Tutorials/Hunger management

Hunger is a feature in Minecraft that requires the player to eat in order to survive. Hunger is not used in Spectator mode, or on Peaceful difficulty. Hunger is represented by a bar next to the health bar. As this bar drains away, various unpleasant things happen:
 * 1) Stop healing naturally at
 * 2) Cannot sprint at
 * 3) Taking starvation damage at

There is also a hidden variable called "saturation", which is effectively an additional hunger bar that only has positive effects on the player. Saturation is always exhausted first, before the visible hunger bar starts to deplete. Eating food will replenish various amounts of both hunger and saturation.

Conserving energy
Several techniques can reduce your need for food:


 * Avoid fighting when you can. Endermen won't attack you if you don't focus your crosshairs on them; spiders won't attack unprovoked if the floor under them receives enough light before they see you; zombie pigmen won't attack unless they or other pigmen are attacked; and all monsters have a limit on how far they'll travel to reach you (e.g. they won't usually cross a ravine if they're far enough from the ends).
 * Craft a bed as soon as possible, and use it whenever you find yourself above or near ground at night.
 * Place plenty of torches so that mobs can't spawn along your route home.
 * Reduce jumping. While mining, carry some cobblestone stairs or ladders and, whenever possible, place a stair block instead of jumping.
 * Craft a stone sword or axe when you can, then follow with iron armor and an iron sword. Healing depletes your hunger bar quickly, and full iron armor reduces the damage you take by 60%. Striking in melee also depletes your hunger, and swords or axes usually do the job with fewer attacks than any other tool.
 * Avoid sprinting, as it rapidly depletes your hunger bar.

Effects of Hunger
There are two hunger variables you need to worry about: Your visible hunger bar, and two hidden values which are officially called "saturation" and "exhaustion". Hunger and saturation range from 0 to 20 (hunger is shown as ), but saturation cannot exceed your hunger. Exhaustion ranges from 0 to 4. As you move about, fight, mine, etc, exhaustion accumulates. In order, common activities that will exhaust you the most are: Healing damage (most of a food point per health point!), a "sprint jump", sprinting any distance, attacking monsters or receiving damage (from any source), and jumping. More specific values can be found in the table. When exhaustion reaches 4, it resets itself and decreases saturation. When saturation reaches 0, your hunger bar will start to ripple, and hunger starts to drain away in place of saturation. When your hunger drops below, you stop healing automatically. When it is at or below, you will be unable to sprint. Also, when your hunger drops to, you start to take starvation damage. On Easy mode, starvation damage will not lower you below, while on Normal mode, it can reduce you to. On Hard mode, starvation can kill you.

While eating is essential to keep your health up, it is not always needed. On Easy and Normal modes the health bar will stop decreasing just before death, so if the player takes care not to take any further damage, they can continue playing normally. In fact, many players drain their hunger to 0 while building. Obviously, this is much riskier in multiplayer servers with PvP (player vs player), as well as adventuring.

With the exception of golden apples, chorus fruits and suspicious stew, you cannot eat when your hunger is at max; when you do eat, each food item restores a specific amount of hunger and saturation. The following section will elaborate on the strategies on effective management of both hunger and saturation.

Food
Food is a specific type of item that can be eaten by right clicking with the mouse, but (mostly) only when you are actually hungry — that is, when your hunger bar is not at maximum. Food restores both the hunger bar and saturation, with different foods filling different amounts of each. You can obtain food through crafting, trading, find in structure chests, farming, and killing mobs. Many of the more nourishing foods (that is, meat and fish) need to be cooked (smelted) for full effect. (If the animals were killed while on fire, they may drop their meat pre-cooked!)

Foods can be divided into five tiers, according to how much saturation they restore per hunger unit. This is known as nourishment, and the saturation one gets from any food is defined as nourishment times hunger. For example, a golden carrot restores 6 points of hunger, and has the highest amount nourishment at 2.4. Eating a golden carrot will grant 14.4 points of saturation, along with 6 points of hunger, effectively restoring 20.4 points of hunger if both hunger and saturation are fully gained by not overfilling either the hunger bar or the saturation limit (amount of hunger after the hunger restored by the food is accounted for).

