I can confirm that this is an issue. I haven't been able to properly play with my friends on my PvP world for months. We've tried Xbox, PE, Switch and Windows 10 players connecting to my world on Windows 10 and the problem is exactly that-- nobody but the host can eat custom items. Please fix this Mojang, I've already created a post like this a while back before the 1.12.1 bugfix released.
edit- I can also confirm that I was using experimental gameplay. Eating custom items was functional for me and only me.
I can confirm that this is an issue. I haven't been able to properly play with my friends on my PvP world for months. We've tried Xbox, PE, Switch and Windows 10 players connecting to my world on Windows 10 and the problem is exactly that-- nobody but the host can eat custom items. Please fix this Mojang, I've already created a post like this a while back before the 1.12.1 bugfix released.
edit- I can also confirm that I was using experimental gameplay. Eating custom items was functional for me and only me.