Without really trying I've picked up hundreds of fruits and mushrooms which don't heal much individually but all together could keep me alive for a very long time.) (Especially since raw materials could be used to heal and there's no limit on holding those. it would be really easy to stack up so many healing items that I've got basically infinite health and then I could just hammer my way through fights (literally, if I have a hammer) with no attempt at tactics, making no attempt to dodge or block anything because I'm basically unkillable. Not cheating, but like deliberately playing badly.
I'm familiar with the term save scumming but I've only ever heard it applied to things like saving before opening a chest so you can 'reroll' for the item you want. When I mentioned this to a friend he called it 'save scumming' and claimed it's the equivalent of cheating and I should just keep going, using however many healing items I need to get through the fight because that's how the game is designed. I only recently discovered you can actually have more than 1 'screen' of cooked food') (Which means I'm never carrying much food, and most of it is stamina boosts. If I have to heal more than once during a fight or if something takes a lot of health away which I think I should have avoided I'll reload a saved game and try it again rather than healing and carrying on. I don't have any specific rules but I tend to save attack/defense boosts for 'boss' fights like tests of strength, lynels or maybe hinox and I only use other food to heal occasionally after a fight. I seem to have fallen into a habit with BotW where I don't like using much food (or any fairies) unless it's really necessary. I'd like some more opinions on an argument with a friend.