Knowing this, there are roughly two ways to approach the issue of hunger and saturation. Players can either try to eat efficiently, meaning using as little food items as possible, or try to eat expediently, meaning to stave off hunger as fast as they can.

The efficiency approach requires the player to avoid wasting hunger or saturation. Meaning, never eat any food that would "overfill" the hunger bar, or at any point wasting saturation points by going over the limit (the hunger value after consuming the food). By doing this, the player will use every piece of food to its maximum potential. The downside of this approach, however, is that the player needs to use more time to tend to their hunger bar, and remember the current saturation value (mods that reveal this value will help a lot; Appleskin is one such mod). Therefore, this is ill-suited for healing in emergencies. Basically, one should probably do this when they are safe and/or low on foodstuff.

The expediency approach, on the other hand, doesn't mind wasting a bit of the food here and there: Eat the most filling and nourishing food until full, and be done with it. If food supply is not an issue, if the player requires imminent healing, or if the player simply wants to save time, this is an appealing option.

Few foods also have special effects, mostly bad. While the golden apple can heal you, other foods can poison you (losing hit points), or give you food poisoning (draining your hunger bar). For these, there is milk, obtained by using a bucket on a cow. While milk doesn't restore hunger or saturation, it does wipe away all status effects, which can be handy when you need to eat something that may poison you or give your food poisoning.

Here are the various foods, by category:

Special foods
Crafted with precious metal, these have a nourishment of 2.4.


 * Golden apples
 * Restores 


 * Golden apples can be crafted or (rarely) found in dungeon, mineshaft, igloo, stronghold, underwater ruins, desert pyramid, woodland mansion chests. While only restoring, they grant 5 seconds of regeneration II and 2 minutes of absorption, giving the player an extra 2 hearts. Golden apples also restore 9.6 saturation, a large amount considering their low hunger restoration. Aside from the regular golden apple, an enchanted version can be found in some mineshafts, woodland mansions, desert pyramids or dungeons, which gives 2 minutes of absorption IV for 8 extra hearts, regeneration II, V, resistance and fire resistance. They are, however, expensive and hard to find.


 * Advantages:


 * They are the only food items that cause temporary constant health regeneration that is not dependent on the player's hunger. This is indicated by the line of hearts bobbing up and down in a wave pattern, with each full wave restoring half a heart.
 * Compared with potions of regeneration, golden apples are available for fighting monsters before the player is able to brew or even go to the Nether in singleplayer (brewing requires blaze rods and nether wart, both found only in the Nether). In particular, the enchanted version provides Fire Resistance, which is handy for collecting one's first few blaze rods.
 * Although standard apples have a low chance of dropping from oak leaves and dark oak leaves (0.5% per leaf block), tree farming can produce a good supply of them. Trading with villagers can also get them in quantity.
 * Golden apples can be used to create a village by curing zombie villagers. If Generated Structures are turned off, this is the only way to have villagers and trade with them.


 * Disadvantages:


 * Unenchanted Golden Apples require 8 gold ingots, and enchanted golden apples can only be found by exploring (can be crafted in version Java Edition 1.8 or below, Pocket Edition 1.1.0 or below).
 * It takes time to eat, and the basic golden apple then takes 5 seconds to heal health points. Splash potions or lingering potions are a good alternative, if you have brewing capability.


 * Golden carrots
 * Restores 


 * Golden carrots can be crafted or bought from a farmer villager, but are cheaper than golden apples and restore more than they do. They also restore 14.4 saturation, the highest of any food currently in the game. The downside is that they are too expensive to be an efficient food source in survival mode, unless a gold or emerald farm can be made. Golden Carrots can also be used to make potions of night vision.

Top-tier foods
These have a nourishment of 1.6 — the most nourishing of the ordinary foods.


 * Steak and cooked porkchops
 * Restores 


 * Both of these foods have the same restorative value, and can be found relatively early on, provided there are cows, mooshroom and/or pigs nearby. When possible, fence them up near your shelter to breed them. This way, a reliable supply of food can be established.


 * Advantages:
 * Steak and cooked porkchop restore the highest amount of hunger and saturation of any food in the game except special foods.
 * Cows, mooshrooms and pigs can be bred to supply the player with raw beef and porkchops.
 * Breeding cows and mooshrooms also supply the player with leather.
 * Raw beef and porkchops can be cooked quickly using a campfire when away from a reliable source of food.


