate and other stimulants restore the Stamina Core, and cigarettes, cigars and various types of alcohol restore the Dead Eye Core. Lastly, campfire-cooked meat restores all three Cores at once - the bigger the game, the bigger the recovery. Cores are always constantly draining, and while the player can't starve to death, having completely empty Cores often puts the player at a disadvantage. The description is a bit all over the place and lists cigars/cigarettes even though those aren't foods, but it explains that different types of foods do different things.
• VideoGame.Digimon World Next Order: As part of the virtual pet raising mechanics of the game, you will encounter a number of meat, veggies, mushrooms, nuts, fish, and drinks to feed your Digimon. Not only is feeding your digimon essential for satisfying their hunger, but food items can modify your Digimon's weight, tiredness, stats, stat growth from training, lifespan, mood, obedience, and of course, restore HP/MP. Taken even further as you begin to recruit digimon who act as chefs in the Business District's restaurant and unlock the tamer skill to combine ingredients to cook while camping. Describes that different foods affect a variety of different parameters beyond just stat growth and healing.
• VideoGame.Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure The7th Stand User: As you travel with Jotaro and his friends to several countries all over Asia in a journey towards Egypt, you can sample various items from the local cuisine along the way to heal while Level Grinding. Destinations include Hong Kong, Singapore, and India, each with several food stalls offering a wide variety of choices such as mapo tofu, twice-cooked pork, laksa, satay, pepper crab, mutton curry, and samosa. This feels like a genuinely good example that helps contextualize the different sorts of food.
• VideoGame.Like A Dragon: These games have a selection of restaurants and bars serving a variety of food and drinks including ramen, sushi, pasta, takoyaki, burgers, coffee and alcoholic drinks, plus convenience stores stocked with inventory items like onigiri and sandwiches. As you sit down to eat, your character will comment on the food, and there's even an in-game checklist keeping track of what you've eaten and completion points gotten from eating everything at a restaurant. Brings up food as a conversation starter and an in-game goal for eating as much different food types as you can.
• VideoGame.Mother 3: Initially, given the setting, your diet consists of things like nuts, mushrooms, beef jerky, and cheese. Not long into the game, though, come bags of pork chips, lootable from defeated Pigmask soldiers, marking the beginning of the end of the simple life that defines Tazmily Village up until then with the first processed foods since the end of the old world. Story significance. A change in available food indicates a turn in the story. This does feel a bit more like Gameplay and Story Integration admittedly.
• VideoGame.Yokai Watch: You can feed the Yo-Kai all sorts of foods to befriend them or to recover health and raise their Soul Meter, and they've all got their own preferences and dislikes; Pizza, Hamburgers, Oden, Curry, Candy, Hot Dogs, Ramen... Virtual Pet mechanic and preferences involved.

• Characters.Final Fantasy Record Keeper VIII To XV - Ignis Scientia: His specialty, expressed through his Burst. ZCE
• Franchise.Castlevania: From Symphony of the Night onward, you can find a much wider variety of food than the standard drumstick or pot roast in many games. Sot N alone offers things like cheesecake, pudding, strawberries, spaghetti, hamburgers, apples, miso soup, and pineapples. Just lists food.
• VideoGame.Captain Commando: As a distant sequel to Final Fight, this game continues the tradition with cherries, lemons, ice cream, coffee, chocolate, sandwiches, tempura, and barbecued ribs. Just lists food.
• VideoGame.Cloud Meadow: This game contains many ingredients and recipes, although most of them appear to be season-dependent. Some of the different recipes you can serve include bofroot cube steaks, chocolate cremepies, speedwheel dunkers, jelbabu juice, gempas nectar, nachos, creme sandwiches, Crunchy Boys, chwon kasha, pretzel burgers, tentaburgers, and turnog kebabs. Just lists food.
• VideoGame.Epic Battle Fantasy 4: Food: Kiwi, Pumpkin, Coconut, Watermelon, Muffin, Ice Cream, Cupcake, Sundae, Cherry, Lemon, Pineapple, Chocolate, Cheese, Fried Chicken, Crisps, Chips, Softdrink, Energy Drink, Beer, Milk, Coffee, Garlic, Burger, Pizza, Orange Juice, Chilli Sauce Just lists food.
