Food

[Lollie]

You don't need food but it gives you a slight edge, and 3% xp bonus regardless of which food you eat. The big ones end game are buttons in a blanket, mulled tea, stuffed cabbage, and la nocean toast. Higher tier most people wont have the stats to benefit from yet. If you just want the xp bonus find the cheapest food you can find.

[Estellios]

Higher tier most people wont have the stats to benefit from yet.

This actually isn't true anymore. They boosted the % that the 1- and 2-star foods give you so they are usable now and are personally what I am going to make my FC as farming clusters is incredibly easy and much less time consuming than farming shards.

That said the food the above poster mentioned are good choices regardless and should be cheaper than the starred foods so they will be more useful in dungeons where you don't want to bring out the pricey stuff.

As for how people obtain food, if the market is any indicator many people just buy it off the wards. In our FC I just take shard/crystal/cluster and material donations for food and leave a stock in the FC chest for people to use.