Packaged Survival Meal won't survive

[Blastoderm]

Is there any way to prevent PSM from being eaten?
I want to accumulate them but every time they end up being eaten. They are quite expensive to make but at the same time they are almost useless now as it is impossible to accumulate in needed numbers.
How to prevent pawns from using PSM?

[ReZpawner]

The easiest way to prevent them from being eaten is to provide a better type of food for them. In my experience they will even eat simple meals before eating PSM's. If you go with fine meals, you should be pretty safe (and they only cost half of what a survival meal costs to make).
You can also try to store the survival meals further away than the other meals. Distance does matter, if memory serves.

And if nothing else works, just forbid all the survival meals, so they can't be interacted with.

[Nainara]

Do PSM's have any distinct advantage over pemmican? They seem to cost a lot more research.

[ReZpawner]

Do PSM's have any distinct advantage over pemmican? They seem to cost a lot more research.

They don't expire. Ever.

[Hans Lemurson]

You could forbid them?  It's a bit of work to maintain, especially if you're producing more regularly, but a dedicated stockpile could help with this.

[Trylobyte]

Do PSM's have any distinct advantage over pemmican? They seem to cost a lot more research.

They don't expire. Ever.

Pemmican takes approximately forever to go bad (Well over a year and a half), has half the material cost, is significantly less wasteful, and can be produced a lot sooner.  Packaged survival meals never go bad, true, but that advantage is lost when you consider pemmican lasts long enough for any journey you might realistically consider making.

[ReZpawner]

Do PSM's have any distinct advantage over pemmican? They seem to cost a lot more research.

They don't expire. Ever.

Pemmican takes approximately forever to go bad (Well over a year and a half), has half the material cost, is significantly less wasteful, and can be produced a lot sooner.  Packaged survival meals never go bad, true, but that advantage is lost when you consider pemmican lasts long enough for any journey you might realistically consider making.

I've had pemmican go expire, and you cannot have a huge stockpile of it without it going bad. As I type this, I have a stock of 1736 survival meals in my storage to ensure that my colonists will always have food, even if I get hit with a year of vulcanic winters, blight, coldsnap, my growers drop dead from the plague and my cryptosleep pods malfunction. That's the point of survival meals - being able to survive almost no matter what.

When the endtimes come, it'll just be my colonists and a small group of very nervous cockroaches left.

[Trylobyte]

Or you could hook a geothermal power plant up to a freezer full of pemmican. 

Point is that pemmican is better for nearly everyone in nearly every circumstance.  PSMs are only worth it for when you have such a huge overabundance of resources that you don't mind the wasted time, food, and research they require.

[Perq]

The easiest way to prevent them from being eaten is to provide a better type of food for them. In my experience they will even eat simple meals before eating PSM's. If you go with fine meals, you should be pretty safe (and they only cost half of what a survival meal costs to make).
You can also try to store the survival meals further away than the other meals. Distance does matter, if memory serves.

Distance does matter, but if that storage happens to be closer when certain pawns triggers his I need to eat now event, he will go pick up Survival meal, even tho there are better (and cheaper) ones available. Forbidding them one by one is too bothersome, obviously. :@

[RimworldOx]

Yes, currently dealing with this same thing. I have to mitigate by watching my cook make a Survivors Meal and drop it in a designated stockpile, and forbid and new stacks of 10 she/he makes.

Wish there was a vanilla way to tell everyone, stay away!

[KillTyrant]

You can make it so only the chef can enter the squares you have the packaged meals

[Blastoderm]

That's kinda "not worth time spent" solution.
So the conclusion is that there is no reason to make PSM now because kibble is better in all ways.
That's sad. I expected it to be some kind of reserve so it could be used for caravans or as emergency food source during heat waves or cold snaps. But now it is better to make kibble as it can survive even volcanic winter

[ReZpawner]

It seems a lot of people are missing the point of the packaged survival meals here.

They are not meant to be regular food. They are meant to be used in an emergency. This is why they take up so many resources to make, and why they last forever.

They are an emergency backup, not a staple food.

[Blastoderm]

But they ARE used as a staple meal. There is no reasonable way to prevent pawns from using them on everyday basis, to stack them in case of emergency. They lose all their value due to being worse than pemmican and kibble in every possible way.

[Limdood]

I use a mod that increases stack sizes (i can't stand the default anymore) so this is easier for me, but it will work (albeit with more work) for the vanilla game.

A stack of items that is forbidden can still be added to, but not taken from (except animals...who will eat those meals...watch your zoning, and also: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=32878.0).

This means that if you see the first survival meal placed in a stockpile, and you forbid it, the next 9 (or more, with bigger stack sizes) will be "safe." This means you have to pay attention and do some player input only once every 10 meals.

Alternatively, you could make a stockpile that accepts ONLY PSMs, make it removed from the high traffic areas of the base (not by much, just at least a room that people won't be using to pass through to elsewhere).  Make an allowed zone on that stockpile and invert it (so the allowed area is everywhere EXCEPT that stockpile)...then assign all colonists except the cook/designated hauler to that zone.  Now only your cook/hauler (whichever you use to get the PSMs to the stockpile) can eat those meals...other colonists won't consider them.