Starting from the latest version of this mod (1.8.1), the player model has a bizarre animation a few milliseconds before performing the eating animation, as if their entire body were spinning or something like that. It doesn't happen all the time, I think it only happens the first time you eat in your world after opening the game. For now, I haven't been able to recreate this bug in third person camera.

I might have an idea of whats going wrong, probably an issue with the now smooth rotation locking while the eating animation plays. I thought I caught all the issues around it, but apparently not.

Ok I'm honestly not able to reproduce this one.

For now, I haven't been able to recreate this bug in third person camera.

Also, where do you see that if not in third person?

first person mod maybe?
i have a similar issue with shield and eating as well but instead of happening one time, it always do that spin (1.21.1)

But Firstperson mod should behave exactly the same as being in f5 🤔 Will have to do some testing.

I'm experiencing this problem too as I tried to figure out which mod was causing it. I think real camera may be incompatible with this mod as when I have the two mods active, I am always able to reproduce the spinning animation. It only happens for like a split second so it isn't very noticeable but it does happen all the time when eating/drinking for me.

EDIT: I was messing around some more and realized when PaperDoll, First Person Model, and Not Enough Animations are all installed at the same time, it causes the spin. I don't know if this was a known issue or not but i'm posting just in case.
1.20.1 latest updates

Huh, maybe the PaperDoll somehow interacts weirdly with it. Will have to test that a bit.

I'm also experiencing this problem. I do not have PaperDoll installed tho, so doesn't seems to be specific to it. I also made an entry on the discord about this issue with video, description and mods I'm using. If you have any idea on what could this issue be, I would be glad to know how to fix it
Edit: Removing Not Enough Animations seems to have fixed the issue, plus I forgot to mention that I'm on 1.21.1