Tutorials/Hunger management

= Hunger =

Hunger is a feature in minecraft that requires you to eat in order to survive. Hunger is represented by a bar next to the health bar. Negative effects happen when the bar is partially or completely depleted. When the bar is less than 9 units, health will stop regenerating. When no more hunger points are left, you will take damage until a certain amount of hearts are left (zero on hard mode). This tutorial will help you keep it full.

Tactics to combat hunger
While hunger is essential to keep your health up, it is not always needed. On Easy and Normal modes the health bar will stop before dying, so if the player takes care not to take any damage, they may still do whatever they were doing. In fact, many players drain their hunger to 0 whilst making a farm.

This can serve a problem in multiplayer servers, however, with PvP on the loose. Many players are luckily served with different types of food, which can help regeneration of health and sprinting, listed below.

Food
Food is a specific type of item that can be eaten by right clicking with the mouse. Food fills up the hunger bar and different foods fill different amounts. Certain foods have special effects. You can obtain food through crafting, farming, and killing mobs.

Cookies
Restores 

These are a hard to craft (requiring rare cocoa beans) food item. Despite 8 cookies created per crafting, these are not a very efficient food item. Filling up only half a bar on the hunger bar for each cookie consumed, a single crafting's worth heals as much as a cooked porkchop. They also have a better wheat-to-hunger ratio compared to bread, requiring 2 wheat (crafting 8 cookies restoring 4 units), instead of 3 wheat restoring 2.5 units. However, as of snapshot 12w18a, cocoa beans have a 0.5% chance of being dropped from jungle tree leaves, and Cocoa Plants were added in snapshot 12w19a, making them easier to craft and renewable.

Beef/Porkchop
Restores (raw) and  (cooked)

Beef and porkchops are both easily obtainable during the first few days of playing in singleplayer. They are dropped (raw) by pigs and cows. When cooked by a furnace, or by killing the animal with fire, they fill more than if raw. Since animals spawn rarely, it is recommended you start farming after the first few days.

Chicken
Restores (raw) and  (cooked)

Another type of meat that can be obtained by killing chickens. When raw there is a chance that it can cause food poisoning, which drains your hunger bar quickly, so it is recommended to cook it unless you really have no choice. It is fairly easy to get because chickens aren't rare animals and can easily be farmed with eggs. Killing a chicken with fire gives a cooked chicken.

Red Apple
Restores 

Apples are a fairly rare food item which appears in chests and oak tree leaves rarely when they are destroyed or decay. Apples are easy to harvest if you have a tree farm (chop down trees, then replant with a sapling). Apples are a fairly reliable source of food in the first few days of adventure when farms aren't established yet as it is a by-product of harvesting wood.

Golden Apple
Restores 

One of the easiest way to obtain a Golden Apple is to take 8 Golden Nuggets and an Apple and make a Golden Apple. The less predictable way is to find a Dungeon. Dungeons have Chests with various items, and if you get extremely lucky, there may just be a golden apple in it. A Golden Apple will accelerate your health regeneration for four seconds regardless of whether or not your hunger bar is full. As of snapshot 12w21a you can make an enchanted golden apple with 8 gold blocks instead of nuggets. This provides much faster and longer-lasting health regeneration, as well as the Resistance and Fire Resistance potion effects.

Bread
Restores 

Bread is one of the most commonly used foods, and is also one of the most renewable. Easy to make, it is crafted from farmable wheat, four bread will fill one's hunger bar completely. Tall Grass needs to be harvested in order to obtain the seeds necessary for farming wheat. One downside is that wheat farming is slow at the beginning. Without bone meal, it takes a few days to establish a wheat farm.

Cake
Restores (per slice eaten, 6 slices total)

Cake is the only food that must be placed before eating. However, cake is harder to craft than most food items, requiring three milk buckets, sugar, wheat, and an egg. Cake is not stackable in your inventory. It is recommended that you keep cakes in a place that you travel a lot for quick healing.

Fish
Restores (raw) and  (cooked)

If you have access to water, fishing is a great way to gather food, and after it is cooked it heals 2.5 units on the hunger bar. After creating a fishing rod, a 4 block deep patch of water will provide an endless supply of food. Fish also has the benefit of being able to be harvested inside of your shelter by digging a hole and using a bucket to fill it with water. However, fishing large amounts of fish is slow.

Mushroom Stew
Restores 

Fairly hard to get at first but easy to farm food, Mushroom Stew is quite affordable and hunger staving meal. It heals 4 units, like Steak, but it is quicker to obtain. Mushroom Farms should be made in order to harvest mushrooms wisely. Mushroom stew is one of the two non-stackable foods (along with cake) so it does take up a fair amount of inventory space. Contrary to popular belief, one does not need a crafting table to craft mushroom stew; it can be created in the inventory by placing the ingredients in any slot of the 2x2 inventory crafting. Mushroom stew is also obtained by 'milking' a Mooshroom with a bowl.

Melon Slice
Restores 

Melon Seeds are hard to obtain, as they are only generated in chests found in Abandoned Mineshafts, but once you plant them and have a farm going, Melon Slices are a fairly practical food source. Each slice heals 1 unit, and you should get a lot of them through Melon Farming. Each melon can drop from 3-7 melon slices.

Milk
Milk is obtained by right clicking on a cow with a bucket. It does not fill your hunger bar but can clear status effects such as poisoning and potion effects.

Poisonous Food
Avoid eating these foods unless you have to or have Milk in your inventory or hotbar:

Rotten Flesh
Rotten Flesh is obtained by killing a zombie. They cause food poisoning 80% of the time so they should be eaten only in an emergency. Because the poisoning effect does not stack, you can eat many of them at a time without losing too many hunger points. It can also be eaten with milk to prevent food poisoning. Zombie flesh is best used to feed or breed wolves because they are not affected by food poisoning.

Raw Chicken
Raw Chicken will cause food poisoning 30% of the time, meaning it is usually a good idea to cook it before you eat it.

Spider Eye
Spider eyes cause poisoning which depletes the health bar. It will deal two hearts of damage to you so spider eyes are better used for potions. However, these are good if you have 8 or 8.5 units of hunger, because once you've eaten a spider eye, your health will regenerate.

Emergency measures
A relatively quick, if dangerous, method of obtaining food is to kill skeletons to get bone meal, then use it to make wheat grow instantly. However, this may not be feasible if you're already low on health from lack of food.

If you're close to your bed or spawn point, a more radical solution is to kill yourself (e.g., by drowning); you will respawn with full health and hunger bars.