to help with the idea for freshness limit, make use of time, let there be a base time in which will increment as the you play, now when you pick up foods that can spoil let this be a trigger, the moment its about to be in the inventory it will collect the current time it was made n depending on what it is let it also have a independent variable that will state how long it will last, each item that can spoil will have 2 variables which is date picked up and life span. With this, add a code before eating items (poison player=((current time- date picked)>=life span of item)?activate:inactive). if you do it like this you dont have to use counters to count the time before the item expires and it will save ram speed especially with many items, now dont worry about stack just let the stack use fifo(first in first out) using picked up date variable, now how to tell if item is spoiled? my guess is that you add a new function when holding items that can be eaten and with that function it will give "appraisal" in which a window that shows the status of item will be viewed while holding the key that activates the appraisal function. In my opinion use hold right mouse button to show item appraisal window. i hope this helps.