 * Disadvantages:
 * As with raw beef and porkchops, steak and cooked porkchop's availability is dependent on the presence of cows, red mooshrooms, brown mooshrooms or pigs within sight, which can be random at best and require extensive traveling depending on the biome the player spawns in. Once at least two animals have been found, however, they can be bred for an easy and infinite supply of steak and cooked porkchops.
 * Breeding pigs requires carrots, potatoes or beetroot, which can be very difficult to obtain, if there are no villages with carrot or potato farm nearby, as they only very rarely drop from zombies.


 * Burning cows and pigs provides a slightly easier method to obtain steak and cooked porkchops without the need to monitor a furnace, smoker or campfire. The player can burn a cow or pig by making it walk into lava, press use the block under it with a bucket of lava, or by lighting the squares around it on fire with a flint and steel. You can also obtain cooked porkchops by killing a cow or pig with a sword or bow with the Fire Aspect/Flame enchantment.


 * Cooked mutton
 * Restores 


 * Cooked mutton restores a fairly good amount of hunger and good saturation, making it a good food choice. As sheep are fairly common, it is quite easy to obtain cooked mutton early on. Once two sheep have been found, they can be bred for a reliable supply of cooked mutton.


 * Cooked salmon
 * Restores 


 * Cooked salmon restores more than cooked cod. Salmon is rarer to catch with a fishing rod than cod, but the salmon mob is commonly found in rivers and is fairly easy to kill.
 * If you can find string, fishing is a good source of food. It is safer than some other food sources, as water can be brought to your shelter with a bucket. However, meats and bread restore a similar amount of hunger and are often easier to obtain.


 * Spider eyes
 * ''Restores


 * Although they only restore and poison you for 4 seconds (draining  over time), spider eyes do restore a large amount of saturation. This is useful if you are already at/near  (since poison does not drain your health past half a heart) and you only need to restore a small amount of hunger to start healing again. Only ever eat spider eyes if you have to, it is best to leave them in your brewing lab.

Second-tier foods
These have a nourishment of 1.2 — the staple foods, cheap and fairly nourishing.


 * Cooked chicken
 * Restores ''


 * Chickens are easier to find than most other passive mobs, and also lay eggs, which can be brought to a fenced-off area and hatched. As chickens only need seeds to breed, this makes them a good source of food if they can be found. However, they do not restore as much hunger or saturation as other meats.


 * Advantages:
 * Cooked chicken restores a fairly good amount of hunger and saturation.
 * Chickens are more common than other passive mobs, as well as giving eggs to speed up farming.
 * Farming chickens also provides feathers and eggs.
 * Because chickens lay eggs, cooked chicken can be farmed completely automatically, compared to farming of other animal meat which needs the player to breed the animals.


 * Disadvantages:
 * Other meats restore more hunger and saturation than cooked chicken.
 * Eggs hatch into baby chickens, which need to grow before they are farmed.


 * Cooked cod
 * Restores 


 * If you can find string, fishing is a good source of food. It is safer than some other food sources, as water can be brought to your shelter with a bucket. However, meats and bread restore a similar amount of hunger and are often easier to obtain.


 * Advantages:


 * Fishing can be in any size body of water.
 * Cooked cod restore a fairly good amount of hunger and saturation.
 * Once a fishing rod can be obtained, a steady supply of fish can be caught.


 * Disadvantages:


 * Cooked cod restores equal amounts of hunger and saturation as bread, which is easier to farm early on.
 * Catching fish takes some time, making it slow to gather large amounts of them. Killing cod mobs is also quite difficult, as they can only be found in the ocean.


 * Mushroom stew
 * Restores 


 * If mushrooms can be found, mushroom stew can be a reliable food source. Because the ingredients stack, and the recipe can be made in the 2×2 crafting menu, mushroom stew can be a useful food source when exploring – even in the Nether. Additionally, pressing use on a mooshroom with a bowl will fill the bowl with stew.
 * However, mushroom stew does not stack, so crafting a lot of stew at once takes up a lot of inventory space. Storing just the ingredients and crafting stew only as needed mitigates this somewhat, but 64 servings would still take up one slot for the bowls, one for red mushrooms and one for brown mushrooms, while storing 64 cooked chicken (for the same amount of nutrition) needs only one slot.


