Rotten Flesh

Rotten Flesh is an item from the 1.8 update dropped from zombies; eating it restores some of your hunger meter however there is a large chance that after eating it your hunger meter will deplete at a faster rate. This is food poisoning. ). As of the pre-release testing, poisoning causes no damage by itself, but does sometimes cause the player to be unable to eat. It is unclear whether poisoning causes creatures to do increased damage to the player or not. As of the 1.8 Pre-release, the poison effect causes a player to take half as much damage (it is unclear if this is a bug or an intended effect). Rotten flesh cannot be cooked.

Rotten flesh heals Wolves without poisoning or causing damage to them. This will be useful in that players can optionally feed them an item that has no other use at the moment so that they may save their cooked pork for themselves.

Trivia

 * It has been pointed out on the forums that since zombies are undead humans, eating rotten flesh (i.e. zombie meat) is technically cannibalism.
 * It has also been pointed out on the forums that since zombies traditionally eat human flesh, feeding upon zombie meat is ironic.
 * It is speculated that version 1.9, which is to include both NPC villagers and enhancements to the Nether, will allow rotten flesh to be traded to the passive zombie pigmen.