Food

Food is a group of items that restore food points to the food bar, which has a direct bearing on the player's health (see Hunger for more detailed information on the effects). With the exception of milk, cake, and mushroom stew, all food items and ingredients can be stacked in a player's inventory. Holding down the "Use Item" button (default is Button 2, right mouse button) will allow the user to eat the food that is in the player's hand. Note that cake must be placed like other blocks on a surface before being eaten.

Food
There is also an invisible saturation bar, in addition to the food bar, that controls other aspects of hunger.

Nourishment Value
Nourishment is defined as the ratio of saturation to food points restored by a certain food item. Creeper <--Click!

Ingredients
The following items cannot be eaten on their own. Instead, they are crafted with other ingredients to produce certain food items.

While the following ingredients can be crafted with others, they can be consumed to induce or nullify certain effects on the player.

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 bonemeal 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 shorn to harvest the red mushrooms.

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. Spiders also dropped eyes that could be crafted with sugar and a brown mushrooms to produce fermented spider eyes.

Trivia

 * You can continue breaking blocks even while eating, the actions simply occur simultaneously.