Mod I'd like to see: A food overhaul. I do *not* mean hunger overhaul.
The inspiration: Mushroom stew.
First: If you do not understand the saturation/exhaustion mechanics, this will make no sense. Read the minecraft wiki.
The first problem: Steak is better than the wheat used to make it. In general, working to make a higher-tier food makes a better food. That works fine for a game, when the game's rule is "Food does not stack". That's the old, alpha and early beta days. Vechs has a training map, and he teaches mushroom stew, because the ingredients stack; while you can't assemble it and eat in combat, you can heal yourself between combats.
Key observations: Inventory space. Food tier. Difficulty of making said food.
Key data point: Cake. Can be placed down on the ground when combat is detected; can be eaten while in combat. No other food can be eaten in combat like that.
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Mushroom stew, before its nerf, was hands-down the best food in the game. It restored as much food as steak/porkchop, and you could fill your saturation bar easily enough. Additionally, you can take the raw materials with you, and grow more while you are underground; you can't take more steak with you.
The tradeoff, for that food, was the inventory space; a stack of non-renewable steak took one inventory slot; mushroom stew took a minimum of two, and that's assuming you did not keep the bowls. If you kept the bowls, then it's three stacks; otherwise, you are constantly having to use your wood supply (you do take a stack of logs when you leave base, right? It's a cheap enough, often used supply of materials while exploring.)
Despite the increased cost -- and in vanilla, 1-2 extra inventory slots is a cost -- this was the most desirable food for extended expeditions. For modded, with extra inventory space, even that wasn't a cost. So stew got nerfed down to the level of fish -- but a stack of fish takes less space, and fish is already renewable while on an extended trip.
So mushroom stew went from great to bad.
Steak or fish is better.
Why is steak better? In real life, people complain: The food value of what you feed to a cow is higher than the food value you get from a cow.
So why not have a hunger system like that? Given 6 wheat, and either breeding two cows, or cooking 3 wheat twice, why not make the wheat provide more food than the cows, but let a stack of cow meat be more than a stack of bread?
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In this system, eating the "raw pieces" of food would provide more total food value. The "cooked" food would provide less food value than the parts did, *but more saturation*.
A food item that is a combination of both carbohydrates and protein -- milk directly; fruit + steak for a meal, or bread + steak for a sandwhich -- would provide high saturation; food that is not a combination (and this would include all or almost all uncrafted items) would provide lower saturations. This mimics real life -- although the whole "speed of carbohydrate" issue that affects 75% of people can be either (a) Eliminated by saying Steve is one of the genetically lucky 25%, or (b) Coded in, so it can be used as a teaching tool.
Now, turning three wheat into, after a furnace for cooking, three bread, will give you "wheat gives more food than a cow does" (good), and "a stack of steak is better than a stack of bread" (good), and with re-adjustment, can also give you "Steak sandwich is better still", or "Steak plus fruit meals is the clear winner". (And yes, chicken or fish instead of steak is a perfectly good food option as well.)
In other words, change the food values from "This is a game; harder food items are more valuable" to "This mimics reality; processed foods are not as good as the raw foods, but you can store more of them".