• VideoGame.Fortune Summoners: Mostly different kinds of sweets, but also includes things like steamed buns, chicken, salmon, milk, and bread. Just lists food.
• VideoGame.Guild Wars 2: A wide enough variety of food to warrant four different food groups: Soups, Meals, Snacks, and Desserts. Just lists food groups.
• VideoGame.Hunie Pop: There are loads of food and drinks that players can give to the girls. ZCE
• VideoGame.Monster Tale: Helping Chomp grow and evolve involves feeding him various meats, sweets, fruits, vegetables, and grains. ZCE. It's not clear if the different food groups have different effects.
• VideoGame.Prehistorik: The object is to gather food for the tribe. Said food comes in four groups: Dairy, junk, fruits, and big foods. ZCE, mostly just lists food groups.
• VideoGame.Recettear An Item Shops Tale: Many items in the game are are various kinds of food. Said foods include oranges, cutlet bowls, candy, walnut bread, shortcake, kid's lunches, and melons. Just lists food.
• VideoGame.Science Girls: There are about fifteen different food items that you can have by the end, each with its own Flavor Text, although most are provided in low quantities and are likely quickly consumed, so players might not see them all. For fruits and vegetables, there are a banana, a handful of kumquats (counted as one item), a pomelo (that heals the group, and is mistaken for an alien fruit at first), five mandarins, three oranges, two lemons, and one bell pepper. For drinks, there are three milkshakes and a sodanote . For sweets, there are around 17 doughnuts scattered around the game, but the cap is 13 to be held at any one time. There is also a bundle of cotton candy. And finally, a pizza slice and a whole pizza. Very exhaustive list of all foods and their available quantities.
• VideoGame.The Lord Of The Rings Mod Bringing Middle Earth To Minecraft: The mod adds dozens of new food items, including fruits, veggies, meats, and desserts of an impressively wide variety. In addition, the mod adds an entire system of drink brewing, adding over twenty alcoholic drinks, as well as several magical drinks. Overall, the The example just cuts off, but this looks like it just lists food

• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Video Games - The cooking mechanics in Dwarf Fortress make every single dwarf fit the trope. Prepared meals are classified as biscuits, stews, or roasts based on number of ingredients used (2,3, and 4 respectively), and any dwarf you set as your cook will make whatever type of meal you ask... out of any ingredients you have available. Biscuits made of quarry bush leaves and radish wine, durian/ostrich egg/giant flying squirrel liver stew, and roasts cooked from tallow, llama milk, olive oil, and chili peppers, are all entirely possible. Thankfully, the game doesn't track taste (besides dwarves having favorite foods), so you can feed whatever culinary abomination your cooks come up with to your dwarves without negative effects. Pothole that's really describing Cooking Mechanics
• Game Hunting Mechanic: Action-Adventure: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Link can hunt wild animals, from birds, deer, and boar all the way up to woolly rhinoceroses. Each drops raw steak or bird meat of varying quality, which can be used for cooking or Shop Fodder. Hateno Village has a minigame in which Link can be hired by Dentz to cull deer for money in Retsam Forest. Pothole that's really describing Cooking Mechanics
• No Such Thing as Dehydration: Straight Examples - Dragon Quest Builders 2 has the ability to create a wide variety of both food and drinks, but they both fill the same hunger meter. You could theoretically go through the entire game without consuming a single beverage (in fact, you don't even have the ability to make them until the second chapter). The first game didn't even have the ability to make drinks, though (removed spoilers) Pothole that's really describing Cooking Mechanics
• GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas.Tropes G To N: CJ can buy food from all different restaurants and street vendors to replenish his health bar. These range from fast food joints to diners to fine dining, and each restaurant has its own menu to choose from. Hyperactive Metabolism
