Not your level, but in NEO: The World Ends With You, you can only permanently increase attack, defense, and style by eating. You can also increase HP by both eating and leveling up, so funnily enough eating is way more important then your character levels.

Do the Pokemon games with Rare Candy count?

River City Ransom
Moon Hunters

In We Love Katamari there's a level where you're rolling a sumo wrestler, you have to make sure he eats enough to be larger than his opponent... if that counts?

Yeah, I'll add all of them. I like how each of these affect either characters and/or gameplay. Thanks for the suggestions!

would ffxv work? your characters only actually level up if you rest, which will almost always involves them eating. idk tho, thats a bit of an edge case

@Ninjabunny You said "almost always" does that mean sometimes it doesn't show you character eat? If yes, then does anything change like less experience or lower amount of stats? If no, then yeah it doesn't fit this list.

@AlphaOne2 that was in the original twewy too

ok, so how leveling works in ffxv is that your party gains exp by defeating enemies and completing quests and such but that exp won't be counted until you rest, which will be either at a hotel or, typically, at a campsite. And when at a campsite and at certain hotels the character Ignis will cook something for the rest of the party. He has to cook something, so even if you don't have any ingredients he'll still make plain toast for everyone to eat, or canned food, depending on which chapter you're in. and so usually in ffxv you're seeing your party level up while a scene of them eating and hanging out plays in the background so eating food is synonymous with leveling up in the minds of most people who play the game. Which food you pick won't make you level up more or less, but each food gives the party different buffs, some of which will give exp buffs for after the rest, but you only get multipliers for your current exp pool while resting from resting at nice lodgings. So, the eating doesn't effect the level ups, but the eating is associated with leveling up in the game. I genuinely don't know if it should count or not so dont add it if you dont think it should count

@Ninjabunny That fact that the food has to always show up during rest and that it can give exp buffs I feel makes it eligible imo. So yeah, I'll add it. Thanks!

in case you need further investigation into the matter here's a video of some of the scenes of them eating food. Ignore that there's no ui and these scenes were meant to be half paid attention to so they look weird if you look at them by themselves. There's a handful of ones that don't have food, but the vast majority of them do. Also, and I only noticed this by watching it, but even the ones that don't have them eating, (the ones where they're staying at a hotel or something similar) they're usually still shown drinking beer and/or coffee, or even just have some drinks or even some food on a table next to them or something to imply that they may have eaten still. While this further bolsters the claim for this game to be on this list, it's also very funny that the devs needed to make sure we knew the boys weren't going to bed hungry. also lul at the cup noodle product placement, no matter how many times i see it its never not funny

I did make this list because I found this mechanic to be funny, so it still works out lol

Marenian Tavern Story has exp you get from the food you make. In fact, it's the only way to get exp at all.

You also gain exp from food in the Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom, but you don't cook it there. Just eat it at a restaurant while still getting exp from battles.

Added, thanks!