Food

Foods are consumable items that restore hunger points when eaten, and are essential to The Player's survival. Most foods are eaten by holding the right mouse button (PC default). Cake must instead be placed, like other blocks, on a surface before being eaten. A Survival Mode player must eat food items regularly, or they will begin losing health and die soon after.

With the exception of Golden Apples, food may not be eaten when the hunger bar is completely full. Except for milk, cake, and mushroom stew, food items and ingredients can be stacked inventory slots.

[edit] Hunger vs. Saturation

Main article: Hunger#Mechanics

Players have two different food statistics, only one of which is visible: The hunger level (visible), and the saturation level (invisible).

The saturation level is a primarily invisible statistic. Saturation is the first statistic to decrease when a player performs energy-intensive actions, and it must be completely depleted before the visible hunger meter begins decreasing. Although the current saturation level is generally hidden, you can tell that your saturation level is completely depleted if the visible hunger meter begins displaying a jittering effect.

Eating food restores both hunger and saturation points in varying ratios, depending on the food item eaten.

A player's current saturation level can never exceed their current hunger level. A player at a hunger level of 5, for example, can only be at a maximum of 5 saturation. This is important to remember when choosing which foods to eat for the most efficient use of food: Highly saturating foods/low hunger-restoring foods should be eaten when the hunger bar is more full, especially when the bar has begun jittering. If you eat highly saturating foods when the bar is low, saturation points are likely wasted, since saturation level can never exceed hunger level.

The "nourishment" table below can help by categorizing foods by their saturation-to-hunger restoration ratios. See the more detailed Foods table for the exact hunger and saturation statistics of each food.

[edit] Nourishment value

Nourishment is defined as the ratio of saturation to hunger points restored. Foods with higher nourishment values (the left column) should be eaten when the hunger bar is more full.

Value	Food
2.4
1.6
1.2
0.6
0.2

[edit] Foods

Name	Icon	Food Points	Source(s)	Saturation restored (additional effects)	Effective Quality [note 1]
Apple		4	Stronghold chests Destroyed/despawned oak Leaves NPC Village blacksmith chests Bonus Chests Trading	2.4	6.4
Baked Potato		6	Cooking a potato in a furnace	7.2	13.2
Bread		5	Crafting Dungeon chests Stronghold chests NPC Village chests Abandoned Mineshaft chests Bonus Chests Trading	6	11
Cake (slice)		2	Crafting	0.4	2.4
Cake (whole)		12	Crafting	2.4	14.4
Carrot		4	Killing zombies Harvesting carrots	4.8	8.8
Cooked Chicken		6	Cooking a raw chicken Setting chickens on fire Trading	7.2	13.2
Cooked Fish		5	Cooking a raw fish	6	11
Cooked Porkchop		8	Cooking a raw porkchop Setting pigs on fire Trading	12.8	20.8
Cookie		2	Crafting Trading	0.4	2.4
Golden Apple		4	Crafting Dungeon chests Stronghold chests	9.6 (Health regeneration for 4 seconds.)	13.6
Golden Carrot		6	Crafting	14.4	20.4
Melon		2	Harvesting a melon block Trading	1.2	3.2
Mushroom Stew		6	Crafting Using a Bowl on a Mooshroom	7.2	13.2
Poisonous Potato		2	Harvesting potato plants	1.2 (60% chance of getting poisoned.)	3.2
Potato		1	Killing zombies Harvesting potato plants	0.6	1.6
Pumpkin Pie		8	Crafting	4.8	12.8
Raw Beef		3	Killing cows	1.8	4.8
Raw Chicken		2	Killing chickens	1.2 (30% chance of food poisoning.)	3.2 (2.075)[note 2]
Raw Fish		2	Fishing	1.2	3.2
Raw Porkchop		3	Killing pigs	1.8	4.8
Rotten Flesh		4	Killing zombies and zombie pigmen Desert and Jungle Temples.	0.8 (80% chance of food poisoning.)	4.8 (1.8)[note 2]
Spider Eye		2	Killing spiders and Cave Spiders	3.2 (100% chance of getting poisoned.)	5.2
Steak		8	Cooking raw beef Setting cows on fire Trading	12.8	20.8

1. ↑
   Food Points + Saturation, which gives roughly how 'long' the food will last. See hunger for details. Eating food with a food value more then what is currently missing from your food bar will not give you extra saturation.
2. ↑ ^{a b}
   Average expected food quality if food poisoning isn't cured. Food poisoning lasts 30 seconds from the last food that inflicted it, and drains nearly 2 shanks of hunger over that duration. The loss comes from saturation before visible hunger.