• Pokemon.Tropes A To I: Berries aside, this trope more or less evolved overtime onto this series, with its various drinks and delicacies introduced in each generation, all good for restoring HP and status, although most of these can only be obtained at a specific part of each game. The first games only featured Rare Candies and a vending machine somewhere where you could buy water, soda, or lemonade, but the next pair added berry juice, milk, and Rage Candy Barsnote to the mix, and from there came things like Lava Cookies, Old Gateaus, Sweet Hearts, Casteliacones, Shalour Sables, Lumoise Galettes, and Malasadas as time went on. Hyperactive Metabolism, Rare Candy
• VideoGame.Bastard Bonds: The game is filled with food items that can heal your character when not in combat. They can range from simple soggy sandwiches to scrumptious Monte Cristos and Bacon Clubs; from plain cakes to delectable Black Forest Gateaus; from stale mead to sweet honey beer; and from burnt steak to smoked tenderloins. You can recruit Greening, a wizard who can cast food for your party. Hyperactive Metabolism
• VideoGame.Battle Circuit: As usual for Capcom's beat'em-ups, you recover life by eating food scattered around the level. Special mention goes to the chicken and beef dishes you find, which you can eat from vaious times, each one the sprite changing to show the food losing more and more meat. Hyperactive Metabolism
• VideoGame.Bubble Bobble: There's about three dozen types of food. All bonus items worth 4000 points or less are food, while higher-value items are generally jewelry and other inedible objects. There are also giant bonus items worth tens of thousands of points; once again, the lower-value ones are food and the higher-value ones are jewels. Edible Collectible, which is called out in the same line
• VideoGame.Collection Of Everything: There are at least five special dishes (bread, nigiri, banana shake, coleslaw, pork chop with mashed potatoes and salad). Each of them also fills a specific gauge related to its nutrition to provide a Knowledge boost. Most other TMT games don't even have food. This seems to describe Rare Candy.
• VideoGame.Cooking Simulator: Game Gourmet: The Game! since it's literally a cooking game, you can make a dish as appetizing or as disgusting as you please, especially in Sandbox Mode. Cooking Mechanics
• VideoGame.Dokapon Kingdom: There are 72 different food items for adventurers to consume, including soup, fruit, pizza, blue cheese, and beverages. Consuming some of these items does nothing, but otherwise they'll either heal half an adventurer's max HP, heal all of their HP, or raise one of their stats temporarily. Hyperactive Metabolism, Power Up Food
• VideoGame.Elona: With its farming sims elements, this game includes a vast amount of food. There are over thirty different kinds of food available, from fruits to vegetables to fish to nuts, and that's before using the Cooking skill to turn them into finished meals. With the Cooking skill, there are at least seven different kinds of meals you can make for each food type. Eating well-prepared meals will eventually lead to attribute gains. The kind of attribute gain you can expect depends on what you've been eating; for example, fruit can raise Magic and Charisma, while fish improves Dexterity and Learning. Cooking Mechanics. It also seems to describe Rare Candy.
• VideoGame.Epic Battle Fantasy 4: Stats: Honeycomb, Sushi, Ham, Beef, Cake, Donut, Lollipop, Candycane There's a section on Rare Candy foods.
• VideoGame.Gourmet Warriors: Much like what the title implies, you'll be spending the whole game collecting various ingredients from defeated enemies, from garlic to tofu, mushrooms and eggs, and all kinds of meat, and at the end of each level the game then throws a mini cooking game for you to "create" your own meal. Cooking Mechanics, which is called out separately on page.
• VideoGame.Legends Of Idleon: Power-Up Food: Blood Berserkers get access to the Cooking skill shortly after entering the Hyperion Nebula. Unlike other games with a Game Gourmet mechanic, meals specific to the Cooking skill are treated more like skill points rather than consumables. Meals are cooked up after waiting out a timer, then are "spent" by setting the table next to the kitchen, which grants passive bonuses to all characters on the same account. This looks like Cooking Mechanics, since GG isn't technically a mechanic itself.
