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Posted: Jan 20, 2023 in Minecraft
By Kevin Lott
Hunger is an interesting thing. Despite the fact that Minecraft didn’t have hunger in its early years, it has always been considered a survival game. And like most survival games, the idea of sustaining your character’s hunger eventually made its way into the game’s mechanics. Because of this, the Minecraft community have taken it upon themselves to formulate the most efficient way to farm foodstuffs so as to not starve to death. Today, we’ll go over the best foods to farm in Minecraft, and how you can build it!
Farming refers to the systematic production of renewable resources. The technique is typically used to get blocks, experience, items, but more importantly: food. Lots of different crops can be farmed, but since we’re on a quest for the most efficient farm, we’re going to be farming very specific foods. Which foods we decide on is going to be determined by the amount of hunger points and saturation given along with how difficult the food item is to farm. I’ve done a cost analysis to determine the most efficient foods, but also the ‘best’ assuming you have the time and energy to farm them. But what exactly are hunger points in saturation?
Well, hunger points simply refers to the chicken legs on your hotbar which tracks how much hunger you have. You need as many hunger points as possible for your food because that enables you to farm less food while still maintaining your hunger. You can also hold less food and stock up and food less often. Saturation is a little different. It basically refers to the amount of running and health regen you can take before losing your next hunger point. Typically, this stat is invisible in Minecraft but it can be made viewable with a mod called Appleskin.
The best food we could farm is Steak. The most efficient food we could farm is Carrots.
We’ll start with the more efficient food, Carrots. Carrots are a normal food item obtained from carrot crops that can be used to plant them, eaten or used as a crafting ingredient. This food suits our needs for maximum efficiency and low hassle because of the fact no seeds are required, and you do not need to craft/cook the harvest into a more suitable food item. Just plant, harvest, replant, then dig in! While potatoes almost served as a better option stat wise, you need to cook potatoes to optimize their stats, which is one extra step than carrots take.
Next, the best food item, cows! Steak provides maximum hunger points and saturation comparatively to other food items, but it’s fairly difficult to farm consistently. Not only do you need an abundance of cows, but you also need to manage a wheat farm so as to feed the cows to make them breed. So essentially, to eat Steak regularly you’ll need to run a farm to run your farm. It’s not like it takes a lot of wheat to breed the cows, but it’s an extra step that uses up your precious time, and it’s extremely difficult to automate. Furthermore, once you’ve made your slaughterhouse and gotten your meat, you have to cook all of the food! Eating raw meat is not worth it at all, and the carrots would serve you better.
Overall, these two options are your best bet, and besides a few exceptions that may serve you better in specific situations, carrots and steak are the bomb!
Food can be fairly complicated in Minecraft. This is mainly because over the years, numerous updates have added in tons of food options and without unique mechanics/functionality to distinguish them, they all blend together into an odd food conglomerate where only the most powerful distinguish themselves. Regardless, I hope this blog helped you find your next favorite food item, and with that, have a great day!