All enemies in the game are CP160. If you are not already CP160 (or above), the game gives you stat boosts so you can hold your own against CP160 monsters. Without these non-intuitive stat boosts, you would be getting killed constantly by CP160 mudcrabs and CP160 skeevers. The combination of "food gets better as you level" and "lower level chars get bigger stat boosts" can interact in weird ways. Even without some padded stats, a true CP160 will be more powerful due to having a lot more skills and passives unlocked.

Another area to keep an eye on: weapon level. Don't let your weapon get too far away from your character level. A Level 20 sword that has a tooltip of 1500 damage while character is at Level 20 will decrease in damage as your character gets further and further from Level 20. It is because the weapon does not give 1500 damage, it gives like 500 damage plus a Level 20 stat boost of 1000. As your character levels up, and you get closer to CP160, that level-based boost decreases. So at Level 25, it might be 800 damage boost. And your Level 20 sword now becomes 500 + 800 instead of 500 + 1000.

The scaled foods are probably giving a percentage boost. The stats adjustments for low-level characters makes the base figure higher, so a lesser percentage can be a higher amount.