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What is the Best Food in Minecraft?

Posted: Oct 4, 2021 in Minecraft

mc head By Kevin Lott

Overview

When it comes to what food you should eat in Minecraft, it is quite the conundrum. Some food is more difficult to procure, but offers better stats. Some are easy, but are basically worthless in terms of saturation. Finding that balance is today’s goal, where we will discuss what the best food is, how to acquire it, and everything in between. For the sake of this guide, it may help to use a mod called AppleSkin, which visualizes all of the mechanics we’ll be discussing. Let’s begin.

Best Food in Minecraft

When determining what the best food is, we look at two different statistics: Hunger points and Saturation points.

  • Hunger points – the visible chicken legs that compose the hunger bar on the hotbar. After all available saturation is depleted, hunger points will be consumed when performing energy-intensive actions.
  • Saturation – the first statistic to decrease when a player performs energy-intensive actions, and it must be completely depleted before the visible hunger meter begins decreasing. Although the current saturation level is generally hidden, the player can tell their saturation level is completely depleted if the visible hunger meter begins displaying a jittering effect. A player’s saturation level can never exceed their current hunger level.
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    Food always restores hunger, which in turn raises the saturation limit before applying saturation. The most efficient use of food is to eat low-nourishment food to fill the hunger bar, followed by a high nourishing food to fill saturation. While a few hunger points may be wasted when eating nourishing food when nearly full, eating nourishing foods on a low hunger bar wastes even more points of saturation. Maximizing saturation increases the length of time before the player needs to eat again.

    food chart

    Though that is how to conserve as much saturation as possible, it doesn’t necessarily apply to typical survival. Not all of us are chefs! We can’t afford to be carrying multiple types of foods for the sake of being optimal players. So if we had to carry a single food with us and nothing else, what would be the best option? In that case, I would have to choose the cooked meats. All of the cooked meats have great saturation to hunger point values, and they all fill your bar quite large amounts, which will make it so you don’t have to eat often.

    steak

    They aren’t as filling as the supernatural tier of foods, but it’s unrealistic to expect to eat golden apples for every meal. Having a healthy 64 stack of Steak will ensure you spend as little time as possible eating and more time gaming. Also, arming cows over any other animal or crop gives you the added benefit of acquiring lots of leather for other projects.

    Trivia

    • Every type of food is fully renewable, except for enchanted golden apples.
    • It is impossible to damage another entity or break blocks directly while eating.
    • Brown and Red Mushrooms are the first food items to be added into the game, and used to be directly edible before the addition of Mushroom Stew.
    • Conclusion

      That’s all there is to it! Food isn’t that complex, but as with most things in Minecraft, its functionality and mechanics are hidden/unexplained. With saturation and hunger points, we can determine the most efficient way to upkeep our character, with the least downtime eating as possible. I hope that this mini guide was able to help you decide the best food items in Minecraft.

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