Sims hungry but won't sit down to eat

I looked around at AHQ but the most relevant thread was several years old and was not accurate anyway. So I just wonder if this is a thing in other games, too? I never had this earlier, is started just today. Sims are very hungry, but when I direct them to eat the action gets canceled. When getting leftovers from the fridge, they will just drop the plate to the floor and stand there. I placed the plate on the dining table and directed them to eat, but the action was canceled. I placed the dish in their inventory, but same. I added a new dining table + chair in case the existing was corrupted some way, but no help. Then I sent one sim to the bbq area in the hood, and she actually sat down at the picnic table to eat.

It's been a few months since I patched my game, so this is not related to the previous patches. I added only one mod recently, which I removed for testing, but the problem resists. The house is a "Haunted residential" so I tried setting it to "Residential" to see if this was caused by the haunting, but no.

My sims won't die from hunger, because I'll cheat, but I wonder if anyone else experienced this? I have played many households recently and not seeing this before today. The haunted house is in Finchwick in Henford-on-Bagley, in case that matters. Household members are mom, teen and kids - none of them can eat - teen managed to eat in the bbq area near by.