Vanishing Food

Okay, it's happened at a couple of lots already...one Science-hobby-themed dorm and one massive house that's designed to be a humungous spaceship. Sims grab their food off the counter, the table or the floor, and it vanishes. The Sim grabbing the food usually turns to face a random direction the moment the food vanishes. So in the interest of preventing Simmy death by starvation, I'm trying to isolate the cause of this vanishing food bug, the better to either work around the bug or eliminate it.

Stuff that I've tried so far:

• finishcustomfood.package? Never had it, never will.
• Group Meals, Single Meals or Both? Both.
• Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and/or Desert? All of the above will vanish.
• Custom food that can be bought through Buy Mode? Each serving vanishes once taken from the [cupcake tray/fried chicken bucket/whatever].
• Cafeteria Worker food? Disappears when taken off the counter.
• Cooked in an oven? Disappears once cooking is done.
• Cooked on a stove? Disappears once cooking is done.
• Cooked on a grill? Disappears once cooking is done.
• "Make..." meals? Disappear after being set down on a counter and grabbed.
• "Make Many..." meals removed from inventory and set on counter? Vanish when grabbed.
• "Make Many..." meals removed from inventory and set on table? Vanish when grabbed.
• "Make Many..." meals removed from inventory and set on floor? Vanish when grabbed.
• "Call...Delivery...Pizza" with accepted delivery? Pizza disappears once auto-placed on table.
• "Call...Delivery...Chinese Food" with accepted delivery? Haven't tried that one yet.
• "Call...Delivery...[Pizza or Chinese Food]" with action cancelled, so Sim sets the food on the floor? Okay, that actually works. Sims will grab pizza or boxes of Chinese food off the floor and eat them that way. If I grab the [pizza box/Chinese tray] and set it on a table, Sims can eat the food that way too.
• Get snacks out of the fridge? That works too. Sims grab the chips (or whatever), eat them and throw the trash away. Too bad snacks don't fill much Hunger (unless they're Protein Shakes, and not every Sim is a Fitness hobbyist).
• Drinks from a bar? Works, whether Blended, Poured or from the Bottle (though drinking from the bottle doesn't seem to do anything to Hunger).
• Drinks from a nectar bar/wine rack? Works.
• Smoothies from a juicer? Haven't tried it. (But at this point, I'm willing to try Pureed Boot if it'll turn that red Hunger gauge green again.)

As I mentioned, this only seems to be happening on two of my lots so far; all the others seem to be fine. Both of those lots have various kitchen counters and appliances from the Blue Heaven Sims site's Star Trek stuff and their "Midnight at the Whatever" stuff, but so do several other lots (including the lot which Benne and her crew just left before moving into that ginormous spaceship), and those work fine. I'll try deleting all of the kitchen objects in Aspirational Laboratories (the Science hobby dorm) and replacing them with base game items to see if that eliminates the problem.

But what else might be the root of the vanishing food bug here? I'm all ears.

Okay, Serra Bellum and I just confirmed that tavern-type bars still work, and so do nectar bars; I've edited the first post accordingly. Serra also has six harvested Mouthwatering apples, and I'm about to buy a juicer so that she can try making some apple juice. Fingers crossed.

EDIT: Juicers work too. Good thing the Science dorm has a fair-sized greenhouse garden (explained away as the "Botany lab"). The dorm mostly caters to Science, but it's pretty much impossible to keep the other hobbies completely out of the mix; gardening is Nature, the food and drink themselves are Cuisine, repairing the showers when they break is Tinkering, et al.

Okay, so I confirmed that the juicer was working normally. But then I decided that the layout of my Science dorm could stand a lot of improvement, so I started packing up all the items in the dorm and stuffing them into Serra's inventory. But while I was doing that on and off, I noticed that at some point, the students could grab food plates and eat them again.

So the cause of the vanishing food bug has to be something that's presently stashed away in Serra's inventory; after moving her to my new Science/Nature dorm and placing several inventoried items here and there throughout the dorm (and giving her some cheat money so that she could buy the rest of the furnishings), I see that she and the other students can still grab and eat food. Some items from the previous dorm are still in her inventory, so I plan on doing a trial by elimination: transplant a few items at a time, grab a plate of food, see if the vanishing food bug returns. Maybe that way, I can see which item may be causing a scripting conflict that in turn causes the food to vanish. Once that's done, I can isolate and delete the offending item(s) from every household that's presently suffering this glitch, then delete the item(s) from my catalog once and for all. No placeable object is worth the threat of Simmy starvation.

Once more into the breach!

Okay, after a whole heap of trial and error, I seem to have isolated the cause of this particular vanishing food bug to a combination of one or two "Midnight at the Cryo Lab" objects...

...one or two "Midnight at the Sexlab" objects (hey, don't judge me)...

...and their related poseboxes, all from the excellent Blue Heaven Sims site.

I may need to narrow things down a little tiny bit further. Both the cryo chamber and the bondage platform are static, so they may not be the cause of the vanishing food bug; on the other hand, the cryo chamber's transparent shield, the platform's little round "Doodads of Probing and Suctioning +5" activator and both poseboxes are all interactive objects (at least to the player, not so much to the Sims themselves), so I suspect that the scripting fault lies with them. All I know is this: I Inventoried all of the Cryo Lab items. The food bug persisted. I Inventoried all of the Sexlab items. The food bug disappeared. Then I returned all the Cryo Lab items, and the food bug returned. Naturally, the Cryo Lab items were dropped back into Serra's inventory immediately after, right next to the Sexlab items. And the munchies were munchable again, as they should be.

So as far as I know, as long as both the Cryo Lab items and the Sexlab items aren't placed in the lot somewhere, the food bug is either dead, dormant or otherwise inactive.

But it's just too bad that I can't keep those objects around, at least not if I plan on feeding my Sims. Whether it's for scenery, screenshots, story time or just plain horsing around, those doodads are fun to play with.

...yeah.

(Thanks for the help, Serra Bellum! You're a real trooper, for a budding adventuring xenobiologist. )