I use a barbarian type character who doesnt use magic and practically turned off health regen by console so food wouldve been useful despite the very limited healing. However, downing several animals worth of meat didnt go very well with my RPing so that's out too.

Hopefully, the food and drink mods will give a very slight health (and other) regen with the "well fed" status

You are partly right, they are there to cook and make better. But you can't use food products for alchemy. Look at the inventory and you will see it is seperate, there is food like meats and cheeses. Then there is ingredients like flowers and salts for potions.

I think you can use Garlic in both Food and Alchemy.
Garlic is being held under Alchemy section.

I never seen the point either. I thought it was cool, as a roleplaying element, when I found out you could cook but I found no reason to invest any time into it. It's kind of like the ability to make bread in Ultima 7, but then again, you had to eat in U7. Mods will surely make this more interesting by introducing hunger.

Another thing can do with food is sell to farmers. Theres a few farms that buy leeks, cabbage, potatoes and such. Your not stuck with a vendor limit. They will buy all you have. Every few days ill make a farm run by farming all the veggies and sell to them. Not saying its uber or any fun, but it is a way to make honest coin and not hurt selling to vendors in city so can sell other things. I roleplay by not stealing because i think that just makes the game to easy. Though I will take things if they say its ok ( item not red)

I almost forgot the reason and then I ate it. Sweets then salts then spicey then back to sweets

you need them for a mod that will come out soon called realfood (you have to eat otherwise your stats will be lower)

food looks pretty and adds variety to the environments. plus it's basically a standard in rpgs

Why have 3D graphics? Why not just a plain old 16-bit side-scroller? Immersion, atmosphere and good looks. The world is supposed to look believable. And if you eat you can get a little health and even some boosts and penalties (try alcohol). But you're right, spells and healing are more effective. So it's simply to have a living world around you - as much as they can. try not to look at the gameworld as a cold digital environment while you focus on any numerical combination to improve your stats and enjoy the storytelling. It's basically a giant movie set. It's supposed to look lived-in. Good fantasy movies have details.

Looking at the list of foods in game on UESP wiki these are my suggestions for further things that could be added:

Honey bread
Goats cheese on toast
Rabbit and potato stew
Honeyed apple tart (if pastry doesn't break the lore - it didn't come into use until quite late in human history)
Clam and salmon broth
Beef and Ale pie (as above re pastry)
Brandied apple cake


Know a little about food history and a couple of basic food items that should be added are oats and beans - they were pretty much the staple of Northern European diets for a long time. Those and not really a lot else sadly for most of the population.

Food is pointless thats right. You could http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=105. That makes the game harder. But because Skyrim is really too easy, I dont have any problems with that.
The best way is, if there is also non regerenation if you are sleeping. So if you want to heal/regenerate you have to eat food. I like this way.

I find the better stews useful when starting a dungeon as they increase base regen for quite a while (12 minutes), meaning you can crack on after each skirmish and save potions for mid battle

I was really disappointed in the number of recipes there were when I heard you start out with all of them in the beginning. I really hope they out someone else adds more somehow. I wanted trip make a warrior who doesn't take potions, but in the end in a pinch on master, id rather drink than redo.