Hunger



One of the new aspects of the game added in the Adventure Update is the Food Bar, which governs several aspects of gameplay. Eating food, instead of directly restoring the player's Health, now fills up the Food Bar, which is constantly draining very, very slowly.

If the Food Bar is 90%-100% full you will slowly regenerate health, but if you let it drain all the way to 0%, you will constantly lose half a heart instead, as you are starving to death. On Easy difficulty, the player's health would stop dropping at 5 hearts, Normal stops at 1/2 a heart, and on Hard it will keep draining until you die. .

Contrary to popular belief, having a full Food Bar does not keep your health bar from completely depleting.

While the player is sprinting, the Food Bar will deplete faster than when not sprinting and will be unable to sprint at all once the bar falls to 30% or less.

This game mechanic allows food to be stacked, increasing the amount of food one can carry in their inventory at a time. It has been hinted that this will be added when Hardcore mode is added. Despite that fact, some community modders have already created Single Player mods and Multiplayer mods, both of which incorporate the hunger mechanic.

The Food Bar does not drain when playing on Peaceful mode, but its effects on your character's health bar remain.

When you eat Rotten Flesh, your Food Bar gets poisoned and depletes faster. There is also a fairly high chance of your food bar poisoning every time you eat Raw Chicken.

Bugs
Sometimes the Food Bar will stop depleting. This may be due to a glitch with the new food items. Alternatively, there could be a period after eating when the player is not hungry (as they just ate) and the food bar doesn't drain.