So, effectively doubling your actions, because you can exert while ignoring the HSR bump? And you get to take actions anywhere? Is this Mac man actually a djinn?

Had forgotten about Exertion, but I’m not sure it shakes out like that: if you’re “increasing [your] HSR by 1 instead of increasing [your] Date” and then “choose to ignore” the increase in HSR, doesn’t that put you back at increasing the Date, since the “instead” doesn’t happen?

Well, it isn’t very clear, but ok, I agree. Still, the ignore effect is a bit odd. Seems to be about eating fruit and changing motivation without the HSR effects? Nothing increases Hunger besides the weekly communal action, to which this doesn’t apply.
CoV

I was just going for a general “avoid bad things” bonus which later rules could use, and those were the two obvious stats. Seemed like it’d always make some sense that if you were sending Mac to do something, anything about it that would make “you” hungry or delusional would happen to him instead.

Well, if he’s eating the fruit, why would you get full?

He’s bringing some back for you. If it’s the “-1 Hunger, +1 HSR” plant, maybe he knows how to cook it to remove the hallucinogenic effect.