Cooking
Food is incredibly vital to This War of Mine: The Little Ones. You need to have a steady supply of it, and you’ll definitely need to learn how to ration it. The first tip is that it’s okay if your survivors are a little hungry. Keep them there always, but don’t let them drop any more.
If you have Bruno in your party, your life is a million times easier because he has the Good Cook perk. This allows him to use up less ingredients when it’s him cooking up the food, even if you just have the Crude Stove. So, if you do have him, be sure to keep him alive at whatever cost.
Cooking meat alone will net you one meal, while cooking it with vegetables nets two. While the vegetable one may seem more hearty and better, it’s a lot rarer; so at the beginning don’t save your meat waiting for something that may not come. Cook the one meal and be thankful you have it at all.
If you don’t have Bruno, may god have mercy on you. Invest in the Improved Stove as quickly as possible.
Note that you’ll never find Cooked Food outside of your own home after making it yourself.
Scavenging
Food can be scavenged as well of course. You can find meat and vegetables and even canned food. Out of those three, the best is Canned Food. It’s a lot more nutritious than meat and vegetables alone, although still nothing compared to Cooked Food. Also, their rarity makes them a lot harder to rely on.
Eating meat and vegetables raw is also an option, but it won’t fix up your survivors’ hunger by that much.
When you’re in an area with a good amount of food (as told before you select it for scavenging at night), keep an eye on refrigerators since they often are exactly where the food will be.
Trading
Always opt to trade whenever the Trader makes it over to your house. And if they have meat, definitely try to get it. Canned Food may be too pricey, but if he has some and you can afford it, go for it. It’s a great substitute for a Cooked Meal, after all. But the main thing is to always try and get some meat. Maybe vegetables, but primarily the meat. Because, remember, be happy with one meal if it’s all you can swing right at the moment.
Traps
The best investment in the game (besides the basics and the water catcher), has to be traps. Be sure to get a couple going as fast as you can afford to build them. They use either canned food (which you should never use), fertilizer (which you should definitely use), or raw food. The last one is interesting because it means having a steady supply of food always. But in order to really take advantage of it, you’ll need as many traps as there are survivors, as well as raw food to match each one. This way, each trap will give you back two raw foods in exchange for your one.
Go nuts with traps. They take one to three days to yield a return and will keep your survivors fed.
With these tips, you’ll never go too hungry in This War of Mine: The Little Ones. Remember, the key isn’t to be perfectly happy and content and extremely well-fed. What you really want to do is survive.