What are poisonous potatoes used for in Minecraft? (2022)

There are several different food sources in Minecraft and many of them have multiple uses. Carrots, for example, can be used as a trade with farmer villagers, consumed as food, crafted into golden carrots, or used in a composter to potentially get a little bit of bonemeal. Most crops in the game are like this, though not all of them can be eaten.

Potatoes are one of the most popular crops to grow in the game. For every potato planted, there is a chance to yield over five potatoes if Fortune III is involved. They can be turned into baked potatoes, which is an excellent food source.

However, every once in a while, a potato plant yields a poisonous potato, which most players throw out or get rid of because they don't see a use for it. However, this overlooked item does have a use in the game.

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The use of a Minecraft poisonous potato

Ordinarily, poisonous potatoes are quite rare to obtain in the game. This is how rare they are, according to the Minecraft Wiki:

'The poisonous potato is a rare drop when harvesting (destroying) potato crops: a fully grown plant has a 2% chance of dropping one in addition to the 2-5 regular potatoes.'

A 2% chance is pretty miniscule, but if players have a lot of potato plants, they can obtain quite a few. These may seem useless, and that's for a good reason. They don't have a lot of uses, and it is often seen as a bad item.

Poisonous potatoes can't be planted on farmland and also cannot be turned into baked potatoes. Neither can they be placed in a composter to get bone meal. They are only useful to be eaten.

Composters don't take poisonous potatoes (Image via Mojang)

However, this is not a crucial use, as many players who have eaten one might agree. Eating a poisonous potato has a 60% chance of applying the status effect Poison II for five seconds.

This ultimately drains two full hearts of health in a very short amount of time. In specific circumstances, this can lead to death. This makes poisonous potatoes a bad food item.

However, if Minecraft players can withstand or avoid the poison effect, poisonous potatoes are actually better to eat than regular potatoes.

Poisonous potatoes restore two hunger points and have a saturation of 1.2. Neither of those numbers are good, but they are twice as good as normal potatoes.

A normal potato restores just one hunger point and has a measly saturation of 0.6. These are among the worst stats for any food item in the game. Hence, despite poisonous potatoes being dangerous, they are potentially better than regular potatoes.

However, that is the only use for them. They don't do anything else, so players should treat them as a last resort food option.

The only other possible (and maybe fun) use would be to trick another Minecraft player into eating one and checking to see if they get the poison effect, which would be helpful in PvP, but otherwise, they have a very narrow use in the game.

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