Mush Bar

Mush Bar is a basic packaged food item used to keep a colony fed when better ingredients are scarce. It provides 2400 kcal and can be eaten directly, or processed further into Fried Mushroom at the Electric Grill and then Mushroom Wrap at the Gas Range.

Its main niche is as an early or emergency food source, but it is inefficient compared with many other foods. The item itself does not provide any morale bonus, while its downstream recipes do: Fried Mushroom grants +1 Morale, and Mushroom Wrap grants +4 Morale. The food chain also becomes more demanding as it advances, since Mushroom Wrap requires both Fried Mushroom and Waterweed.

Mush Bar’s behavior changed over time: it formerly had a chance to cause Diarrhea, but that effect was replaced with 1000 Food Poisoning germs. This makes it less of a direct debuff source than before, though it is still associated with food safety concerns.

• A single Mush Bar is a compact 2400 kcal ration, making it suitable for short-term storage and emergency feeding.
• It is a starting-point ingredient rather than a high-efficiency meal, since more advanced recipes gain morale at the cost of extra processing and inputs.
• Because it is part of a food progression chain, it can be used when transitioning away from raw survival food toward more reliable cooked meals.