I'm on board the bandwagon of making a lot more recipes using the wide variety of produce in the game! I say this even though most of my played sims never need to eat; they still feed their kids or host dinner parties. For me, it's part of an overall philosophy of game design that "if something exists in a game with a crafting system, the player should be able to craft it." I've been spoiled rotten by the legion of games that take their inspiration from Minecraft.
Lately, however, I've been farming carrots pretty much exclusively as part of an ongoing effort to overcome a gender imbalance in my simworld without resorting to mods. The game's spawned tons of female townies but very few men. As long as the game keeps THAT particular means of influencing baby gender, everyone with the space is going to have a garden even if they never otherwise eat!