The Best Food in Minecraft, Ranked

Every food restores two values. Hunger is the bar of 10 drumsticks you can see, worth 20 points, so each drumstick is 2. Saturation is a hidden buffer on top of it. While you have any saturation left, the hunger bar does not move, which is why a high-saturation food lasts far longer than its drumsticks suggest.

The main foods ranked

These values come from the game's own data (Cake's per-slice values come from the cake block). Hunger is in points, two per drumstick. The food and saturation chart lists all 40 food items and sorts them by hunger, saturation or both combined. It shows hunger in drumsticks, so its hunger numbers are half of these. The table below is sorted by hunger plus saturation, the same order as the chart's Best value sort.

Golden Carrot has the highest saturation of any food that stacks, which makes it the best food to carry. Steak and Cooked Porkchop restore more hunger per bite and come straight from an animal pen. Stews restore a lot, but each one fills an inventory slot on its own.

How hunger and saturation drain

Everything you do adds exhaustion. Each time exhaustion reaches 4.0, the game removes one point of saturation, or one point of hunger once saturation is empty.

Natural regeneration is the big cost. Every half-heart you regenerate naturally burns one and a half points of saturation or hunger. Regenerating all 10 hearts costs 30 points of saturation and hunger, as much as sprinting 1,200 blocks. You also spawn and respawn with a full bar but only 5 saturation.

Your hunger level also sets limits:

• 18 points (9 drumsticks) or more: you regenerate half a heart every 4 seconds.
• A full bar with saturation left: healing speeds up to every half second.
• 6 points (3 drumsticks) or less: you can't sprint.
• 0 points: you take starvation damage. On Easy it stops at 5 hearts, on Normal at half a heart, and on Hard it can kill you.

Saturation can also never be higher than your current hunger level.

The best food at each stage

Your first day

The first-night survival guide covers hunting and cooking your first meat. Always cook it: Raw Beef gives 3 hunger and 1.8 saturation, Steak gives 8 and 12.8.

Once you have a farm

Bread takes three wheat and restores 5 hunger. Potatoes bake one for one into Baked Potatoes with the same values as Bread. Carrots are weak at 3 hunger, but you will want a steady supply of them for Golden Carrots later. An automatic crop farm keeps all three coming.

Meat is still the better meal. Pen a few cows or pigs, breed them (the guide to breeding every animal lists what each one eats) and cook in batches. A Smoker cooks food in 5 seconds instead of a Furnace's 10. It burns fuel twice as fast, so each piece of fuel still cooks the same number of items. A Campfire takes 30 seconds per item, holds four at once and needs no fuel.

Mid to late game

Switch to Golden Carrots. The Golden Carrot recipe is one carrot surrounded by eight Gold Nuggets. A Gold Ingot crafts into nine nuggets, so each carrot costs less than one ingot. A Nether gold farm turns that into an endless supply.

Without a gold farm, trade for them. A Master-level Farmer always offers 3 Golden Carrots for 3 emeralds, up to 12 times before restocking. The villager trading guide covers levelling one up.

Foods eaten for their effects

Some foods matter more for their effects than their hunger. Golden Apples, Enchanted Golden Apples, Suspicious Stew, Honey Bottles and Chorus Fruit can all be eaten on a full bar.

A Golden Apple costs eight Gold Ingots and gives the same saturation as Cooked Salmon with less hunger, so eat it for the effects before a fight, not as a meal. Enchanted Golden Apples have no crafting recipe. You find them in chests in dungeons, mineshafts, desert pyramids, ruined portals, woodland mansions, ancient cities and bastion treasure rooms, and as a reward from ominous vaults in trial chambers.

Suspicious Stew made with a Dandelion, Blue Orchid or Golden Dandelion adds a brief Saturation effect. Together with the stew's own value, that restores 13 hunger points and fills your saturation to the maximum, more than any other single meal. It doesn't stack, so it suits a base kitchen more than a trip. Since 26.3, Mushroom Stew and the Suspicious Stew recipe take any two mushrooms, including the Shelf Mushroom, and Rabbit Stew can use one too.

Foods to avoid

Rotten Flesh is still worth eating in an emergency. It restores 4 hunger, and the Hunger effect from one piece adds only 3.0 exhaustion over its 30 seconds, less than a single point. A Milk Bucket clears the effect if you have one.

When to eat

• Once you are down by what the food restores. Food can't push your bar past 20 points, so Steak eaten at 16 points wastes half its hunger.
• Steak first, carrots second. Because saturation can't exceed your hunger level, a Golden Carrot eaten at 2 points leaves you at 8 hunger with no more than 8 saturation. Fill the bar with Steak first, then top it off with Golden Carrots.
• Before a fight. Below 18 points you stop regenerating health naturally, so eat before the fight starts, not during it.