EDIT August 18th: It seems that disabled foods still show up under the "Make Many..." option, but since those interactions are non-autonomous I don't think it's something to worry about. Just make sure you click the right food when using that option.

(Apparently I'm not allowed to post in the 'Tutorials for Object Modding'-forum, so I'll just post this here)

This tutorial will show you how to disable a custom food (or several) for all mealtimes, making it hidden in-game and preventing sims from preparing it.
Wait, why would I want to do that? Why can't I just delete the custom food from my downloads folder?
Deleting custom food may result in hood corruption, since it "breaks want trees for Sims whose favourite food was the deleted food, and will corrupt the memories of sims who have a "Learned to make" memory for that food". In order to completely get rid of a custom food, you'd have to (in addition to changing the favorite food of the affected sims) delete all visible and hidden memories of those foods. This is a task that consumes both time and effort, especially for a well-played neighborhood. Additionally (considering what's mentioned in this thread, removing all traces of a custom food might involve editing SWAF (Sim Wants And Fears) history for the sims who've eaten the food, and that's something I'd rather leave to the pros.
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Please note: this method is not from another tutorial. On my quest to find one I stumbled upon this thread about modding custom food. It was from the tip on how to enable food that I tried my way to satisfying results. I am an amateur at this sort of thing. Before you start, back up your neighborhoods and custom food in case anything goes wrong.
Though your sims won't have the option to prepare the food after using this method, you will still be required to have the .package file in your downloads folder in order to not cause corruption.

As stated in the title, this method requires SimPE. My version is 0.72; your interface may differ.

-> Open the .package file for the custom food you want to edit in SimPE (it may take a few minutes to load). Your screen should look something like this.


-> Go to the Resource Tree (it should be on the left side of the screen) and select "Behaviour Function (BHAV)".
Scroll down the Resource List until you find a line called "Function - Init - Menu" and click on it.


-> While in Plugin View, search for the following line (you may have to scroll a bit).

If the custom food you've chosen is available for several mealtimes, there should be other lines identical to this one, with the exception of the last digits. 0x01 is for breakfast, 0x02 is for lunch and 0x03 is for dinner. In this case, I'm editing a food that's set to all three mealtimes, so as you can see I have three variations of this line.
Select/click the line (or one of them), then go to the right and click the "Pop-Up Wizard" button.


-> In the box that pops up, select the field that says "0x2005:0x01" (or 0x02 or 0x03) and change the 1 to a 0 (backspace the 1, type in a 0). Then click "Okay" to close the box, and don't forget to click the "Commit File" button when it becomes accessible!


-> Repeat the procedure for the other lines (remember to click "Commit File"), hit Save and you're done! The food of your choice will no longer show up when clicking on the fridge in-game.

I'm not sure of what the other lines in the "Function - Init - Menu" stand for, so touch them at your own risk.

Is anything unclear? Do you have suggestions for how to make this tutorial easier to understand? If so, please leave a comment.

This information was already available here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=222202

Yes, that's one of the links I'm referring to in the beginning of the post, but I thought it would be helpful for some people to have it as a step-by-step guide.

I do admit that I like seeing pictures with circles, arrows, and "HERE! See? HERE!" types of notations. So both guides are extremely useful.

Also, when looking at a tutorial that someone wrote long ago, I find myself wondering, "That came out nine years ago. Has anything changed since then? Did we find out anything since then?" We learned so much more about corruption and general game-messing-up over the years. (Well, I certainly have, of all people!) It's not a bad thing to see either an updated version or a "Yes. This still applies in its entirely"-sort of notation on an older guide.

I remember when someone on this very site came out with a tutorial regarding something else that years later, people found out caused corrupted hoods. People did point that out once they discovered this, and that was very, very helpful. (Unfortunately, people didn't find out about this until long after I followed the tutorial. Sigh. But at least if anyone sees this tutorial, they will know not to attempt it! )

This is great I no longer use custom foods, because I want to be able to remove CC if I change my mind. Now I know there's an option if ever I feel tempted to try something, in case I end up changing my mind.

I've seen lots of people wonder how to change which meal times a meal appears at, and this can be turned around to adding meal times or changing them, nice to have a place to direct them to in the future Thank you for taking the time to type it out for us, and providing pictures. Always easier for beginners when there's pictures to look at.

Love this! Thank you for taking the time to post the tutorial with images. I download a lot of custom food and have no doubt this will come in handy at some point.

I agree with gazania, red circles and arrows. Also some of us panic if what we see doesn't look exactly the same as a tutorial so using the latest SimPE model is always welcome.

Given that I did remove a food but it was brand new, so no sims favourite food (that doesn't occur the moment you put it in) only one sim had cooked it to test it and I removed all the memories. I hope I did it okay, I never saw any issues from that. Of course testing a food in my main hood was not my best idea, but I had assumed since I knew the creator that I would want to keep it.

Just a side comment about SimPE, I've only had Sims 2 for about four years now and SimPE for maybe half that time. Quite a few of the instructions I've seen for it seem to be for even older versions of the program, or simply "use SimPE" and a link to general instructions on backing up the neighborhood. So up to date tutorials along with screenshots on doing anything with the program are extremely helpful.

Random question, but I'm very interested in corruption and the internal workings of The Sims 2. Could I maybe get a link to that tutorial, or what it was about?

Also back on topic, I had seen something like this on The Sims Wiki but I'm terrified of screwing up my game by doing anything wrong, since I'm pretty bad with my luck. I'm glad I know a safe alternative to removing everything related to custom foods from my game before removing it, so I can download it as I please now.

EDIT August 18th: It seems that disabled foods still show up under the "Make Many..." option, but since those interactions are non-autonomous I don't think it's something to worry about. Just make sure you click the right food when using that option.

Was unable to hide a custom food following this method, Burrito Bowl by Jacky93Sims . The BHAV function has the meal set to appear at Dinner, but at least in the game it also shows up for Lunch for some reason. After editing the BHAV to 0 like the tutorial, it still shows up on the fridge menu for Lunch and Dinner, and initiating a sim to cook the meal works fine.

Below is a screenshot of my SimPE Setup. If anyone has any feedback on how I could resolve this and hide this stupid burrito bowl, please let me know!

Set Flag 0 is not valid. Flags are numbered 1 through 16. That line is redundant if you set my semi attribute 7 to 0 on the next line.