Trouble feeding my colonists

[EarthyTurtle]

I'm having a bit of trouble with my colony in terms of feeding them. It's not that they wont feed, they will feed on raw food. The problem is they wont use the nutrient paste dispenser.

Now I have double checked the dispenser is not in a prisoner cell or inaccessible. The occational colonist does take food from it and wardens will use the dispenser to take food to prisoners. But when it comes my colonists eating food they will eat raw food straight from the farms and leave whatever is left over in the garden and eat it later.

I've searched for a similar thread for help and googled it as well however was unable to find anything on the subject. Forgive me if I missed one. Is there any reason why my colonists would be purposely choosing to eat raw food over nutrient paste?

[Semmy]

First question coming to mind.
Is your nutrient dispenser powered?
Is the front accesible?
Is there enough food in the stockpile?

[British]

My guess would be about the stockpile as well.

The only times I had colonists eat off raw food while the dispenser was powered and accessible, were when the stocked amount of food was very low (under 10) and the colonists were starving.

In that case they tend to eat off raw food rather than bringing them to the stockpile area first.
I don't remember priorizing hauling in the overview changes anything, but it works much better when you force individual colonists into hauling the food.
For that you have to stop all the colonists that are going to eat off the raw foods (since it "locks" the food, which thus can't be hauled by another colonist), ideally by drafting them momentarily.

[EarthyTurtle]

First question coming to mind.
Is your nutrient dispenser powered?
Is the front accesible?
Is there enough food in the stockpile?

Soz forgot to include those.
1. Yes
2. Yes, it's pointed towards the centre of the room
3. Most of the time yes. It hovers around 20ish, most of the food gets eaten before it goes into the stock.

I did play another game and tried your suggestion British and it worked for the most part. Some desperately hungry colonists end up running to the farm first. I also did note that this time that the dispenser was closer to the colonist quarters, last time the farm was closer. Idk if that suggests they get up and immediately go to the nearest source of food or not. I didn't get much of a chance to test it before Cassandra decided to throw a double  Raider/Emp combo at me.

Thank you for your help, I'll keep going with the hauler/farmer prioritization system you have going.