As a German ESL student, I found it hard to believe that "foodstuff" and its plural was a genuine expression and not a prank. Seems so much more German than Lebensmittel is ("Survival/Life tool/gear").
"Lebensmittel" more represents something like "Life implement" or "means of life".
Edit:
Conceptually it maps almost exactly to Latin "nutrimentum", and hence, English "nourishment".
As such, I supposed we could construct some neo-latin from it to more closely approximate it, such as vitimentum or rather vitalimentum - but if you look closely at vitalimentum, you'll notice it contains "alimentum" as a substring, and, well:
Have you come across the word "nutmeat", meaning the edible part of a nut? It's from two words with Germanic roots and thus might give you a similar feeling.
