Food

Food refers to any consumable items that, when eaten, restore hunger points and hunger saturation points, and sometimes cause status effects. They are essential to survival, as going without them eventually causes the player to starve, causing damage until reaching in Easy Mode, and  on Normal Mode. Starvation damage kills the player in Hard and Hardcore modes.

Food is eaten by holding while having the food item selected in the hot bar or in the off-hand.

Cake cannot be eaten this way, and must instead be placed on a surface before being eaten.

With the exception of chorus fruit, golden apples, honey bottles, milk, and suspicious stew, food cannot be eaten when the hunger bar is completely full. In Creative Mode, any food can be consumed at any time.

All food items and ingredients can be stacked in the inventory slots, except for milk, rabbit stew, mushroom stew, beetroot soup, suspicious stew, and cake.

This page covers food items for players; blocks and items that can be eaten by other mobs are not included here.

Hunger and saturation


Players have two different food statistics, one of which is visible: The hunger level is visible, and the saturation level is not.

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, the player can tell that their saturation level is completely depleted if the visible hunger meter begins displaying a jittering effect.

Eating a food item replenishes a fixed number of hunger points and saturation points, based on the item. Some foods have a better ratio of saturation to hunger points replenished than others. Overeating the hunger bar does not overflow to saturation.

A player's current saturation level can never exceed their current hunger level. A player at a hunger level of 5, for example, can be at a maximum of 5 saturation. Food always restores hunger (raising the saturation limit) before supplying saturation. The most efficient use of food is to eat low-nourishment food (see below) to fill the hunger bar, followed by a highly nourishing food to fill saturation. While a few hunger points may be wasted when eating nourishing food when nearly full, eating nourishing foods on a low hunger bar wastes even more points of saturation. Maximizing saturation increases the length of time (and/or the amount of damage healed) before the player needs to eat again.

Usage
Most foods can be eaten by holding down the right-click button with a food item in hand. It takes 1.61 seconds to eat most foods; dried kelp takes 0.865 seconds to eat. Additionally, a player can hold food in their off-hand $$.

While eating, food particles form from the player's mouth correlated with their respective food item, and produces a munching noise. Eating also slows the user significantly.

Unlike other foods, cake has to be eaten by placing it, then right-clicking on its block form. Eating cake is instant and it has 7 edible slices, each giving hunger and 0.4 hunger saturation.

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

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.

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

History
Potraviny Hunger Comida Nourriture Étel Cibo 食料 식료품 Voedsel Jedzenie Alimento Еда อาหาร Їжа 食物