food is broken. it wouldn't matter if it did work as 96.88% of food past 72 is lost

I've experimented with the food system and the professions that use salt to make more food. If you hover the mouse over the food production, you can see the amount of food you are producing and the amount that your civ is consuming. Far as I can tell, the briner and preserver only seem to work if you're running a net positive. Then it does some calculation and adds to your stockpile.

So, yeah, I think the food system needs a revisit or at least more explanation.

If I forage, then the foraged amount is directly added to my stockpile. But if I build a stone block based farm and harvest whatever food resource, then the above calculation applies and I believe all excess is lost.

in an early beta version i played probably back this time last year, if you had a butcher, meat smoker, preserver, salt and some animals, you could produce a game breaking amount of food. 1700+ / turn. it would show up with the preserves icon, but act as regular full value food.

The 96.88% loss is something that i brought up after the preservers were taken offline awhile back and apparently it's not an easy fix. THis is on Jon's long term update plan (end of year)