Belly rubs make illness go away 4 times faster
IMO, there should be some indication of what exactly makes them sick, it almost seems random. I know some foods seem to really make them sick easily, but I'm not really sure why they get sick otherwise. Seems like maybe it's a chance based on how big a certain food is compared to your stomach capacity, IDK.
Either way, I skipped the dodgy mechanic entirely by mass-purchasing cheap, small (and small-ish) foods, then stockpiling certain badges to make the small foods more useful, then I use an autoclicker on my mouse to eat thousands of them individually, my character never gets sick anymore, and I get to chuckle at the mints' description about getting immobile from mints.
Idea to make the mechanic a little more clear: a "health" stat for all foods. Eating too many unhealthy foods runs a higher risk of making the character sick, but eating healthy foods is worse for the $/cal side of things, and slows down gameplay. Maybe healthy food even takes longer to digest?
Kind of like an active vs passive choice?