Food

Foods (or Foodstuffs as considered by the Creative inventory) are consumable items that restore hunger points when eaten, and are essential to The Player's survival. Most foods are eaten by holding Use Item. 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 in inventory slots.

Hunger vs. Saturation
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.

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.

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

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

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 shears 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" 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.

Trivia

 * There is no hunger bar in Pocket Edition. Instead, foods restore health, like Beta 1.7.3 and earlier.
 * Each and every type of food is fully renewable (including gold food since Zombie Pigmen drop nuggets and ingots of gold).
 * You can eat while you are going to sleep, breaking blocks, and climbing vines/ladders.
 * 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.
 * When eating while 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 will be fired at a rapid pace.
 * The most effective time to eat is when climbing ladders, because that is one of the few times that eating will not slow you down.