Food should last for about 1 rl week and then it should start decaying.
So food should decay in different ways The main way is rotting and The random way is mice.
To keep the food from rotting people could use : salt , cooling ( Could be done on some kind of new terrain type) , drying and putting food in jars.
You could get salt from salt mines and from water. The better ql salt is the longer it could last ?

Cooling should be like this : The food item should cool in-game for about 8 hours. When taking it away from the cooling a timer should start. The timer depends how long it has been in cool. Every in-game day 1ql should decay from it.
Drying should happen like drying leather. This should add 1 ingame week to the food ,but should take away some of the ql.
Jars - This should add 1 rl day to the food before it starts to decay.
When the food starts to rot it should be under status "Rotting". When the food has been rotting for 1 rl week it should disappear. When people eat rotten food a small bar called "Food poison" should pop up like drinking wine and beer. There could be 5 statues when eating rotten food . First one will take 5% hhp off you when it reaches full , Second one 25% hhp , third 45% hhp , fourth 65% hhp and fifth one 85% hhp. It should also take 50% Fep off the food when its rotten.
Mice - These guys will come at random time wont matter if the food is rotting or isn't. To get rid of mice you could kill the mice that you find in your house, use rat traps like : put cheese on the ground and when mice grabs it a cage will trap it. (maybe a mouse catching minigame?)
Mice should also come more often when the house is more decayed and there are mice holes. When a mouse eats food it should feed less than it fed before and Take some Fep off it but not as much as the rotten food does.
Also when you drop food it could get muddy and take 5-15 ql off the food item.
Yeah i know these ideas have been here before , but sometimes talking them over and over makes them come true
