Mushroom Stew

Mushroom stew (aka mushroom soup) heals for or  as of Beta 1.8 and is obtained by combining a bowl and two mushrooms - one brown, one red. The bowl is returned upon consumption.

Advantages

 * Mushroom stew's components can be stacked to 64, making stew a good candidate for stockpiling.
 * As of Beta 1.6, mushrooms can be farmed. With an adequate farm, this can be faster than gathering wheat or gathering pork.
 * Including the workbench needed to craft mushroom stew, only 4 inventory spaces are needed to yield 320 or  of healing as needed.
 * Because it is not necessary to have more than 64 bowls, and more than 1 workbench, additional sets of stew will only require 2 inventory spaces.
 * Mushroom stew is the best type of food to be made in the Nether if the player has brought in bowls (even one is enough). This is because mushrooms are far more common in the Nether than the overworld. The second best food to eat in the nether is Cooked Porkchops from Zombie Pigmen, though it can be a little risky to obtain.

Disadvantages

 * Mushrooms spread as of Beta 1.6, making them a renewable resource, but without a proper farm, their slow growth makes this less efficient than getting food through farming Wheat or hunting Pigs.
 * Because a single bowl restores half of the full amount of health, the healing potential of mushroom stew can be wasted if the player is already somewhat healthy before eating it.

Trivia

 * In the Minecraft code, Mushroom Stew is called Mushroom Soup.
 * If Mushroom Stew is inventory edited to be in a stack, eating it consumes the whole stack at once, only healing the amount of one Mushroom Stew. A stack can, however, be unstacked to get the full use of every Mushroom Stew in the stack. Due to this, Mushroom Stew is the only directly consumable food in the 1.8 beta that does not stack.