Mushroom Stew

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

Advantages

 * As of Beta 1.6, mushrooms can be farmed. With an adequate farm, this can be faster than gathering wheat or gathering pork.
 * Mushroom stew is now equal to Cooked Porkchops, meaning that it is now only slightly easier to farm mushrooms in the nether compared to killing Zombie Pigmen
 * As of 1.8, huge mushrooms can provide the player with an indefinite amount of mushrooms for mushroom stews provided they have bonemeal.

Disadvantages

 * Mushroom stew proves the same amount of food healing as Cooked Pork Chops, but provides less saturation (See Hunger). Because of this 1 bowl of Mushroom stew is still considered worse than 1 Cooked Pork Chop for hunger purposes.
 * 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. (Although you still gain Saturation, which balances this out somewhat).
 * As of version 1.8, mushroom stew has lost it's advantage as the best food item, due to both lower saturation and the finished product not being stackable. Carrying 64 of each mushrooms, 64 bowls and a crafting bench will only heal 64 hunger per slot, while carrying a stack of a simple food such as bread will heal 192 hunger per slot, while an equal food such as Steak heals 256 hunger per slot.

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.
 * Due to the eating animation implemented in 1.8, the particles produced by eating mushroom stew contain wooden chunks from the bowl as well. This implies that you are eating the bowl.