Adding in "MOAR OPSHUNS" into the game is not a substitute for proper game balance, nor does adding in options reduce the amount of balancing work which must be done. In fact, adding in options greatly increases the amount of balancing work which has to be done.
I suppose that's reasonable. Some things probably
should be options such as restricting saves or not because people aren't going to agree and it has the potential to have significantly negative effects on some people's playing style/needs if it's pared back.
But I can see that food in combat is a bit of a work-around; some would say even more advanced medical kits in a general sense isn't realistic. In which case the combat needs to work with realism and what players are reasonably expected and allowed to do. But I suppose this is the point of EA to work it all out, both player preferences and how the game is catering to that, to player abilities and indeed to the whole 5e thing.
In my case my main combat cheese isn't
gorgombert exploding barrels but sneaking off when possible and then resuming once I'm feeling suitably recuperated, reequipped and recovered. Does that mean the combat needs to be changed? Hmm... dunno. It's been my standard technique in many games and is a variant of stealth attacks or breaking down a mob into smaller more manageable groups that I usually fall back on. I'm having to use the cheatsneak approach in BG3 as it (currently) doesn't have good support for stealthy kills and not involving the entire mob. Today I retried the goblin camp, something I failed on so miserably the other day, and mostly used a much smaller team of on average two characters to take out the lot starting in dribs and drabs, escaping combat by staying near the upper entrance of the interior location so I could easily take time out during any given turn.
Okay, that is nothing to do with food-during-combat, unless I had a hankering for roast dwarf leg, but the same basic principles seem to apply.
