[Mountain_Skies]

Baby Alive has been able to eat since the early 1970s. Pretty sure robopresident could find a place to internally store consumed food until returning to its maintenance pod.

[yorwba]

Robots have been able to fake eating since de Vaucanson's mechanical duck in 1739: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digesting_Duck

[wutbrodo]

In the story above, the candidate is capable of eating (and does so in front of one of the roboticist main characters). She points out, as you do, that it would be trivial to store food internally for later disposal