• VideoGame.Littlewood: The Tavern has a huge number of recipes to unlock, which run the gamut from ordinary recipes (like pickles, peach pie, and fried fish) to surreal fantasy recipes like the Bubbly Dragon, a cocktail made of apples and trout. You yourself can't eat them, but your townsfolk will, and if you sell their favorites, those favorites will sell out faster and you'll gain friendship points with them. Cooking Mechanics. Looked it up and seems that the player cooks food.
• VideoGame.Metal Slug: Roast turkeys, live fish, lettuce, eggs, dim sum, carrots, mushrooms, and other foods can be collected for points. Collecting too many will make you fat, which means that you move slightly more slowly but your weapons become more powerful. Looks like Edible Collectible and Power Up Food.
• VideoGame.Order Up: It's a cooking simulator, so a wide variety of food to serve your customers is a given. The game has you work at several different restaurants, and among other things, the gameplay involves unlocking different recipes as you go along. Cooking Mechanics
• VideoGame.Pew Die Pies Pixelings: Rare Candy, food is used as experience to level up characters.
• Video Game.Purple: Food does not give you any gameplay-related benefits, but does count towards 100% Completion. The first two worlds only feature fruits and carrots, but then you come across things like sodas, French fries, and chocolate starting in world 3. Edible Collectible
• VideoGame.River City Girls: You can buy various food items in restaurants and stores throughout the game as healing items. The first time you eat something you gain a permanent stat increase. Hyperactive Metabolism, Rare Candy
• VideoGame.Shepherds Crossing: In the second game, you can cook lots of different kinds of food, both for yourself and to share with the villagers. Cooked meals allow you to turn side-dish foods like meat and vegetables into main-dish foods. Cooking Mechanics
• VideoGame.Story Of Seasons: Cooking is a fundamental aspect in many games, in which you can whip up various meals, soups, salads, desserts, and what-have-you. Cooking Mechanics
• Video Game.Tangledeep: There are quite a few food items available for scavenging or purchase, and you can cook at firesides to produce potent dishes. Cooking Mechanics
• VideoGame.The Elder Scrolls Online: The Provisions skill-line, where you cook different kinds of foods and beverages. Food will increase the amount of resources, while beverages will increase resource recovery. Special recipes from events might do a bit of both. Power Up Food, I think?
• VideoGame.The Simpsons: Weaponized foods (drinks) aside, you can restore your life with apples, oranges, corn, burgers, donuts, roast chickens, hot dogs, and pies. Some items are obtainable from fruit trees or NP Cs, while others are simply strewn about. Hyperactive Metabolism
• VideoGame.The World Ends With You: All kinds of food have different effects on each character in terms of stat boosts and sync rate effects. They also come in different sizes, measured in Bytes, and their effects on each character will depend on how well they enjoy them. Looks like Power Up Food

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: In video games, foodstuffs are collectible or menu items, usually to restore lost HP or gain points. Makes no mention of how this is an acceptable break from reality and doesn't mention wide variety of food. It's also describing other tropes such as Hyperactive Metabolism and Edible Collectible.
• Tropes Are Flexible: is about variety of collectible or selectable food in video games. It is common for games under this trope to have too many different foodstuffs to count, but the current minimum stands at 10 (which is still only a guideline). This describes the minimum food count as 10, which contradicts the trope's main page that the minimum is a dozen (12). The main page does say that some genres have a lower minimum, but doesn't explain which genres these are.
• VideoGame.Darkest Dungeon II: In contrast to the first game's generic Food provision, the sequel offers a wider range of food items which are only usable in The Inn to heal the party. The items range from disgusting Slime Mold to Stale Bread to delicious Flapjacks. A few Trinkets are also food items, such as the Stiff Drink for the Grave Robber. the food count here is low and just used to say 'more variety than the previous game', but it's notable for being probably one of the few instances where it's not Hyperactive Metabolism as you can argue that they rest at the Inn and let the food digest over night before journeying off again.

• VideoGame.Kingdom Of Loathing: Enough manner of foods to be classified by quality, which in turn determines how many adventures (battle turns) per fullness a character can gain Page lists 5 different food quality groups. I'm not sure where this fits as the fact it is food seems to be incidentally tied to battle turn granting mechanic.