 * Bread
 * Restores 


 * Bread is one of the easiest foods to obtain early in the game, as a farm can be started by a lake with only a wooden hoe and some wheat seeds. However, it is likely the player will find more efficient food sources later in the game. It effectively reliefs 11 points of hunger with 3 units of wheat.


 * Advantages:
 * Bread takes little resources to farm.
 * Bread restores a fairly good amount of hunger and saturation.
 * A wheat farm is easy to maintain.
 * Does not require a furnace or fuel.


 * Disadvantages:
 * Wheat grows slowly, and three are required per bread.
 * Lots of bone meal may be needed to grow a single stalk of wheat.
 * Farms require a light level of 9 for growth.
 * Meats restore more hunger and saturation than bread.


 * Since the introduction of tall grass, bread is arguably among the most efficient early sustainable food sources. By building farms out into open water, wheat production can be started on Day 1 with no other tools than a wooden hoe. With a little luck at night, you may get enough bone meal to help make your first loaf before dawn.


 * Nevertheless, once operations are underway, farms can be enlarged and automated to provide a reliable, safe and renewable supply of wheat for food security. Using automated harvesting (based on pistons and/or water), wheat production becomes much less labor-intensive—hoppers can even allow the seeds and wheat to be automatically gathered into chests. Mechanical assistance contributes directly to the effective amount of energy obtained from wheat since both movement and harvesting decrease your hunger bar.


 * Bread has more or less been rendered obsolete by carrots, which take the same amount of time to farm, but yield 6 times as much hunger (including saturation) for the land and seed used. However, carrots are harder to come by in a new game (and both wheat and wheat seeds have other uses), so bread is still likely to be the first-farmed food for most players.


 * Baked potato
 * Restores 


 * Although hard to find initially, potatoes are an efficient food source, as each potato plant can drop up to 4 potatoes. Unlike bread and carrots, potatoes do require cooking for the full effect.


 * Advantages:
 * Baked potatoes restore a good amount of hunger and saturation.
 * Potatoes can be farmed quickly and in large quantities.


 * Disadvantages:
 * Meats restore more hunger and saturation than baked potatoes.


 * As no experience is granted for harvesting potatoes, and a cooked chicken yields the same amount of experience, cooked chicken has a slight advantage over cooked potatoes due to the experience bonus of breeding. However, since potatoes only need to be planted, are quickly harvested with almost no waste, baked potatoes can be a much more efficient food source than cooked chicken.


 * Carrot
 * Restores 


 * Similar to potatoes, but do not need to be cooked. Carrots restore.


 * Advantages:
 * Carrots are easy to farm.
 * Carrots can be used to breed pigs and rabbits.
 * Carrots can be dropped by zombies which can be useful if you start caving before you have a reliable food source.
 * Carrots do not need to be cooked.


 * Disadvantages:
 * The initial carrot is hard to find unless you spawn near a village.
 * Carrots do not restore much hunger or saturation.
 * Meats and baked potatoes restore more hunger and saturation than carrots.


 * Beetroot
 * Restores 


 * Advantages:
 * Beetroots can be used to breed pigs and can be crafted into red dye.


 * Disadvantages:
 * Beetroot can only be found in villager farms and snowy tundra village house chests.
 * Beetroot crops grow somewhat slower than other crops, and they only yield one beetroot for each harvest.
 * Finding beetroot seeds takes some exploration.
 * Eating one beetroot is only marginally more useful than not eating at all.


 * Beetroot soup
 * Restores 


 * Crafted from six beetroots and a bowl.


 * Advantages:
 * It restores the same amount of hunger as six beetroots while taking only one-sixth as much time to eat.
 * Uncrafted beetroot soup takes up less inventory space than uncrafted mushroom stew (up to 10 servings).


 * Disadvantages:
 * Beetroot can only be found in villager farms and snowy tundra village house chests.
 * Beetroot crops grow somewhat slower than other crops, and they only yield one beetroot for each harvest.
 * Like mushroom stew, beetroot soup doesn't stack when crafted.


