Food facts(?) and Is it worth having a food processor

[cwykes]

While I was searching around to find you exactly what a food processor contributed to food value, I copied and pasted everything I found into a txt file.  I suspect most of it is regurgitated Prima guide.  A couple of you asked me to post it anyway, so here it is.  If any of it is wrong I'd love to know.  Maybe someone a lot more awesome than me could convert into something suitable for the war room.  AND - I'm still not clear about that food processor.  If your sim uses the food processor instead of a high level counter, are you losing food value?  I've taken to putting microwaves in a corner where they can't reach them on the understanding that cooking in an oven gives more food value than the microwave.

The text file - none of the facts or recommendations are mine...............
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 - A difference between a cheap fridge and an expensive one is capacity. When you order some groceries you buy some food for a particular amount of money that is stored in the fridge.

- You buy food on the Internet or over the phone but if you use cheats for money and don't mind tricks, you can sell a fridge when empty and buy a new one instead of making new orders.

- Don't eat when your sims' hunger bar is full.

- Sick sims and pregnant sims want to eat more often. The hunger bar decreases faster.

- It is quicker to prepare served meals but you won't save money this way if there are 2 or 3 sims in the house.

Breakfast:
Instant Meal - §3/§12 if served
Cereal - §4/§16 if served
Toaster Pastry - §4/§16 if served
Pancakes - §5/§20 if served (3 cooking skills needed)
Omelettes - §5/§20 if served (4 cooking skills needed)

Lunch:
Instant Meal - §3/§12 if served
Meat Sandwiches - §4/§16 if served
Grilled Cheese - §5/§20 if served (2 cooking skills needed)
Chef's Salad - §5/§20 if served (3 cooking skills needed)
Chilli Con Carne - §6/§24 if served (4 cooking skills needed)

Dinner:
Instant Meal - §3/§12 if served
TV Dinner - §4/§16 if served
Mac And Cheese - §5/§20 if served
Spaghetti - §5/§20 if served (1 cooking skill needed)
Chef's salad - §5/§20 if served (3 cooking skills needed)
Pork Chop - §7/§28 if served (5 cooking skills needed)
Salmon - §7/§28 if served (6 cooking skills needed)
Turkey - §28 served only (6 cooking skills needed)
Grilled Ribs - §28 served only (7 cooking skills needed)
Lobster Thermidor - §8/§32 if served (10 cooking skills needed)

Cakes:
Gelatin - §4/§16 if served
Layer Cake - §5/§20 if served (6 cooking skills needed)
Baked Alaska - §6/§24 if served (8 cooking skills needed)

Hot Dogs - §5/§20 if served
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Except be careful - lobster Thermidor always carries a 20% chance of burning it. (According to the Prima guide, when you first unlock a food (say, spaghetti, when you get your 1 cooking point), you have 20% chance of burning it. One point later, you have a 10% chance (so for spaghetti, when you have 2 points), and after the *second* point after the food's unlocked, you only have a 5% chance of burning it (which you always have. Unless it's something like lunch meat sandwiches, which you can't burn. )

Every other food but lobster is unlocked after 8 cooking points, so that when your Sim maxes the cooking skill, he can cook those foods with a low chance of ruining them. Lobster, though, you get at level 10, so he never gets any better.

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 Learning to Cook
To become a great cook you must build up your Sims cooking skills. Sims can learn to cook by reading books on cooking, or by watching the yummy channel on TV. Children can earn cooking skill points while providing edible food by baking in the toy oven. Cooking skills come in handy, not only in a Sims career, but also around the house. Sims with higher cooking skills are able to cook more advanced meals, are less likely to start fires, and can prepare meals quicker. Although you can start earning points at a young age, only teens, adults, and seniors can use cooking equipment and prepare meals.

What can you cook?
With each Cooking Skill Point your Sims earn, you are able to "unlock" new meals your Sims can cook. The higher their skills the more they can cook, and the better they can cook them. Here is a list of some of the different foods available at each level.

Level 0: Juices, Chips, Cookies, Instant Meal, Cereal, Toaster Pastry, Lunch Meat Sandwiches, Hot Dogs, TV Dinner, Macaroni & Cheese, Gelatin
Level 1: Spaghetti
Level 2: Grilled Cheese
Level 3: Pancakes, Hamburgers, Chef Salad
Level 4: Omelets, Chili Con Carne
Level 5: Pork Chops
Level 6: Salmon, Turkey, Layer Cake
Level 7: Grilled Ribs
Level 8: Baked Alaska
Level 9: (No new foods added)
Level 10: Lobster Thermador

When do you cook it?
You can prepare and eat different meals at different times of the day. Below is a list of the three main meals, the times they are available, and the foods allowed to be cooked.

