Some really frustrating mechanics behind this, sorry in advance for the long post.
Cooking fish is impossible:
Each worker consumes 1 food unit per second, so we want to figure out how many worker-seconds does it take to make a cooked fish:
23 to catch one, 77 to cook it, 75 seconds for the fuel, and 4 * 23 = 92 for the 4 wood for the fuel.
Adding it up gives 267 food spent on workers making nothing but food that gives only 175.
This is particularly frustrating because nowhere does it say: "This fish is bad". It's just presented as if it was a legitamite option and we have to figure out later that it's been starving us the whole time.