How food and hunger replenishment works in Minecraft: Explained

Soon after players first enter a new Minecraft world, they will start consuming their in-game character's energy and work on an appetite. The game has a hunger bar that starts depleting as players run, jump around, or perform any intensive activity. Thankfully, there are several kinds of food items that can replenish their hunger bar.

However, Minecraft's food mechanics is not as simple as it looks on the surface. Here is an explanation as to how it works.

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All details about food and hunger replenishment in Minecraft

Health, hunger, and saturation points

Players have three survival bars that are connected (Image via Mojang Studios)

There are three kinds of survival bars, all of which are connected: health, hunger, and saturation (a hidden bar).

The health bar is the most important one since players will die if it completely depletes. It can be increased by either keeping the hunger bar full or by using health potions.

Then comes the hunger bar, which can only be filled by eating various food items. However, it is heavily connected with an invisible food mechanic, which is saturation.

Saturation can be considered as an extra hunger bar that players do not see. After a hunger bar is nearly full and players eat a heavy food item like steak, porkchop, or rabbit stew, the remaining energy from the food item will be taken as saturation and fill up that invisible bar.

If a saturation bar is sufficiently full, players will not lose hunger points for a while, even if they continue to do intensive tasks. The indication that the saturation bar is empty will be when the hunger bar points start to move a little. As soon as the hunger points on the screen start to twitch, the player will start depleting the hunger bar instead of saturation.

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Different food items have different hunger and saturation points

Different food items replenish different levels of hunger and saturation (Image via Mojang Studios)

There are many food items that players can consume to replenish hunger and saturation. Some are the best to consume for replenishing the hunger bar, while others have slightly more saturation points.

While simple food items like bread, baked potatoes, cooked cod, and cooked chicken offer fewer hunger bar points, cooked porkchop and steak replenish lots of them. However, as explained above, replenishing hunger bars is only one side of the story. Players must also try to replenish saturation points that can only increase once the hunger bar is full.

Golden carrot is considered to be the best food item to consume to replenish the most amount of saturation points. However, if players only have cooked porkchop or steak, they are also a good source of saturation.

Since the hunger bar must be filled before the saturation bar, the best way to eat in Minecraft is to choose a food item that can quickly fill the hunger bar and then consume food that can replenish lots of saturation points. This will enable players to eat less and work for several minutes before their hunger bars start depleting.

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