Breakfast - 2:00AM - 10:30AM
Instant Meal, Cereal, Pancakes, Omelets, Toaster Pastry, Chips, Cookies, Juice
Lunch - 10:30AM - 4:30PM
Instant Meal, Chef Salad, Lunch Meat Sandwich, Grilled Cheese, Hamburgers, Hotdogs, Chili Con Carne, Chips, Cookies, Juice, Gelatin, Layered Cake, Baked Alaska
Dinner foods 4:30PM - 2:00AM
Instant meal, Chef Salad, TV Dinner, Spaghetti, Salmon, Pork Chops, Macaroni & Cheese, Lobster Thermidor, Hamburgers, Hotdogs, Grilled Ribs, Turkey, Chips, Cookies, Juice, Gelatin, Layered Cake, Baked Alaska
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Here are some food efficiency values. Food efficiency is a measure of how to get the most hunger satisfaction in the shortest time. (from Prima guide)

Baked Alaska - 75%
Chili Con Carne - 75%
Chef's Salad - 63%
Grilled Cheese - 75%
Hamburgers - 75%
Pizza - 100%
Salmon - 88%
Pancakes 75%
Pork Chop 88%
Toaster Pastries - 63%
TV Dinner - 83%
Toddler Mush - 75%
Gelatin 63% ( And gelatin can last for 24 hours without spoiling)
Instant Meal - 50% (And instant meal can last for 12 hours without spoiling)

 According to the Prima guide, those percentages represent "hunger efficiency", a measure of how to get the most Hunger satisfaction in the shortest time. (The most nutritious food may not be the most efficient if it takes a long time to eat.) At 100% are lobster thermidore, pizza and grilled ribs. At 88% are pork chops, salmon and turkey. A TV dinner is at 83%. The lowest hunger efficiency is 50% for instant meals, snacks, and toy oven muffins.

 What they probably did was post information from the Prima strategy guide. In it is a chart of "Food Cost and Efficiency." This is how the book explains it:

"A refrigerator is not really stocked with food, it's stocked with food points (200 for the cheap fridge and 300 for the expensive). A food point costs exactly 2 Simoleons.

"Every kind of food has a price tag per serving. The higher the Hunger satisfaction of the food, the greater the cost. Every time you extract a serving of a food, its cost is deducted from the refrigerator's stock."

Food cost is measured by the amount of food points it takes out of the fridge; therefore, this can be translated into Simoleons since a single food point costs 2 Simoleons.

"Ruined food can be consumed but is stripped of most of its Hunger satisfaction. Any additions to food points from preparation or cooking are eliminated, leaving only the food's base Hunger satisfaction. Cooking failure also carries a 20% chance of fire."
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Expensive countertops effect food quality nearly as much as appliances and skill level
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Getting fat isn't just determined by working out. They move toward being fat everytime they continue eating after they're full.

This is not a complete list, but I hope it helps.
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High-price counters provide quicker food preparation and higher food value than low-price counters. The food processor is equivalent to a midprice counter, for both speed and food value, regardless of which counter it's placed on. High-price is anything from §500 on up, low-price is anything under §200, and midprice is anything in between. Most meals require food preparation which must be done at either a counter or a food processor. Any food can be prepared at an empty counter but only chopped foods can be prepared at a food processor.

Stoves and other cooking appliances seem to be the biggest factor in how much food value a meal gives. The high-price stove adds about 10 times as much food value as the low-price stove and the midprice stove adds about 4 times as much. Stoves can cook all meals except Cup O' Ramen, Hot Dogs, and Grilled Ribs and can provide either single or multiple servings of most meals, but Turkey and desserts can only be prepared in multiple servings. They do require a food preparation area for most meals.

Grills can only cook Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, and Grilled Ribs and they only provide multiple servings. No food preparation is required. The high-price grill is equivalent to the high-price stove and all other grills are equivalent to the low-price stove.

Microwaves can only cook Cup O' Ramen and TV Dinners which don't require preparation. Toaster ovens can cook Toaster Pastries, TV Dinners, Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Pork Chops, and Salmon. The last three meals require a food preparation area. Both the microwave and the toaster oven prepare single-servings only. The toaster oven is equivalent to the low-price stove for food-value. The microwave provides about double that food value.

The newest cooking appliance is a cooktop. It costs the same as the high-price stove and provides about the same food value. It doesn't have an oven and therefore can only cook stovetop meals. Food preparation is required.

All cooking appliances, including the microwave, are fire hazards and there should always be a fire alarm or sprinkler in the same room with any of them unless you intend to allow a fire. Sprinklers must be placed near the appliance to be effective.

