[KaVir]

It's worse than that...the stock system most muds use simply provides a penalty to regeneration if you're hungry/thirsty. The games I've seen that cause death by starvation or dehydration have usually gone out of their way to implement it specially, and they tend to be really proud of it.

I recently played a mud where I was too stuffed to drink anything, and as a result I dehydrated to death, which caused my leg to fall off in a shower of blood.

Personally I chose to implement hunger the other way around, so that there's no concept of being "hungry", only "stuffed", "digesting" and "not digesting". Eating food instantly restores health, but also gives you some minor speed penalties until you've finished digesting everything. This makes food useful while also keeping it optional - you don't need to eat just to compete with those who do (unless you've intentionally built your character around eating, such as a wendigo who grows in size the more it eats).