 * Cooked rabbit
 * Restores 


 * Advantages
 * Cooked rabbit can be obtained relatively early on depending on the presence of rabbits.
 * Cooked rabbit can be purchased from butcher villagers.
 * Cooked rabbit is used to craft rabbit stew. Disadvantages
 * Other meats restore more hunger and saturation than cooked rabbit.


 * Rabbit stew
 * Restores 


 * Advantages
 * Rabbit stew can be purchased from butcher villagers.
 * Rabbit stew restores the most hunger of any food type currently in the game except cake.  Disadvantages
 * Like mushroom stew and beetroot soup, rabbit stew does not stack.
 * Rabbit stew restores less hunger and saturation than all of its ingredients combined, and is currently the only food where this is the case.


 * Suspicious stew
 * Restores *


 * Crafted from two types of mushrooms, a bowl and a flower, the suspicious stew is almost like mushroom stew – with the notable addition of a status effect depending on the flower used.
 * When crafted with blue orchid or dandelion, suspicious stew grants the effect Saturation for 7 ticks, meaning an additional and 14 saturation, for a total of  and 21.2 saturation, which effectively makes Saturation stew slightly more nourishing than top-tier foods. Suspicious stew crafted with a oxeye daisy has the effect of an 8-second Regeneration instead, which heals 1.6 hearts – making it all but essential when natural regeneration is turned off.


 * Advantages:
 * Flowers and mushrooms are easy to find.
 * Flowers provide certain status effects when added to suspicious stew.


 * Disadvantages:
 * Suspicious stew may have negative effects too – Blindness, Poison, Weakness, or even Wither. Remembering the correct flower for the recipe is important.
 * Once a suspicious stew is crafted, there is no indication to the nature of its effect.
 * These two facts make it inadvisable to eat any suspicious stew that one didn't craft oneself; hence its name.

Third-tier foods
These have a nourishment of 0.6, these are useful for achieving a full bar of both hunger and saturation when the current hunger bar is almost empty, if eaten with foods of higher tier of nourishment.


 * Pumpkin pie
 * Restores 


 * Pumpkin pie is crafted with pumpkins, sugar and eggs.


 * Advantages:
 * Pumpkin pie has a higher hunger restoration value than most uncooked foods, being the "largest" of the third-tier foods. It's an excellent choice for restoring a badly drained hunger meter, before eating something with more saturation.
 * The crafting recipe for pumpkin pie is shapeless, and fits within the 2×2 crafting grid of the player's inventory. This makes it possible to craft pumpkin pie anywhere without a crafting table or furnace, as long as the player is carrying the necessary ingredients.
 * All ingredients required to craft pumpkin pie can be farmed completely automatically, using pistons and/or hoppers.


 * Disadvantages:
 * It's still a third-tier food -- steak and cooked porkchops restore the same amount of hunger, and far more saturation, than pumpkin pie.
 * Pumpkins are relatively rare, so it may take some time and traveling before the player is able to establish a pumpkin farm.
 * Pumpkin plants are slow to grow a pumpkin and only yield a single pumpkin per plant at a time.


 * Apple
 * Restores 


 * Apples are found when oak leaves or dark oak leaves are broken or decay.


 * Melon
 * Restores 


 * Advantages
 * Melons are renewable and their farms are easy to automate.
 * Each melon block drops 3-7 melon slices, so you can quickly get a lot in only one harvest.
 * Melon slices can be crafted into glistering melons, which can be used to make Potions of Healing.
 * Melons are almost never wasted on overfilling the hunger bar.
 * Melons can be crafted back into melon seeds.
 * Melon plant stems will stay productive indefinitely so long as they are protected.
 * Disadvantages
 * Melons can be difficult to obtain.
 * Melon seeds can only be found in chests in abandoned mineshafts, dungeons, and woodland mansions.
 * Melon stems grow slowly and don't instantly spawn melon blocks even when grown with bone meal.
 * Melons provide almost no food saturation, so a diet of melons necessitates frequent stops to eat. A better use of melons is to first fill the hunger saturation with food such as meat, then use melon to fill the bar the rest of the way.


