The food counter would need to be split into four sections: Stored berries, stored meat, hand-held berries, and hand-held meat.
Could all of the food be stored in one pile? Or would there be a cap to how much food can go in one? How would you place down a food pile? Can you get rid of it? Destroy it and all the food (none goes to your counter), gather what you can hold (making the pile vanish if you take all the food from it)? Could you make multiple food piles? When collecting food, would it go into the hand-held food counter, or
I think the herbivore/omnivore/carnivore trait should be something that stands alone as a gene. It limits you if it's tied to head genes--what if I want a tribe of cracker jaw nichelings with claws, and I want them to be carnivores (and completely ignore cracker jaw's cracking abilities because I just like what cracker jaws look like)?
The food holding should also be tied to a certain stat, which would then be added to the genes that would be able to hold food. This could pave the way for some new genes that focus on food storage!
Finally, how would this work when just starting the game, where you usually start with much more than whatever your nichelings would able to hold? Would it all automatically be stored on a nearby tile?