My personal recommendations are to buy the high-price stove and high-price counters if at all possible, with the stove being the more important. I consider the food processor a waste of money since I can get a midrange counter for the same cost.
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[Gwill]

Good guide, I just have to harp on this:

- You buy food on the Internet or over the phone but if you use cheats for money and don't mind tricks, you can sell a fridge when empty and buy a new one instead of making new orders.

I do that to save time.  I don't "use cheats for money".  In fact I use the no20khandout hack.  Money seem to fall out of the sky in this game.  There's nothing I can do to spend it all, so buying a new fridge every time the old one is empty seems like a good idea.

[Yay]

The worn fridge is the most efficient in terms of the "selling after it's empty" method because it holds exactly the same as the "cheap" one at 200. Restocking it costs 450 if you count delivery which is almost always higher than the cost you need to sell and buy a new one. You could even get a recolour for this that is not worn... 

I was wondering, is the toddler mush free?

[seven]

I almost always buy the food processor because I thought it saved food preparation time. This thread makes me wonder if it's worth it though.

Anyway, it seems that sims have a chance of burning food the first time they make it as well as other factors. For instance I played a sim with 10 cooking points, but she hadn't yet made spaghetti. The first time she made it [and pancakes too] she burned it. I don't know if that is something in the game or coincidence.

[Dark Trepie]

So, if I'm reading this right, if I have a kitchen that consists of $500 counter tops, adding a food processor is actually detrimental to food value and preperation?  Werid.

And here I am with food processors in every house I have...

[Ellatrue]

I always felt like they were a waste of money, because apparently they only add 2 hunger points (according to the description in the game), whereas there is a huge difference with the stoves- plus they take up counter space I don't want use. I didn't know about the cost of the counters though. Has anyone tested this in their own game yet?

[J. M. Pescado]

I wouldn't say the food processor is really important at all. The one thing to note about it is that it greatly accelerates the speed at which the cooking process for certain foods is completed, regardless of the final hunger value: Since all of the foods that USE the food processor are low-yield, and none of the high-hunger foods use it at all, this is unimportant: You're not really eating from the food processor if you're hungry anyway. In light of that, the apparent speed gain makes it worthwhile regardless of the hunger value.

[radiophonic]

I wouldn't say the food processor is really important at all. The one thing to note about it is that it greatly accelerates the speed at which the cooking process for certain foods is completed, regardless of the final hunger value: Since all of the foods that USE the food processor are low-yield, and none of the high-hunger foods use it at all, this is unimportant: You're not really eating from the food processor if you're hungry anyway. In light of that, the apparent speed gain makes it worthwhile regardless of the hunger value.

That's the only reason I had for buying one. That way your sims with 10 point cooking skill levels don't stand around like chumps cutting their fingers with knives.

[RainbowTigress]

The Lobster Thermidor continues to annoy me because my maxed cooking sims always want to fix it, although I've found a way around it by using the Cooktop from Uni in all my houses now instead of the stove.  This also seems to solve the problem with using Macrotastics to eat when free will is on, because Macrotastics favors pork chops, but sims put them in the oven after frying them on top of the stove.  When the action comes up to remove the pork chops from the stove, the action is queued after the Macrotastics icon, so that the sim just stands there at the stove while the pork chops burn.  You have to manually cancel the Macrotastics icon so that the sim can get the food out.  At least with the cooktop, they don't put the food in the oven because there isn't one, so this problem is eliminated.  Also, Sims can't fix foods that require an oven, so that gets rid of Lobster Thermidor.  Lobster carries a high hunger satisfaction, but my sims who are maxed out on cooking burn it half the time; even though there is a 20% chance, they seem to hit it 50% of the time.  Not only that, but they seem to want to cook it every chance they get, even when their hunger bar is halfway.  This also contributes to them getting fat.  If you don't catch them soon enough after they finish something they are doing and pop up the Have Lobster Thermidor icon, it's too late and they've already pulled it out of the fridge, meaning the cost of it is already deducted from the fridge.  So in lieu of a hack to fix this annoyance, I am using the cooktop in all residential kitchens, but I would love to have a hack to fix this because the cooktop doesn't look quite as good as a regular stove.  Sometimes my fortune sims want to purchase the expensive stove.  Plus I can't use recolors for the other stoves I've downloaded to match the kitchen color scheme. 

[Renatus]

Rainbow: Simlogical has a gas hob and an induction hob available for download that are placeable on any countertop. Inge has both with and without oven options. They look much nicer than the cooktop! They're under the new meshes section.

