Cookie

The cookie is an edible item that requires Cocoa Beans to craft, which appear in dungeon chests or on Jungle trees from Cocoa Plants.

Cookies restore each, but only 0.4 of a "saturation" point. A half-stack of 32 cookies restores as many hunger points as 8 Cooked Porkchops, but the saturation of only one porkchop.

Advantages

 * Cookies are made in batches of 8 from just a single cocoa bean and two wheat.
 * Cookies recover .  Therefore, they can be eaten without any waste, before the player actually loses healing ability.  Thus players can constantly stay at a high enough hunger level to restore health.
 * Cocoa beans are easy to acquire hanging on jungle trees, and can be farmed on jungle-wood logs, while wheat is usually farmed from the beginning of the game.
 * Per Wheat, cookies are actually a more efficient form of food than bread. (Admittedly, that's weak praise.) In bread, 6 wheat recovers  plus 12 saturation points, but six wheat used in cookies, because of the number produced, recovers &times;24, plus 9.6 saturation points, only requiring an additional three cocoa beans.
 * Cookies are renewable.

Disadvantages

 * Cookies have a quite low saturation level compared to "meatier" foods, so their effects tend to be short-lived.
 * While a single cocoa bean's worth of cookies will restore the hunger meter as much as two cooked porkchops or steaks, it's far quicker to eat 2 items than 8, and the cookies won't provide nearly as much "saturation". Stack for stack other foods provide far more effect for the inventory space, especially when saturation is considered.
 * Melons have a similar food restoration and saturation level, but unlike cookies, can be farmed automatically using a BUD switch. Melons can also be directly crafted into seeds, whereas cookies require wheat and cocoa beans.
 * As of right now in the Xbox 360 Edition cocoa beans are hard to find, appearing only in dungeons.

History
Since their introduction, cocoa beans were arguably the scarcest item in the game, making cookies a rare trophy. However, in version 1.3, the beans became farmable, making cookies a cheap small-change food. Especially with their increased food value, they seem likely to replace Melons in that role.



Video
Note that this video was created before cocoa beans could be found in jungles, and before they could be farmed, making the information quite outdated.