 * Raw fish and Raw salmon
 * Restores 


 * Advantages:
 * Raw fish or salmon can be used tame cats, trust ocelots, or feed dolphins.
 * Can be obtained by fishing or killing cod, guardians, elder guardians, polar bears, or dolphin s. Disadvantages:
 * Raw fish is not nearly as nourishing as cooked fish.


 * Raw chicken and Raw mutton
 * Restores 


 * Advantages:
 * Chickens are relatively easier to find in the world than pigs or cows.
 * Chickens die more easily, as they have only 4 units of health, making obtaining raw chicken both time effective, and food/saturation effective.
 * Supply of raw chicken is easier to maintain, as chickens also drop eggs which can be hatched into chicks for mass production of raw chicken rather than being dependent on seeds or wheat for breeding.
 * Chicken farming can be automated, making for a useful way of collecting eggs/raw chicken/feathers while you are doing something else, as long as the chunk is loaded.
 * Raw chicken and raw mutton can be used to feed wolves.


 * Disadvantages:
 * Raw chicken has a 30% chance of giving the player food poisoning, which is one reason why it's better to cook it first (the other being more food value). However, food poisoning just barely counteracts one raw chicken's food saturation, and will not even drain half a hunger shank. This makes it a very minor drawback, especially when eating multiple raw chickens at once. Because food poisoning does not stack, and because raw chicken has a very high food saturation value, eating multiple raw chickens at a time will easily restore more hunger than the poison can take away.


 * Raw beef, Raw porkchop, and Raw rabbit
 * Restores 




 * Advantages:
 * Raw beef is relatively quick to get at all stages of the game without requiring specialized tools, and even faster to collect when the player has a stone sword (or better) and a sizeable herd nearby.
 * Unlike raw chicken, raw beef does not carry a chance of contracting food poisoning when eaten.
 * Cooking raw beef yields steak, a food item that restores 4 units of the food bar and 12.8 saturation when eaten.
 * Cows and mooshrooms can drop up to 3 raw beef, as opposed to a chicken, which can only drop 1 raw chicken.


 * Disadvantages:
 * The availability of raw meat is dependent on the presence of animal mobs.


 * Potato
 * Restores 


 * Advantages
 * Potatoes may be found in plenty in villager farms.
 * Disadvantages
 * Potatoes are far less nourishing than baked potatoes.


 * Poisonous potato
 * Restores 


 * Advantages
 * Rarely dropped when farming potatoes.
 * Can be found in shipwreck chests.
 * Usable as emergency food.   Disadvantages
 * Poisonous potatoes have a 60% chance to inflict the poison effect.

Junk foods
With a nourishment value of 0.2, these foods will provide almost no saturation. They are basically snacks that will rarely ever overfill the saturation bar.


 * Cookies
 * Restores 


 * Crafted from two units of wheat and one unit of cocoa beans.
 * Advantages
 * The ingredients can be farmed in large quantities.
 * 8 cookies are made each time.
 * 1 batch of cookies relieves 19.2 points of hunger with only 2 units of wheat, much more efficient than bread.
 * When fed to a parrot, a cookie will kill the parrot instantly. Disadvantages
 * Cookies have a very low nourishment value.


 * Cake
 * Restores (slice),  (whole)


 * Advantages:


 * Cake can be used repeatedly in multiplayer and can be shared by several players as a feast item.
 * Cake is a renewable resource.
 * Cake can be eaten instantly without any eating animation and without switching the currently selected item.
 * Cake can be used as mounting for a TNT cannon and produces a range greater than that of a half slab.
 * Similar to a half slab, you do not need to jump to walk over cake.


 * Disadvantages:


 * Cake requires several different items to craft: sugar, wheat, an egg and three buckets of milk. In addition, a crafting table is required to use the recipe.
 * Once cake is placed, it cannot be retrieved.
 * If the block below the cake is broken, the cake will disappear.
 * Cakes need to be placed to be eaten, which means they cannot be eaten in places where one cannot build (e.g. spawn protection).
 * If you only eat part of a cake, you'll have to come back to that exact spot to eat the rest of it later on.
 * Cake is not stackable in Java Edition.
 * Cake has a low saturation level, causing you to become hungry again in a very short amount of time.
 * Cake is the least effective of all wheat-based foods.