[edit] Ingredients

The following items cannot be eaten on their own. Instead, they are used to craft consumable food items.

Name	Icon	Source(s)	Used to make
Bowl		Crafting	Mushroom Stew
Cocoa Beans		Dungeon chests Breaking Cocoa Plants	Cookies
Egg		Laid by chickens	Cake Pumpkin Pie
Brown Mushroom		Dark/shady areas Swamp biomes Mushroom biomes Breaking huge brown mushrooms	Mushroom Stew
Red Mushroom		Dark/shady areas Swamp biomes Mushroom biomes Breaking huge red mushrooms Using shears on a Mooshroom	Mushroom Stew
Pumpkin		Harvesting mature pumpkins grown from pumpkin seed Naturally occurring pumpkins	Pumpkin Pie
Sugar		Crafting sugar cane	Cake Pumpkin Pie
Wheat		Harvesting mature wheat Found in dungeon chests	Bread Cake Cookies
Gold Nugget		Crafting 1 gold ingot Dropped by Zombie Pigman	Golden Carrot Golden Apple
Gold Block		Crafting 9 gold ingots	Golden Apple

While the following ingredients can be crafted with others, they can also be consumed directly to induce or nullify certain status effects.

Name	Icon	Source	Effects	Used to make
Milk		Milking a Cow	Clears status effects	Cake

[edit] Video

[edit] History

Before Beta 1.8, food did not have an eating animation, simply disappearing from the player's hand as if a block had been placed. Food also restored a set amount of hearts instantly - a player could return from the brink of death during a fight almost immediately by consuming a few porkchops or bowls of stew. To keep a certain level of challenge to the gameplay, Notch prevented players from taking advantage of this instant recovery by ensuring food (with the exception of the ingredients) did not stack in the inventory.

When the Hunger Bar was added in Beta 1.8, food became an even more vital resource as the player was required to eat regularly to avoid dying of starvation and regenerate health after taking damage. With the exception of Cake, Milk and Mushroom Stew, food could now stack to 64 in the player's inventory. Both types of mushroom could now be farmed by using bone meal on either individual mushroom to produce a Huge Mushroom that dropped more fungi when harvested.

The first Beta 1.9 pre-release revealed two new sources for mushrooms - an entire biome filled with Huge Mushrooms and the Mooshroom, a strange red cow with red mushrooms growing on its back that could be milked with a bowl to collect Mushroom Stew and shorn to harvest the red mushrooms. However Mooshrooms can only be found in Mushroom Biomes which are extremely rare and difficult to find.

In the second pre-release of Beta 1.9, Jeb said that Milk now acted as a "clear-everything drink"^[1] to nullify the effects of potions and poisons. Spiders also dropped eyes that could be crafted with sugar and a brown mushrooms to produce brewing ingredient, fermented spider eyes.

In the 1.3 Version, Cocoa Beans, that were once only obtainable from treasure chests in Dungeons and Abandoned Mineshafts were made into a crop that can be farmed, thus making all food items a renewable resource.

From Minecraft 1.4 (Snapshot 12w34a), potatoes and carrots can be obtainable from zombies (rare drop) or harvested. Potatoes can be cooked to make baked potatoes, and harvesting potatoes may give 0-2 poisonous potatoes. Also, carrots can be crafted into golden carrots. And also in 1.4, Pumpkin Pies are added to the game. These are not cooked, but rather crafted by combining a pumpkin, an egg and sugar. From this, pumpkins are now a food ingredient.

[edit] Trivia

• Each and every type of food is fully renewable.
• You can eat while you are going to sleep, breaking blocks, and climbing vines/ladders.
• The eating animation appears only in the first-person view.^[2]
• When you eat stew, the brown particles of the bowl spray out as well, making it seem like you are eating the bowl. Also, it makes a "chewing" sound effect rather than "slurping" (as milk and potions do) further suggesting you are actually eating the bowl. Despite all this, the bowl is retrieved with no damage whatsoever.
• The player cannot consume anything in Creative mode except milk and potions.
• In 1.5, when eating over water, the particles will all appear as if under water.
• In Pocket Edition, when eating while walking, an interesting bug will happen. If you mouseover a door, it will open and close extremely fast, if you mouseover any type of storage block, it will be entered, blocks in your hand will be constantly placed at a great speed, and snowballs and eggs wil be fired at a rapid pace.

[edit] References

1. ↑
   https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/119842906528944129
2. ↑
   Issue tracker: MC-1646