[RainbowTigress]

I hadn't thought of using that.  I wonder if it will work with Macrotastics?  I'll give it a try.  Thanks for the suggestion, Renatus!

[Avie]

The enitre concept of acquiring cooking  points by actually cooking is pinched wholesale from C&C Enterprises who had that hack out for S1 for many years. They also had a menu choice in place of the odd green and brown mush of every Sims meal that preceded them.
As I recall C&C did a really nice pine kitchen set and a hacked food processor which reduced cooking time by half. Their hacked tables also prevented sims from taking 3 hours to eat a meal.
Whatever happened to C&C?

[yetyak]

C&C is still around, but doesn't do things for TS2.

[Avie]

More is the pity. Best of the mild hacks sites on the net

[RainbowTigress]

I hadn't thought of using that.  I wonder if it will work with Macrotastics?  I'll give it a try.  Thanks for the suggestion, Renatus!

Yes, I am quoting myself.  I wanted to add an update but was afraid it would get lost since replies have been made since then.

I've been trying Inge's hob without the oven since that message was posted, and it's working great!  No more burnt food because of using Macrotastics with free will on.  And no more Lobster Thermidor!  If they burn the food, it's their own fault, not mine.  Plus, they have an extra counter because they can use the counter under the stovetop.  It looks funny though when they are cooking with a thinking cap on it...I wonder how it doesn't catch fire! 

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks again to Renatus for the great idea.  And I'd suggest this for anyone who has had the same problem with sims burning food while using the Skillinator or Macrotastics Power Idle while free will is on.

[Assmitten]

I was thinking about something that rainbow said above, about taking food out and having points deducted. I never understood why you couldn't just put unprepared food back. Sometimes when I'm running a large house a Sim will sneak off to the kitchen and try to start making something stupid. I wish I could make them put it away again, instead of cleaning up or watching them make a turkey when no one else in the house is hungry.

[Karen]

I never understood why you couldn't just put unprepared food back. Sometimes when I'm running a large house a Sim will sneak off to the kitchen and try to start making something stupid. I wish I could make them put it away again, instead of cleaning up or watching them make a turkey when no one else in the house is hungry.

This is one reason that I use Inge's No Autonomy Fridge in all my houses.

[Assmitten]

Aha! Thanks.

[RainbowTigress]

I've used Inge's fridge, but it's a little too restrictive for my playing style.  In a large house, it is easy to forget to keep an eye on sims' hunger levels and they can starve.  Also, I don't want to be limited to the expensive stainless steel fridge.  I suppose if I really liked using it, I could clone it and import the other meshes like Inge showed me to do for her autonomous studying bookcases, which I love.

[J. M. Pescado]

I prefer APO on "deny autonomous", thus forbidding sims from attempting autonomously enter the kitchen. Then you can use anything you want.

Or you can turn off free will and use Macro Power Idle instead, that's even better, as it cuts down a LOT of the stupid shit. And the noise of people pointlessly turning on the TV for no reason.

[RainbowTigress]

That requires building a separate kitchen area in order to lock it up, and that doesn't fit the style of some houses.

[Assmitten]

Yes, I love open kitchens and kitchens with half walls. I didn't know about the starving thing! That would certainly happen in some of my houses. I get fixated on one sim and let the others fend for themselves sometimes, especially when aging's off.

[J. M. Pescado]

That requires building a separate kitchen area in order to lock it up, and that doesn't fit the style of some houses.

Well, it's pretty much mandatory in the game to lock the kitchen area, either seperately or by sealing the entire combined kitchen and eating area, unless you plan to never have a party, because otherwise your fridge will be casually pillaged by visitors who think they own the place.

[Regina]

I downloaded Boblishman's hob last week or so--I was so excited to see one!  I was really disappointed when I looked at it in-game and found out it only has 1 hunger value point.

My sims never even get to buy a stove until they can afford one with 10 hunger points.  The lower stoves are a waste of money.

One thing I like about the food processor is that it saves quite a bit of counter cleaning.  My sims eat a lot of TV dinners, spaghetti and chef salads so the food processor comes in handy for the spaghetti and salads.  It seems like they just never are hungry enough to eat the big meals.

[Hook]

A note on buying a new fridge instead of having groceries delivered.

If you order a grocery delivery, it costs you §50 above what you would pay for food at a store.  If you sell an empty fridge that is fully depreciated and buy a new full fridge, it is §100 above what you would pay for food at a store.  Selling a partially empty fridge gives you back the full value of the food that it contains.

Selling an empty fridge is a little gamey, but isn't significantly more expensive than ordering a grocery delivery. And if you started with a cheap fridge, and now your Sim has lots of money, you might as well upgrade the fridge and get the food at the same time.

Hook