What people eat most these days are still cooked foods, that is, animals or plants prepared through various cooking methods and then eaten.
Apart from a few plants like lettuce that can be eaten directly after washing, most plants need to be cooked, otherwise the texture is poor or even toxic. As for animals, except for some seafood that can be eaten raw, most meats still need to be cooked to be easily digested. But for the fruits of plants (or fruits in particular), it seems they are usually eaten raw. Cooking them, on the contrary, would cause them to lose their natural sweetness.
Both being parts of plants, why is it that fruit alone is suited to being eaten raw? Is it because of structural differences? For example, the flesh of fruit is generally soft and juicy, with a high sugar content, and not as hard as the plant itself. From an evolutionary perspective, common fruits contain seeds. After the fruit ripens, it attracts various animals to eat it through bright colors and emitted fragrance, while the seeds, being difficult to digest, are excreted along with feces, which is beneficial to the propagation of the plant. The animals here do not include insects.
So this component, the fruit, distinct from other parts of the plant (for instance, with an apple tree, in normal circumstances, most animals as commonly understood would choose to eat the apple rather than directly eat the branches or leaves), bears the important function of reproduction and propagation. Many plants depend on outside agents for their reproduction. Is this perhaps because plants generally cannot move, so they need to use fruit as an exchange? Of course, the fruit referred to here means apples, oranges, peaches, strawberries and the like, which are juicy in texture and carry seeds.
Drawing an analogy with plants, do animals have any components that can be eaten directly without affecting the survival of the main body? Since animals can move on their own, such cases seem rare. Mammals produce milk during lactation, but that is only after birth has occurred, and the purpose of producing milk is not to obtain new offspring. Poultry like chickens, ducks, and geese lay eggs, but the necessary preparations are completed before the egg is laid, and the egg is not meant to attract other animals to help with reproduction. Peacocks spreading their tails and birds singing serve reproduction, but those are courtship behaviors, and not something that can be materially "eaten" by other animals or plants.
Thinking about it this way, it really does seem rather rare for an animal to produce a component, for the sake of reproduction, that other animals can eat. So, to distinguish them from real-world animals and plants, fantasy animals could be defined to possess this attribute. For instance, a certain group member's fantasy animal is, by setting, capable of producing a kind of juice for other animals to drink (whether the purpose is reproduction is uncertain). This kind of animal setting that carries some plant traits is really quite interesting.