Right now, to eat, you open inventory, click an item, press spacebar to hold it, exit inventory and then press x to eat it.
Why not: press and hold Esc to keep the inventory open, use you mouse to clock and drag the food out of the inventory, press x to put it in your mouth, spam up and down together to chew, press enter to swallow, all while pressing + and - to breathe? Cos I don't think it's unfriendly enough.
But seriously, the controls in this game are atrociously rigid.