The Tavern

Seriously. Why is this a thing?

I presume it's a legacy from before "fainting" status existed, when there was a chance that a multi-turn action at "starving" would kill you...?

I also don't quite understand the design choice behind this since auto eating chunks would fulfill the condition needed to not be starving anymore.

Well, theoretically you could have a royal jelly or a choko in your inventory, as well as a chunk, and be one turn away from starving to death (before fainting status existed). If you automatically ate the chunk, you would die because you wouldn't finish in time. If you ate the choko or the jelly, you would survive.

This situation can't happen at starving anymore, although I guess it could still happen at fainting.

Recent versions removed stat death, drowning. What about starvation? Can we make "starved" character slow (even Formicid), pass turns randomly, lose 50% AC/EV/max HP/weapon damage etc. instead of death?

Not a bad idea, perhaps, but think about what sorts of characters end up starving. They are the weak characters who can't keep up with killing enemies fast enough to keep themselves fed. If they are having that much trouble without any penalties, how can they ever hope to get back on track if they are made even worse? Also, in this model, would they be unable to cast spells?

I suppose it could make an interesting choice sometimes. specifically under gozag, where you choose to fight with a handicap to avoid buying a food shop... but that's a pretty wild corner case.

I don't remember starved characters but I remember characters who had the most problems with food:
Troll of Gozag, Spriggan Berserker and several characters who were lucky to find 5+ rods. None of them was weak, quite the opposite. Probably it could be fun to play them at permanent "starved" status as challenge.

There used to be a bug where "you are now hungry" would interrupt the auto-chunk-eating that happened right as you became hungry. So the game would say "Player's hungry? better eat a chunk. Oh wait, player's hungry! Interrupt what they're doing to warn them of this!"