Hunger



Hunger is an aspect of Minecraft added in the Adventure Update that governs several aspects of gameplay. Instead of directly restoring the player's health as it did prior to the Adventure Update, eating food now fills up the food bar, which is constantly drained by the player's actions. The food bar is located opposite to the player's health bar on the bottom of the screen and is represented by ten shanks.

While the player is sprinting, the food bar depletes much faster. The player is not able to sprint if their food level is or less.

The food bar does not drain when playing on Peaceful mode. However, its effects on the player's health level remain, and switching difficulties has no effect on the Food Bar's current level. Thus, if the player changes the difficulty level to Peaceful while his or her Food Bar is empty, it will not restore his or her hunger level and the player will continue to starve while healing.

Certain foods have a chance of inflicting Hunger on the player upon consumption, which causes the player's hunger to deplete faster.

Effects

 * When the Food Bar is at points or above, the player's health will slowly regenerate at a rate of 1 health point every 4 seconds.  Note that as of version 1.6, each point healed will cost 3 food points.
 * If the Food Bar is at points or below, then the player will not be able to sprint.
 * When the Food Bar is at, the player's health will deplete at a rate of every 2.5 seconds (this makes sleeping impossible). On easy difficulty, the player's health stops dropping at , on normal it stops at , and on hard it keeps draining until either the player eats something or starves to death.

Food poisoning
Hunger, or food poisoning, is an effect induced by eating certain foods, which turns the food bar a sickly yellow-green and drains food more rapidly. The only foods, however, to inflict Hunger are rotten flesh, which can cause Hunger 80% of the time, and raw Chicken, which causes Hunger only 30% of the time. Eating a spider eye or poisonous potato actually deals the player Poison. The rest of the foods will not cause food poisoning.

Behavior
Hunger from eating food lasts 30 seconds and adds 15.0 to the player's exhaustion level over the duration. This is slightly less than. In Peaceful mode, the food bar will change color, but will not drain out. Green-like swirls will also emit from the player, indicating that the player is food poisoned.

The duration of Hunger does not stack. So, if the player eats many poisonous foods at once, he or she will only feel the negative effects of the most recent poisonous food, plus the consumption time of each other food. Also, drinking milk will negate the effect, allowing the player to potentially eat more poisonous food and constantly drink milk to fill the bar without being inflicted by Hunger.

Also, passing through a nether portal in SMP will negate the effect (this does not happen in SSP).

Mechanics
The ten drumsticks shown at the bottom of the screen next to the health bar show the status of the player's foodLevel, each drumstick represents two foodlevel points therefore the maximum foodLevel you can have is 20.

There is an added part of the hunger bar that you cannot see, this is called the foodSaturationLevel of the player and has to be depleted before your foodLevel starts decreasing. The maximum value of the foodSaturationLevel is equal to the current value of your foodLevel, so if your foodLevel is 20/20 (All your drumsticks are full) then your maximum foodSaturationLevel is 20 points.

When you eat food, your foodLevel and your foodSaturationLevel increases if they aren't already at their maximums - the amount they increase depends on the food item being consumed.

There is a third variable that affects your hunger, this is called the player's foodExhaustionLevel, this variable can range between 0.0 and 4.0. Certain actions the player does increases this variable. The table below shows the different amounts the different actions increase the variable by. When this variable reaches 4.0 or above a point is removed from the foodSaturationLevel and if that is 0 then a point is removed from the player's foodLevel and you lose half a drumstick.

The last variable involved in the hunger mechanics is the foodTickTimer, this variable essentially times how long the player has had no hunger left or more than 17 points on the foodLevel, when the foodTickTimer reaches 80 (its maximum) then it will either deal the player half a heart of damage(when there is no hunger left) or heal the player half a heart(When the player doesn't have full health and his foodLevel is more than 17 points).

Exhaustion level increase
''Any action not listed here will not increase exhaustion level. For example, the player can travel several days by boat and the food bar will not decrease.''