Cookie

The cookie is an edible item introduced in the Beta 1.4 update. Notch had previously mentioned it in a tweet. It requires Cocoa Beans to craft. It was later confirmed that cocoa beans will appear in dungeon chests. A full stack of eight cookies restores a total of four health (the same amount of health as one Cooked Porkchop), but they can only stack up to 8 instead of 64.

Advantages

 * Eating a cookie will fill half a heart. This is useful if you don't want to waste food with higher healing strength.
 * The ingredients needed to make cookies can be stacked. By carrying a workbench, 64 cocoa beans, and 128 wheat, you'll be able to craft 512 cookies. This translates to 256 hearts from four inventory spaces, which is superior to the 160 hearts possible from carrying a workbench and three stacks of wheat.

Disadvantages

 * A full stack of cookies will take up the same inventory space and heal just as much as a cooked porkchop. However, porkchops are much easier to acquire, and a single porkchop is easier to eat in the heat of battle than eight cookies.
 * Cocoa Beans can only be found in dungeons at the current time, making cookies highly inefficient, on par with apples.
 * 64 bowls of Mushroom Stew yield 320 hearts of healing. However, Mushroom Stew doesn't stack, so the ingredients (red and brown mushrooms, at least one bowl and a Crafting Table) must be carried separately. But at only four inventory spaces, it is a much more efficient healer than cookies.