Food

Food is used in Minecraft to restore health. Some types of food (eggs, milk, sugar, wheat, and mushrooms) are used as ingredients to make food that can be consumed, but cannot be eaten on their own. Food is eaten by right-clicking, in the same manner as blocks and items are placed or used. Cake must be placed before it can be eaten, but after that is consumed by right-clicking it.

Food ingredients with the exception of Milk are stackable items, whereas food items with the exception of Cookies are not stackable.

Notch has suggested a food bar of some sort, which could mean that you will need to eat periodically, whether or not you've taken damage.

Ingredients
The following items cannot be used to heal but may be crafted to make some of the food items above.

Efficiency (Healing)
With the exception of Cookies, foods do not stack in your inventory, so it pays to choose what edibles you carry to the maximum benefit out of your resources and time - especially when out exploring or mining, when storage space can get limited.

The healing efficiency (HE) value of a particular food item in this table is measured in hearts per inventory space:

HE value = Total number of hearts (healed by the food) divided by total number of inventory spaces needed (to store the components)
 * Prepared means the HE was calculated based on the inventory space needed to carry the already cooked/crafted food.
 * Unprepared means the HE was calculated based on the minimum inventory space needed to carry the uncrafted/uncooked components of the food (including the Workbench or Furnace) that yielded the ideal (most) hearts per space.
 * Inventory specifies the number of spaces needed to carry the amount of uncrafted/uncooked components to yield the ideal Unprepared HE value.
 * Unprepared (Max) means the HE was calculated based on using the entire inventory space to carry the uncrafted/uncooked food components (including the Workbench or Furnace). Not recommended unless one specializes in virtual catering or holds regular celebratory feasts.

For further in-depth explanation of the values, please see Food/HE_Calculations.