The problem isn’t food. It is stamina. It has always been stamina.

The new food system is not the problem. I'm not saying it's perfect, but they have already started balancing it based on community feedback. I honestly have no doubt that the food system will be a solidly awesome part of the gameplay once they have tweaked things enough to make it not feel so punishing.

The real problem with the game is the stamina. This problem has been there since launch but we were willing to overlook it because the rest of the game was so enchanting. The problem with stamina isn't the presence of it as a core mechanic to Valheim, but that it is too linear. It doesn't matter how big your stamina bar is if it's empty. It doesn't feel good to have to let it replenish. Doing nothing isn't gameplay, and waiting for a full Stam or even just half the bar is completely disengaging from the game. And if you're wet it sucks even more. Getting wet happens all the time, even if you avoid water it could just start raining. The biggest issue with getting wet is it doesn't add anything interesting to the game. It's just another layer of tediousness which isn't fun to deal with.

Yes I know about Tasty Mead, but what we need is some kind of Stamina stat that dictates how quickly you regenerate stamina. Maybe even add it to food making it a third choice between health, stamina, and stamina recovery. Or maybe just have it tied to stamina so the more stamina you have the faster your recovery rate is. I'm just spitting out ideas here, but the point is I feel that if Stamina was more fleshed out as a mechanic then people would probably enjoy the new food system a lot more and maybe would have been more well received on it's release.

One last thing, I am absolutely not advocating for the game to just be easier. I honestly thought some parts of it were too easy already. But simply making things more tedious and grindy doesn't equate to an enjoyable challenge. To simplify what I'm saying here; I enjoy a challenge and I do not enjoy tedium. I realize that sometimes a little bit of tediousness can be ok and adds to a challenge, but it's simply not fun or engaging when the whole challenge just boils down to it being tedious.

Edit: fixed a typo.