 * Rotten flesh
 * Restores 


 * Rotten flesh is obtained by fighting zombies with a sword or bow.


 * Advantages:
 * Rotten flesh can be a good emergency food when other sources are depleted if used in high doses, restoring more food points than the hunger effect can take away.
 * While in combat, eating rotten flesh is a good way of keeping your hunger topped off so that your health keeps regenerating, without wasting better quality food.
 * Rotten flesh may be used to feed and breed wolves without poisoning them.


 * Disadvantages:
 * Rotten flesh has an 80% chance to trigger food poisoning, making hunger deplete for thirty seconds.
 * Rotten flesh only restores 4 hunger points.
 * Killing zombies for rotten flesh may be dangerous for unskilled players.
 * Rotten flesh restores less saturation than other meats.


 * Tropical fish
 * Restores 


 * Advantages:
 * Disadvantages
 * Tropical fish is a rare catch from fishing.
 * The tropical fish mob can only be found in warm ocean, or in warm, lukewarm oceans and deep variants.
 * The tropical fish mob can only be found in warm ocean, or in warm, lukewarm oceans and deep variants.


 * Pufferfish
 * Restores 


 * Advantages:
 * There are no real advantages to eating pufferfish.
 * Pufferfish are a useful ingredient in brewing potions of water breathing.  Disadvantages
 * Pufferfish inflict hunger, poison, and nausea effects, draining and keeping you down to  for 48 seconds.

Automation
A number of food items can have their production automated.


 * Raw and Cooked chicken
 * Eggs can be collected from chickens by hoppers and then thrown by dispensers to make baby chickens. Timed mechanisms can then kill or burn the chickens after they grow up to produce raw or cooked chicken automatically.


 * Melon
 * Melons can be harvested with pistons and hoppers at regular intervals with a clocked mechanism or as soon as they grow by detecting them with redstone power or a block update detector.


 * Rotten flesh
 * Rotten flesh can be auto-harvested with a mob farm.

Emergency measures
If your hunger meter is dropping and you have no food in hand, there are a few emergency measures you can take, depending on available resources.


 * Mushroom stew
 * If you have both kinds of mushrooms handy and enough wood for bowls (three planks of any type), you can make mushroom stew.


 * Milk
 * If you have a bucket and a cow, milk the cow. The milk will let you fill up on rotten flesh, raw chicken, spider eyes, or poisonous potatoes, and then cure the illness.


 * Rotten flesh
 * Eat five at once and not only can you heal, you also end up with about 80% full hunger. If you do nothing while waiting for the hunger effect to wear off, this is even more effective.


 * Local animals
 * Kill a cow, pig, sheep, or chicken. Cook the meat if at all possible, but even eating it raw will fend off utter starvation.


 * Fast crops
 * If you have any potatoes or carrots, and some bone meal (craft 3 from one skeleton bone, or get from composter), you can make a hoe and till some dirt near any water source, then plant your vegetables and use the bone meal to make them mature more quickly. It can take several pieces of bone meal to get a mature plant. Cooking the potatoes is also a good idea.


 * If you have the bone meal but no carrots or potatoes, you can destroy some tall grass near a river or lake, make and use a hoe, then plant seeds and use the bone meal to rapidly grow your wheat. The same caveats as above apply to the use of bone meal.


 * Fishing
 * If you have string, wood, and water, fishing is relatively quick; you can get one or two fish within a minute. Note that you can fish in a waterfall.


 * Doing nothing
 * You won't lose hunger bars if you don't do anything (walking, mining, healing, etc.). In hardcore especially, this can be a necessary strategy while waiting for crops or baby animals to grow.


 * Death
 * A last-ditch measure: If you're close to your bed or spawn point, stuff your inventory and armor into a chest or two … then die. On hard mode, you can just wait to die of starvation, otherwise, good methods are drowning, jumping off cliffs, or dropping gravel or sand on yourself. You will respawn with full health and hunger bars, and can then reclaim your stuff. Naturally, this method doesn't apply in hardcore. Note that this isn't a totally free solution: you lose most of your experience.

Helpful tips and tricks for food

 * Always keep an eye on your hunger bar.


 * Make sure to have at least a half of a stack of food at all times.
 * Obviously, eat when your health is low.

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