Best food in Timberborn for Folktails and Iron Teeth

Short answer: for Folktails, bread and cattail crackers feed the most beavers per farm tile, and carrots are the best food you can have on day one. For Iron Teeth, eggplant rations and corn rations lead on farmland, while kohlrabi and fermented cassava get you through the early game. No single food is "best", though: each food also fills its own nutrition need, so a colony on three foods is happier than one on the top food alone.

How we compare foods

A beaver eats 80 / 30 = 2.67 food a day on Normal and Hard (the hunger need drops 80 points a day and each food item restores 30). So the question for any food is how many items it gives per farm tile per day, and how many beavers one kitchen building can keep fed.

Food per tile per day = harvest per tile / days to mature x items per crop after cooking. Carrots give 3 per tile every 4 days, so 0.75 food per tile per day. Wheat gives only 3 per tile every 10 days, but one wheat becomes one flour and then five loaves, so a wheat tile gives 0.3 x 5 = 1.5 bread a day. These are floors: they ignore the time farmers spend walking, planting and harvesting, and fields that stop growing when they dry out.

Kitchen output assumes the default 16-hour working day and a fully staffed building that never runs out of inputs or power.

Folktails food ranked

Food	Crop (days, per tile)	Food / tile / day	Tiles per beaver	Kitchen	Beavers per cooking building
Bread	Wheat (10, 3)	1.50	1.8	Gristmill + Bakery	30
Cattail Crackers	Cattail, in water (8, 3)	1.50	1.8	Gristmill + Bakery	48
Carrots	Carrot (4, 3)	0.75	3.6	none	-
Grilled Spadderdock	Spadderdock, in water (12, 3)	0.75	3.6	Grill	45
Grilled Potatoes	Potato (6, 1)	0.67	4.0	Grill	46
Sunflower Seeds	Sunflower (5, 2)	0.40	6.7	none	-

Bread and crackers tie on farmland, but crackers are the better kitchen food: the Bakery makes 4 crackers every half hour (128 a day) against 5 bread every hour (80 a day), and the Gristmill grinds cattail twice as fast as wheat. The catch is that cattail only grows in shallow water planted by an Aquatic Farmhouse, which is a 150-science unlock, and the Gristmill needs 60 hp of power. Bread uses ordinary fields.

Carrots need no kitchen, no power and no science, mature in four days, and hold their own on farmland. They are the right first food and stay useful all game as a second nutrition item. The Grill foods are cheap (25 logs, no power, no science) and one Grill keeps about 45 beavers in grilled potatoes or spadderdock, but potatoes are poor per tile because each plant yields one potato.

Folktails also have tree food. A Chestnut Tree gives 3 chestnuts every 8 days once it matures at 23 days, and the Grill turns each chestnut into 2 grilled chestnuts, so about 0.75 food per tree per day with no replanting. Maple pastries use wheat flour plus maple syrup from Maple trees (3 syrup every 12 days after 28 days) and come out at 3 per 1.5-hour batch, so a Bakery on pastries feeds only about 12 beavers. Treat them as a well-being extra, not a staple.

Iron Teeth food ranked

Food	Crops (days, per tile)	Food / tile / day	Tiles per beaver	Kitchen	Beavers per cooking building
Corn Rations	Corn (10, 2)	1.00	2.7	Food Factory	60
Eggplant Rations	Eggplant (12, 3) + Canola (9, 3)	0.86	3.1	Food Factory + Oil Press	72
Fermented Soybeans	Soybean (8, 2) + Canola (9, 3)	0.74	3.6	Fermenter + Oil Press	40
Kohlrabi	Kohlrabi (3, 2)	0.67	4.0	none	-
Fermented Cassava	Cassava (5, 1)	0.50	5.3	Fermenter	30

Two-crop foods count both fields. Eggplant rations take 1 eggplant and 1 canola oil per batch of 6. An eggplant tile gives 0.25 eggplants a day and a canola tile 0.33 seeds a day (one seed makes one oil), so each batch costs 4 eggplant tile-days plus 3 canola tile-days, or 0.86 food per tile per day overall. That is less than corn rations per tile, but the Food Factory makes 192 eggplant rations a day against 160 corn rations, and eggplants and canola are two more crops your farmers can rotate through.

The Oil Press is the real limit on eggplant rations. It makes 1 oil every 1.3 hours, about 12 a day, while a busy Food Factory wants 32. Plan almost three Oil Presses per Food Factory on eggplants, or split the factory's time between corn and eggplant rations.

Kohlrabi is the Iron Teeth carrot: 3 days, 2 per tile, no kitchen. Fermented cassava is the cheapest cooked food to set up (the Fermenter costs 25 logs and no science and draws 50 hp), but cassava yields one root per tile, so it is the worst per tile. Use it early, then move fields to corn.

Iron Teeth also have mangrove fruits (4 every 10 days from a Mangrove Tree that grows in water) and the Hydroponic Garden, which turns 40 water into 45 mushrooms over a 192-hour cycle, or 60 water into 70 algae over 288 hours. Mushrooms go to the Fermenter (4 become 16 fermented mushrooms) and algae to the Food Factory for algae rations. They need no farmland at all, which makes them the drought and badtide insurance food.

Why you want more than one food

Hunger is one need, but the wiki's Needs page lists a separate nutrition need for each food, and each satisfied need adds well-being. Well-being gives work speed, movement speed, kit growth and life expectancy bonuses. A practical setup: Folktails run carrots plus bread, then add grilled potatoes or crackers; Iron Teeth run kohlrabi plus corn rations, then add fermented cassava or eggplant rations. Size the main food with the production chain calculator and use the food and water calculator to check total demand.