Melon Slice

Melons are a food item. They are farmable and can be first obtained from melon blocks grown from melon seeds found in Abandoned Mine Shafts or traded from villagers. After growing the initial batch of seeds obtained from the chests, the player can grow additional melon blocks using seeds crafted from melons without having to find them in chests. Since snapshot 13w36a they also spawn naturally in jungle biomes.

Usage
Melon seeds, when planted on farmland, slowly grow into a stem. The stem then spawns melon blocks regularly in adjacent dirt, grass or farmland blocks as long as another melon block is not connected to the same stem. Melon slices are acquired by destroying the melon blocks, each of which will drop 3-7 melon slices. Each melon slice restores and 1.2 points of food saturation. The high volume, low calorie nature of melons makes it somewhat like portable cake in that each consumption is almost never wasted on overhealing the hunger bar. On the other hand, due to the food saturation mechanic, whether or not and how much of a food is "wasted" is not necessarily clear cut. If the point were to restore food saturation to ensure the maximum amount of time before needing to maintain the hunger bar, then melons are very inefficient. Due to the rapid production rate of most melon farms, however, a single harvest can provide plenty to eat for long periods of time.

Making melon slices into a melon block is inefficient as you use 9 melon slices, and when you break the block you get a lower melon return rate.

In addition to consumption as a food, melons can be crafted back into melon seeds, allowing unused portions to contribute directly to seed stock and the size of future harvests by exponentially increasing the number of productive stems. This is of course provided irrigated, arable soil is available in a secure area. This is a marked advantage over the other tilled-earth farming crop, wheat for which seed supply builds up much more slowly. However, one bonus with wheat is that it is easier to get seeds for it, as growing melon blocks first requires finding melon seeds in chests in abandoned mine shafts, or trading with a villager farmer.

The arrangement of melon blocks also allows a much more straightforward harvesting method, as stems will stay productive indefinitely so long as they are protected. On the other hand, the low nutrition of each melon means the 1.6 seconds of time required to eat them quickly adds up. Moreover they provide almost no food saturation, so a diet of melons necessitates frequent stops to eat. Needless to say, this can be inconvenient in many situations, such as inside hostile mob-infested caverns. A better use is to fill the hunger saturation with food such as meat, then use melon to fill the bar the rest of the way.

Melon slices can be crafted with gold nuggets to make a glistering melon. Glistering melons can be brewed with an awkward potion to make a potion of healing. As melons are very easy to farm in large quantities, this makes potions of healing very easy to obtain, as long as you can collect enough gold nuggets. Gold nuggets are very easy to obtain if you mine a lot, as one vein of gold can make 12 potions of healing. This is because a vein of gold averages about 4 gold ore which once smelted, can be crafted into 36 gold nuggets. 36 nuggets creates 4 glistering melon (with 4 nuggets left over) and as each glistering melon can create 3 potions, that makes 12 potions of healing. Alternatively, one can hunt Zombie Pigmen in the Nether, although this is much more risky.

Pros

 * Melons are renewable, like all other foods.
 * Each melon block drops 3-7 melon slices, so you can quickly get a lot in only one harvest.
 * Melon slices can be crafted into glistering melons, which can be used to make Potions of Healing.

Cons
"You'll never starve, but you'll always be hungry"
 * Melon seeds can only be found in mineshaft chests or traded from villagers.
 * Melons restores only, so it's not a very efficient food source.
 * Melons have a low saturation level, which causes you to be hungry again more quickly.
 * Melon stems grow slowly, and don't instantly spawn melon blocks even when grown with bonemeal.

Trivia

 * In Minecraft Pocket Edition 0.5.0, the item frame of the melons had a red background, indicating an unfinished item in progress.
 * Melons are only obtainable in Pocket Edition by using a Nether Reactor.