Food's only use in 5e is when it comes to spending gold on rations for when the party has to travel lol. Other then that there are like a grand total of like maybe 2-3 feats (Some UA ones) that are related to food, but their effects are fairly minor (Regaining extra hit die during I rest I believe is one of them).
Giving food the ability to heal is a bit wild, as it kind of makes Clerics, Druids, and any build that is related to healing...irrelevant. On that matter, there's a reason healing potions exist? Why should food do the same thing as a potion which in 5e has a baseline cost of 50gp?
I am not interested in the “but it makes no sense” or the “it’s not realistic” arguments either because there is absolutely no logical reason that a potion should let you speak to animals, or heal external wounds either, other then it’s a random bit of handwaving we’ve just agreed to ignore.
Right here's the thing, those are magic items. Food is not.
The fact they are sometimes “as good as potions” is only a negative if you are ascribing some arbitrary sanctity to the role of potions in general. People need to remember that this is not a pen and paper, purist interpretation and it never will be, and if we kept with the traditional model wherein potions were absurdly expensive and rare, they’d have to scale back the combat so much that it would be extremely dull. The only alternative option would be to flood the game with EVEN MORE potions, and then people would complain about how that was “not accurate”.
Like I mentioned the baseline cost for basic healing potions it 50gp, and with the amount of gold tossed around in BG3, it's not really an issue to stock up on them. Additionally, basic healing potions count as a common magic item, so it's not to ridiculous to think it's a common item. Additionally, with certain tool proficiencies, one can just craft the potion for half the price.
